IMD Issues Severe Winter Weather Alerts Across North India The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has issued widespread weather warnings as winter conditions intensify across northern and parts of central and eastern India. Residents, commuters, and authorities are being urged to stay alert as the season brings dense fog, cold wave conditions and snowfall in many...
Category: Environment
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‘Extremely exciting’: the ice cores that could help save glaciers
Dressed in an orange puffer jacket, Japanese scientist Yoshinori Iizuka stepped into a storage freezer to retrieve an ice core he hopes will help experts protect the world’s disappearing glaciers. The fist-sized sample drilled from a mountaintop is part of an ambitious international effort to understand why glaciers in Tajikistan have resisted the rapid melting...
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IndiGo Cancels 50 Flights Amid Dense Fog in Northern India
New Delhi | December 16 Air travel across northern India was severely disrupted on Tuesday morning after dense fog and poor visibility led IndiGo Airlines to cancel more than 50 domestic flights, causing inconvenience to thousands of passengers. According to airline officials, visibility levels dropped sharply at major northern airports, including Delhi, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Lucknow,...
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Inhalable microplastics, a hidden toxin worsening Indian cities’ air
On successive weekends in November, hundreds of Delhi residents gathered at India Gate holding placards saying “I miss breathing” and “right to live, not just survive”. Winter’s onset once again plunged the National Capital Region into a dense smog, with the air quality index refusing to exit the ‘severe’ (301-400) or ‘very poor’ (201-300) levels....
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Rupee Hits Record Low Against Dollar: Key Factors Explored
MUMBAI, 15 Dec 2025 — The Indian rupee weakened sharply to record lows against the U.S. dollar this week, extending a prolonged slide that has made it one of Asia’s weakest-performing currencies in 2025. The currency slipped past ₹90.70 to a dollar on Monday and touched intra-day levels near ₹90.80, surpassing earlier all-time lows as...
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Cambodia–Thailand Border Clashes Escalate Despite Claimed Ceasefire
Heavy fighting continues along the disputed Cambodia–Thailand border, with both sides trading accusations of violating a ceasefire that was recently announced by U.S. President Donald Trump. Cambodia’s Defence Ministry has accused **Thai forces — including F-16 fighter jets — of continuing to bomb targets inside Cambodian territory hours after the truce was declared, including strikes...
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India’s western tragopan steadied by captive breeding, an interim fix
The western tragopan (Tragopan melanocephalus) is one of India’s rarest pheasants and the state bird of Himachal Pradesh. It was once found across parts of Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand, but now survives in small fragmented pockets. Studies in the forests of Kazinag and Limber in Jammu & Kashmir have revealed that while...
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2025 to be second or third-hottest year on record: EU scientists
This year is set to be the world’s second or third-warmest on record, potentially surpassed only by 2024’s record-breaking heat, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said on December 9. The data is the latest from C3S following last month’s COP30 climate summit, where governments failed to agree to substantial new measures to...
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World Soil Day: Grassland soils, not trees, anchor India’s climate resilience
“Wastelands”. That’s how India’s biodiverse semi-arid grasslands and savannas have been undervalued ever since the British colonial era. For the masters, the woody forests of the subcontinent fuelled industrialisation, while the grassy biomes served no purpose in their timber-driven colonisation. Much of post-independence policy and jurisprudence drew heavily from the erstwhile rulers and “wastelands” made...
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How the Kosi’s shifting course exposes the perils of embankments
In August 2008, Bihar experienced one of the worst floods in nearly five decades when the Kosi River breached its embankment at Kusaha in Sunsari district of Nepal, killing more than 400 people and displacing thousands. A staggering 33 lakh people were affected at the peak of the flood in Bihar. Indeed, the Kosi River...
