Melting ice sheets may cause 'climate chaos' in a few decades: Study

Current Affairs:

Billions of tonnes of meltwater flowing into the world's oceans from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could boost extreme weather and destabilise regional climate within a matter of decades, researchers said Wednesday.

These melting giants, especially the one atop Greenland, are poised to further weaken the ocean currents that move cold water south along the Atlantic Ocean floor while pushing tropical waters northward closer to the surface, they reported in the journal Nature.
Known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), this liquid conveyor belt plays a crucial role in Earth's climate system and helps ensures the relative warmth of the Northern Hemisphere.

"According to our models, this meltwater will cause significant disruptions to ocean currents and change levels of warming around the world," said lead author Nicholas Golledge, an associate professor at the Antarctic Research Centre of New Zealand's Victoria University of Wellington.
The Antarctic ice sheet's loss of mass, meanwhile, traps warmer water below the surface, eroding glaciers from underneath in a vicious circle of accelerated melting that contributes to sea level rise.


 Most studies on ice sheets have focused on how quickly they might shrink due to global warming, and how much global temperatures can rise before their disintegration -- whether over centuries or millenia -- becomes inevitable, a threshold known as a "tipping point."

Patiala only Indian city with clean air as new anti-pollution plan stumbles

Current Affairs:

Almost a month after the launch of a national programme for air pollution abatement, cities across India--home to 14 of the most polluted cities in the world--continued to breathe toxic air during the winter of 2018-19.

Only Patiala among 74 cities assessed by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) met the national safe air standards as on February 4, 2019, said a CPCB daily bulletin.

On January 17, 2019, Ghaziabad, an industrial city bordering capital Delhi, reported a 24-hour average for toxic particulate matter (PM) 2.5 that was 14 times higher than World Health Organization’s (WHO) safe standard. The PM 2.5 average that day in Ghaziabad was six times higher than even India’s own, more lenient, safe-air standard. The national standard allows 2.4 times higher levels of particulate matter than the WHO’s.

The air quality in the world’s most polluted city, Delhi--home to 20 million people--remained above safe limits almost all days this winter between November 2018 and the first week of January 2019, IndiaSpend reported on January 17, 2019.


To fix this pollution crisis, the Indian government launched its first-ever national framework called National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) on January 10, 2019.

What 2019 Budget can do to help India clean its air, reduce coal addiction

Interim Budget 2019:

India has one of the world’s largest programmes to expand renewables--a doubling of capacity over the next four years--but India’s ambitious 2022 target of generating enough non-coal energy to replace the equivalent of 175 coal-powered plants is veering off track.

On February 1, 2019, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has a chance to get things back on track, help India reduce its addiction to coal, help clean the country’s air and meet the global climate-change commitments of the world’s fourth-fastest growing carbon polluter

After record growth in the installed capacity of renewables over the four years to 2017, capacity addition slowed down in 2018. The main reasons: an anti-dumping duty imposed by the government on imported solar modules to aid domestic manufacturing, higher rates of taxation under the goods and service tax (GST) and unclear policy.So, the last budget before 2019 general elections is of particular significance to the renewables sector, which comprises electricity from solar, wind, hydro and bio power.

These are the issues the budget must contend with:

• Due to a 2018 slowdown, the government will have to install 3.5 times more capacity every month than its average speed for the last four years.
• A new duty on imported solar modules--which meet more than 80% of the country’s need--increased production costs and threaten the competitiveness of solar tariffs against those of coal.
• Higher GST rates on solar modules and services are driving away investors and manufacturers. Delays in a long-term policy to remove uncertainty from the sector is holding back new investment.