Sunny climate, stormy climate | News Digest #48
We talk about Delhi's air quality, the 'typhoon parade' in Philippines and how a local community is bringing a river back to life in Kerala
Hello folks! Welcome to your weekly dose of climate where I bring to you 3 climate stories - 2 stormy and 1 sunny!
⛈️ Stormy news ⛈️
1. Delhi’s air quality at hazardous levels yet AGAIN. AQI levels consistently above 400 for days!
What is happening?
Delhi faces a severe environmental crisis as the AQI hit hazardous levels in multiple areas.
AQI in some parts of Delhi crossed 1000 according to a report by the Swiss air tech company IQAir
The Sameer app, which provides hourly update of the National Air Quality Index published by Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), put the AQI at 401 - 500.
The SC has ordered the implementation of GRAP 4 (the highest level of the action plan to curb pollution) across all NCR states, and explicitly said that “the curbs are to be in force even if AQI drops below 400”.
Delhi’s air quality became a key focus at COP 29 as experts warned about the health risks of air pollution and called for immediate global action.
What is AQI?
AQI is Air quality index and is calculated using the levels of 6 different pollutants.
Overall lower the AQI the better.
India’s AQI chart - Anything above 200 is considered poor.
Why is this happening?
Delhi’s dismal air quality as winter sets in has become a yearly ritual and has been blamed on stubble burning by rice farmers in Punjab and Haryana for years. However, more and more research is showing that they are not actually the biggest drivers. Farm fires have gone down significantly over the last couple of years, but the poor air quality remains.
According to a recent report vehicular emissions, road dust, construction activities are biggest contributors to the poor air quality.
Why does this matter?
Poor air quality has major impacts on health. It can result in severe respiratory and cardio-vascular disorders and even cancer.
A report last year had said that breathing Delhi’s air was like smoking 10 cigarettes as day!
Why are we talking about this in a ‘climate newsletter’?
While the poor air quality is not caused by the climate crisis, the sources of emissions that cause global warming and air pollution are the same - coal powered plants, vehicular emissions, waste burning etc.
Sources for further reading
2. 6 major storms hit Philippines in 1 month; NASA says this ‘typhoon brigade’ is “unusual”
What are we talking about?
Super typhoon Man-Yi made landfall in the mainland of Philippines on 16th Nov making it the 6th consecutive storm this month to hit the coastal country.
6 typhoons, Kristine, Leon, Marce, Nika, Ofel, and Pepito have swept across the country in just 1 month.
So far, 9 mn people affected with more than 160 people dead. There has been huge damage to infrastructure with over 11,759 houses, including 1,525 totally destroyed, 322 roads and 101 bridges damaged and agricultural lands inundated.
~400,000 individuals are living in evacuation centers while ~150,000 are being sheltered outside these facilities.
Why does this matter?
Typhoon overlap is very rare but the Philippines finds itself in a very precarious situation with NASA describing this parade of typhoons as “unusual”
4 of these storms were actually present at the same time.
Overlapping storms are particularly catastrophic because “As soon as communities attempt to recover from the shock, the next tropical storm is already hitting them again," said Gustavo Gonzalez, the UN's humanitarian coordinator in the Philippines. "In this context, the response capacity gets exhausted and budgets depleted."
Climate experts have for long warned that global warming exacerbates the intensity of typhoons and this year’s season has been a case in point.
Sources for further reading
🌞 Sunny news 🌞
3. Local action is helping revive biodiversity along a river in Kerala
What are we talking about?
The Kasaragod district in Kerala is home to 12 rivers, of which Chithari is one of the smaller waterways to traverse its coastal landscape.
The 25-km-long river is one of the last habitats for mangrove forests in northern Kerala.
Unscientific river management had led to heavy degradation on the land along the river, floods in the past had uprooted many trees and invasive species, such as trailing daisy had taken over in may parts.
In 2021, the locals there set up a Biodiversity Management Committee (BMC). The BMC performed a preliminary survey of the trees, shrubs, herbs, birds, spiders, butterflies, moths, odonates, mammals, and herpetofauna along the Chithari river tributary and identified a 2 km stretch for a pilot restoration project.
Over the last 3 years, they have done awareness campaigns to help locals identify invasive species, worked with people on removal of invasive species and completed a round of planting of 10-12 native species identified and selected for replanting.
Puravankara (convenor of the BMC) believes it will take another five or six years before nature can take over, and only then can they declare whether the project has been a success or not.
Why does this matter?
It’s early days and we’ll have to wait a few years to see if the degradation can be reversed, but this is a great example of how the local community can take charge of their place and make conservation and restoration a focus.
We need more such Biodiversity management committees to come up and take action in places across the country.
Sources for further reading
You can read previous editions of the newsletter -
Sunny climate, stormy climate | News Digest #47
Sunny climate, stormy climate | News Digest #46
Sunny climate, stormy climate | News Digest #45
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