The Paris 2024 Paralympics have been a groundbreaking event for India, with a record 84 para-athletes representing the country across 12 disciplines. India has already surpassed its previous medal tally, making this its most successful Paralympics in history.
The Indian contingent at the Paris 2024 Paralympics has made the country proud with its exceptional performances. These athletes are an inspiration to millions, demonstrating that with hard work and dedication, anything is possible. Congratulations to all the medal winners!
Excessively warm ocean or sea water leads to coral bleaching. Coral bleaching happens when corals lose their vibrant colours and turn white. Due to high temperatures, algae leaves the coral, causing it to fade and look bleached. If the temperature stays high, the coral won’t let the algae back, and the coral will die. One of the main causes of coral bleaching is climate change.
In March 2024, the Australian Government said that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is experiencing yet another mass coral bleaching event due to heat. This is the fifth time in eight years that the Great Barrier Reef has experienced a mass bleaching event. This means that sections of colourful corals turn pale and grey.
Climate change causes the temperature of the world’s oceans to rise which leads to bleaching. Bleaching does not kill coral but makes them vulnerable to disease and starvation. Even though it is possible for corals to recover from mass bleaching events, frequent bleaching makes it harder for coral reefs. to bounce back. According to scientific studies, climate change is increasing ocean temperatures, making coral bleaching events more frequent.
Did You Know?
The Great Barrier Reef is an important ecosystem for marine life and it stretches for 2,300 km off the coast of Queensland. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage site
Can Underwater Music Save Coral Reefs?
Almost a quarter of all marine species live in coral reefs. However, since the 1950s more than half of the world’s coral reefs have died mainly because of pollution and climate change. Recently, a team of scientists working off the coast of the US Virgin Islands in the Caribbean have hopefully found a solution to revive coral reefs.
highschool.latimes.com
A healthy coral reef makes a lot of noise like clicking, grunting, and scratching under the water, because of all the wildlife that live there. They’ve been testing whether playing sounds of a healthy coral under the water could help bring damaged coral reefs back to life. They found that baby corals (known as coral larvae) were seven times more likely to settle on damaged reefs when they heard recorded sounds of a healthy reef. And this could help damaged reefs. recover! This method was successfully tested by the researchers in the Caribbean. So this could be a new way to protect the coral reefs.
It has been confirmed that the summer of 2023 in the Northern hemisphere was hottest in the last 2,000 years. The UN’s climate body has said that the last time the Earth was continuously this warm may have been more than 100.000 years ago.
The experts looked at deep sea sediments and ice cores to determine this. They also looked at tree rings for valuable insights about climate. Tree rings not only show the tree’s age, but also record detailed information about the state of the climate each year as the tree grows. Scientists reviewed living specimens and fossils, from the European Alps to the Russian Altai mountains.
They studied trees living at altitude, where the impact of summer growth would be most clearly felt. In such places, ringe are usually wider in warmer years when there is more growth and thinner in colder years. This long term Tree ring record along with modern temperature data has shown that: Summer of 2023 was 2.07°C warmer than the “pre-industrial” period of 1850-1900. Compared with the coldest summer in the record which was the year 536, last summer was 3.93°C warmer.
How is Global Warming Tracked?
Presently, global warming is tracked by comparing temperatures to the “pre-industrial era”, before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels. This time period is widely defined as the period between 1850 to 1900.
UN Report Says: More than 1 Billion Meals Wasted per Day in 2022
According to a recent study by the United Nations (“UN”), households all over the world threw away one billion meals every day in 2022. In its latest Food Waste Index Report 2024 (“Report”), the UN stated that over $1 trillion worth of food was thrown away by businesses and households, when about 780 million people were going hungry.
“Food waste is a global tragedy. Millions will go hungry today as food is wasted across the world, Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, said in a statement. Such wastage was not just a moral but “environmental failure”, the report said.
It was also reported that food loss and waste generate 8 to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. If food waste was a country, it would be the third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet behind the US and China.
The Report has also showed that almost one-fifth of all the food wasted in 2022:
60% In our Homes
28% By food services like restaurants and hotels
12% By supermarkets and other shops
news.trust.org
The good news is that all the people that are currently hungry in the world (about 800 million people) can be fed over a meal a day just from the food that is wasted every single year.
The UN is asking countries to cut food waste by half by 2030!
Do you waste food? What can you do at home to minimise food wastage?
COP28 is the popular name for the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2023. It will be held in Dubai from November 30-December 12, 2023. COP stands for “Conference of the Parties”, which are the 198 parties that have signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, originally adopted in Brazil in 1992.
Since 1995, COPs have been held every year in different cities, with the exception of COP26 in Glasgow, which was delayed by a year due to the Coronavirus pandemic. COP is an annual event where representatives of the UN and governments from around the world discuss and make strategies to fight climate change on a global scale.
Who Attends COPS?
The conference is attended by representatives of the countries that are part of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. There are currently 198 parties, including all United Nations member states, UN General Assembly observers, and the European Union. Some charities, scientists, journalists, Indigenous Peoples’ groups, and general members of the public also attend. Once the meeting is over, the parties usually release a joint statement outlining their plans to tackle global warming and climate change.
facebook.comstate.gov
The Start Of COPS
The idea for COP came from the Earth Summit, which was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992. This was a very big international conference, organised by the United Nations because of the growing concerns about the environment. World leaders realised that countries needed to work together to fight climate change. During the Earth Summit, an international environmental treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, was signed by 154 states. The treaty set out a requirement for regular meetings of the signatories so that environmental policies could be made and agreed. These meetings became known as Conferences of the Parties or COP for short. The first COP was held in Berlin, Germany, in 1995.
