Anjali Marar

Last week, day temperatures rose to such an extent that some pockets in Konkan experienced heat wave-like conditions. Dahanu, Vengurla, Ratnagiri and Mumbai were among the hottest places along the coast, where temperatures soared to 38 degrees Celsius.

Referring to the recently-concluded COP13 Convention on Migratory Species held in Gandhinagar, the Prime Minister announced that India will chair the convention for the next three years.

Launched in December 2014 after Maharashtra experienced consecutive droughts, Jalyukta Shivar aimed at rolling out measures that could potentially mitigate water scarcity in the most drought-prone villages in a systematic manner.

Besides warming trends recorded globally, the scientists also pointed out the depleting moisture levels in soils, noted particularly in the last two or three decades of the 20th century.

Explained: The ISRO is preparing to send its first scientific expedition to study the Sun. Named Aditya-L1, the mission, expected to be launched early next year, will observe the Sun from a close distance.

“This fish, Tor putitora, is commonly found in the rivers that flow along the foothills of the Himalayas. But we still do not know how it landed up in caves in Meghalaya,” said Neelesh Dahanukar, co-author and researcher from IISER, Pune.

WMO is working towards providing seamless provisions for weather and climate services to the world, both on short- and long-term basis.

In India, January 2020 was the second warmest since 1919 in terms of average minimum temperatures, according to India Meteorological Department (IMD) data dating back to 1901.

A senior official from the state government said on Friday that municipal corporations in Nashik, Dhule, Jalgaon, Gondia and Wardha were yet to introduce this plan, which was approved in the summer of 2018.

Bucher was speaking on ‘Climate Information for Risk Screening’ organised as part of the sixth International Conference on Climate Services (ICCS) at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune.

All required research for this soon-to-be-launched programme will be carried out by scientists at IITM while later works will also be shared by India Meteorological Department (IMD) and National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast (NCMRWF).

A proposal in the matter has been finalised under the Centre’s ambitious National Beekeeping Honey Mission (NBHM) during Union Minister for MSME Nitin Gadkari’s recent visit to Pune-based Central Bee Research and Training Institute (CBRTI).

A team of Pune-based scientists, led by Sachin Ghude of Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), along with those from Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), and researchers from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, and National Centre for Atmospheric Research, USA, have jointly worked on it.

Mande said all necessary communication regarding this has been made with the Ministry of Human Resource Development. “The decision will be reversed. Many directors of NITs have written to me and communicated the same,” Mande said.

The study, conducted by a team of researchers from city-based ICMR-National AIDS Research Institute (ICMR-NARI), aims at understanding the sexual behaviour and needs of city-based college students aged between 18 and 24 years.

At Nagardhan near Nagpur, recent excavations have brought new clarity on the life, religious affiliations and trade practices of the Vakataka dynasty, which ruled parts of Central and South India centuries ago.

The oval sealing that bears images of the queen and a conch, accompanied with some inscriptions in Brahmi letters, was found on top of a mega wall, now believed to be a part of a palace structure located in the capital city of the Vakataka dynasty.

A recent decision by NITs mandates that “all new entrants shall have PhD in the relevant or equivalent discipline and shall have first class in the preceding degrees. At least one of the qualifying degrees from a centrally funded Institution (CFTI)/Institute of repute (National/ International) is mandatory.”

The monsoon is supposed to begin on June 1, and withdraw fully by September 30. Over the past many years, however, significant changes have been seen in precipitation patterns. So, the ‘normals’ are now set to shift.