Meteorologists found 52.9C reading to be false, though new record does appear to have been set
A record temperature registered this week for the Indian capital of 52.9C (127.22F) was too high by 3C, the Indian government has said.
The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) had investigated Wednesday’s reading by the weather station at Mungeshpur, a densely packed corner of New Delhi, “and found a 3C sensor error”, the earth sciences minister, Kiren Rijiju, said.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
06/01/2024 - 04:00
Approach replaces sugar with mashed pulp and husk of cocoa pod and uses less land and water
Healthier and more sustainable chocolate could hit store shelves after Swiss scientists and chocolatiers developed a recipe that swaps sugar for waste plant matter.
By mashing up the pulp and husk of a cocoa pod instead of just taking the beans, scientists have made a sweet and fibrous gel that could replace the sugar in chocolate, according to a report published in Nature Food.
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06/01/2024 - 02:00
With hundreds of highly prized species, bird tourism is thriving in the country – and farmers are increasingly turning their land into nature reserves
When it came to dividing up his late father’s farm between five brothers, Vinicio Bacuilima says he drew the short straw. Maraksacha, on the main road out of Ecuador’s capital Quito, is a tiny patch of land on the edge of a steep ravine, making it very difficult to make a living from farming.
Then Bacuilima’s wife Anita Cajas had an idea: turn their paltry inheritance into a site to attract visiting birders. Creating the Maraksacha Reserve was a risky venture, but it paid off, with feeders attracting a host of colourful hummingbirds and tanagers.
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05/31/2024 - 13:32
Bright hue of Clear Lake, state’s largest freshwater basin, may have been caused by cyanobacteria and other phytoplankton
California’s largest freshwater lake has turned bright green due to algae blooms so intense they are visible from space, Nasa has announced, sharing satellite images from mid-May.
The photographs showed that “bright green swirls were visible across most of the lake’s area”, the space agency said, and may have been caused by cyanobacteria, commonly known as blue-green algae, as well as other kinds of phytoplankton.
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05/31/2024 - 12:47
Climate Superfund Act compels oil companies to pay potentially billions of dollars for climate impacts caused by their emissions
Vermont has become the first state to enact a law holding oil firms financially responsible for climate damages, after the Republican governor, Phil Scott, allowed it to pass without his signature late on Thursday.
Modeled after the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program, the Climate Superfund Act directs the state to charge major fossil fuel companies potentially billions of dollars to pay for climate impacts to which their emissions have contributed. It is expected to face legal challenges from the industry.
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05/31/2024 - 11:14
Western Texas briefly looked like a ‘winter wonderland’ amid dramatic temperature drop and hailstorm
Just as people start bringing out their shorts for the start of summer, one Texas town had to reach for something rarely seen in late May: a snowplough.
Parts of the state saw a dramatic 50F temperature drop on Wednesday thanks to a giant dump of hail, some “DVD-sized”. The storm made western Texas look, briefly, like a winter wonderland.
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05/31/2024 - 07:08
Labour leader says it was ‘most efficient form of transport’ from Wales and party has offset the carbon
Keir Starmer has admitted he used a private jet to travel to a campaign rally in Scotland where he promised to create “tens of thousands” of clean energy jobs with a new publicly owned energy company in the country.
Responding to media questions after speaking to activists in Greenock, Inverclyde, Starmer said: “We did use a private jet because we did need to get very quickly to Scotland from Wales yesterday and it was the most efficient form of transport in the middle of a very busy general election campaign.”
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05/31/2024 - 07:00
Rules target contaminants such as mercury, benzene and lead released by coke ovens used by facilities to burn coal
New Environmental Protection Agency rules aim to crack down on toxic air pollution from US steelmakers by limiting pollutants such as mercury, benzene and lead that have long poisoned the air in neighborhoods surrounding the plants.
The rules target contaminants released by steel facilities’ coke ovens. Gas from the ovens creates an individual cancer risk in the air around steel plants of 50 in 1,000,000, which public health advocates say is dangerous for children and people with underlying health problems.
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05/31/2024 - 06:16
RHS fears non-native fungi could alter microbiology of soil when grown in gardens or disposed of in compost heaps
A boom in the popularity of mushroom-growing at home could lead to a biodiversity disaster, UK garden experts have warned.
There has been a rise in the number of people growing mushrooms in their gardens, and this year, the RHS Chelsea flower show’s plant of the year award included a mushroom – the tarragon oyster mushroom, thought to be found only in the British Isles – in its shortlist for the first time, despite it being a fungus, not a plant.
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05/31/2024 - 04:14
Zoo welcomes 11 Humboldt chicks, its highest number in a decade, including Thistle and Daffodil
In previous years Chester zoo’s new penguin chicks have been named after crisps – Frazzle, Wotsit – and local football club owners – Ryan, Rob – but the names p … p … p … picked this year are notably less frivolous.
“We’ve decided to go with plants,” said Zoe Sweetman, the penguins and parrots team manager at the zoo. Two of the spikier new arrivals have been named Nettle and Thistle while two others with “colourful personalities” have been named Daffodil and Tulip.
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