Climate Change

A study reported on 9 September found that emissions from the open burning of waste rise sharply in winter across Indian cities, roughly tripling and adding substantially to the seasonal deterioration in urban air quality.

Researchers reported on 8 September that warming contributed to the ice-rock avalanche on the Nepal-China border that set off the Bhote Koshi flash floods, and warned that the risk of such disasters is rising across high-altitude regions.

The UN Environment Programme, in a report released in Nairobi on 2 September, for the first time charted a detailed pathway for a world that temporarily overshoots the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degrees Celsius goal. It warned of faster sea-level rise, coral reef collapse and food production declines of up to 14% by 2050 without adaptation.

The World Meteorological Organisation said on 3 September that El Nino is set to intensify into 2027 and could be the strongest on record. Its forecasts show a near 100% likelihood that it will persist through February 2027, fuelled by exceptionally warm Pacific Ocean temperatures — the first time the agency has stated such certainty.

The professor at the Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, IIT Delhi, died on 4 September. His work established the degree to which observed climatic change can be attributed to human activity, and demonstrated a detectable human influence on temperature changes across Indian sub-regions.