Sunny climate, stormy climate | Weekly digest #8
Welcome to a new edition of Sunny climate, Stormy climate - your weekly dose of climate news
Hello and welcome to the 8th edition of Sunny climate, Stormy climate! Here, every week I bring to you 5 stories about the climate
3 stormy ones - concerning stories that are a source of alarm
2 sunny ones - green shoots that tell you that all is not yet lost
So let’s look at what we have this week!
Stormy news
Cyclone Biprajoy’s path in the Arabian sea and after it made landfall in Gujarat from June 6 to June 18 2023; Source: Zoom earth What is the TL:DR?
Cyclone Biparjoy (meaning ‘disaster’ in Bengali) developed as weather system in the Arabian sea that became an extremely severe cyclone and is possibly one the most severe cyclones experienced by the region in 25 years
It made landfall in the Kutch region of India and its impact was mostly felt in the states of Gujarat and Rajasthan in India and in parts of Pakistan
Impact:
More than 170,000 people were evacuated to safety across the 2 countries before landfall. There has been no officially reported human death due to the cyclone but several people have been injured.
~200 cattle have died
Standing crop has been adversely impacted
1000s of villages were without electricity for more than 3 days and roads were blocked due to fallen treees
Train services to and from the region were impacted.
Strong winds, rain, and high tides from the cyclone also lashed several regions in western India, including in Mumbai.
Why should we be concerned about this cyclone? Is this linked to climate change or an isolated event?
Storms in the Arabian sea are typically not very long. Biparjoy has become the longest sustaining storm (overtaking the previous record set by Kyarr that lasted 9 days)
Unusually warm waters helped fuel Biparjoy’s rapid intensification twice in its lifetime. Between June 6 and 7, Biparjoy’s wind speed increased from 55 to 139 kilometers per hour (34 to 86 miles per hour). The cyclone intensified again between June 9 and 10, when its wind speed increased from 120 to 196 kilometers per hour (75 to 122 miles per hour)—making it a category 3 storm.
Raghu Murtugudde, a visiting prof at IIT Bombay, who studies the role of oceans in tropical climate variability said “Biparjoy is an example of how climate change—especially warming in the upper ocean—is contributing to cyclones moving slower and lasting longer.”
A 2021 study led by researchers in India found that cyclones over the last four decades have become more frequent and have lasted longer.
NCERT removed chapters on evolution, periodic table, energy sources and environment sustainability!
NCERT’s philosophy I guess? What are we talking about?
Last year NCERT announced that they would be removing certain chapters from class 9 and 10 syllabus. The exact extent of the changes was understood when the new textbooks for this academic year were released in May 2023.
The chapters that have now been excluded from the class 9 and 10 syllabus include (but not limited to):
The periodic table
Evolution
Sources of energy
Environment sustainability - Entire chapters on air and water pollution and resource management have been removed.
According to the NCERT website, "The National Education Policy 2020, also emphasises reducing the content load and providing opportunities for experiential learning with a creative mindset. In this background, NCERT has undertaken the exercise to rationalise the textbooks across all classes.”
Why is this a concern?
Climate change is one of the biggest crisis the world faces today and it is a reality that these children are going to live in. Not teaching them about climate change, its impacts and what we should be doing to address these changes is leaving them absolutely unprepared to even understand let alone deal with the most important crisis they may face.
The origins of the climate crisis, the reasons that have caused it lie in science and understanding evolution and the periodic table are pretty much as basic as it gets. So not sure how we are going to teach children about the importance of biodiversity and its impact on climate change if we haven’t taught them evolution.
Siberia seeing record high temperatures. Again.
Didn’t we talk about this last week?
Yeah, I know it probably feels like I am being lazy and just reusing posts from older newsletters, but I promise I am not. There is literally a new part of the world seeing a heat wave every week, or worse some countries are setting new records week on week!
This week, it’s Siberia - one of the coldest regions in the world. Minimum temperatures in winter go as low as -50 degree c!
So what is happening?
On June 3, temperatures reached 37.9 degrees Celsius in Jalturovosk, its hottest day in Siberia's history
Despite only being early June, records are tumbling across parts of Siberia as extreme heat pushes into unusually high latitudes.
Is this a larger trend?
Broader region - It’s not just Siberia that has seen record heat this week. It has spread across Central Asia. On Wednesday, temperatures of more than 45 degrees Celsius (111.2 Fahrenheit) were recorded in China, 43 degrees Celsius (109.4 Fahrenheit) in Uzbekistan and 41 degrees Celsius (105.8) in Kazakhstan.
Sunny news
Grannies are crusading for climate change in Switzerland!
What are we talking about?
Around 2,000 women above the age of 64, have formed a group called KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz (Senior Women for Climate Protection Switzerland)
They have filed a case against the Switzerland government in the European Court of Human Rights. The reason: Officials aren’t doing enough against climate change and violating their human rights.
One woman said “Some people say, why are you complaining, you’re going to die anyway. But we don’t want to die just because our Swiss government has not been successful in coming up with a decent climate policy.”
British lawyer Jessica Simor KC, who is representing the women, told the court, according to a report in The Guardian, that her clients were already witnessing negative effects of climate and this is an “extreme threat to not just their health but to their very existence”.
Why does this matter?
This trial could be historic. The women believe that the trial — the verdict will be announced later in the year — will set the precedent of whether climate protection is a human right.
This is the first time ever that the European Court of Human Rights is engaging with a climate case.
The solutions to climate change will need our political and economic systems to change. Such acts, though small by itself, collectively help to raise awareness, force governments to respond and eventually mobilize action.
EU emissions fell by 4% in the last quarter of 2022
Source: Data on quarterly estimates for greenhouse gas emissions by economic activity published by Eurostat What are we talking about?
In the fourth quarter of 2022, EU economy greenhouse gas emissions totalled 938 million tonnes of CO2-equivalents (CO2-eq), a 4% decrease compared with the same quarter of 2021.
This decrease in emissions happened even as the economy grew - with GDP increasing 1.5% compared to Q4 2021.
The impact is also positive compared to the pre-pandemic Q4 2019.
Greenhouse gas emissions slowed down in 23 of 27 countries.
The largest decreases were seen in Slovenia (-15.9%), Netherlands (-9.9%) and Slovakia (-6.9%)
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