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Rising temperature and growing threat of climate change may increase default risk in 30 per cent of agri and housing loans portfolio in the next five years, according to an analysis by BCG. According to the report, the average global temperature has already increased approximately 1.2 degree Celsius versus pre-industrial levels leading to flooding in coastal areas and reduction in agriculture production. As a result, it said, there has been a drop in per capita income of people impacted by rising extreme weather events. Almost half of the credit of scheduled commercial banks is significantly dependent on nature and its ecosystem so any natural calamity impacts their bottomline. By 2030, as per estimates, 42 per cent India's districts are projected to experience temperature rise by up to 2 degree Celsius. So, 321 districts may be affected by temperature rise in the next five years. However, climate change also provides an opportunity to banks to the tune of USD 150 billion annually
Earth recorded its hottest year ever in 2024, with such a big jump that the planet temporarily passed a major climate threshold, several weather monitoring agencies announced Friday. Last year's global average temperature easily passed 2023's record heat and kept pushing even higher. It surpassed the long-term warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit ) since the late 1800s that was called for by the 2015 Paris climate pact, according to the European Commission's Copernicus Climate Service, the United Kingdom's Meteorology Office and Japan's weather agency. The European team calculated 1.6 degrees Celsius (2.89 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming. Japan found 1.57 degrees Celsius (2.83 degrees Fahrenheit) and the British 1.53 degrees Celsius (2.75 degrees Fahrenheit) in releases of data coordinated to early Friday morning European time. American monitoring teams NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the private Berkeley Earth were to release .
Minimum temperatures are expected to be higher than normal in most parts of India in January, except in some areas of eastern, northwest, and west-central regions, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Wednesday. Maximum temperatures are also likely to be above normal for most parts of the country, except in parts of northwest, central and eastern India, and central parts of the southern peninsula, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, director general of the India Meteorological Department (IMD), said during a virtual press briefing. Western and northern parts of central India are expected to experience more cold wave days than usual during January, he said. The IMD said rainfall in north India during January to March is likely to be below normal, with less than 86 per cent of the long-period average (LPA). The average rainfall for north India during this period, based on 1971-2020 data, is about 184.3 mm. Northern and northwestern states like Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu
The year 2024 was the warmest on record in India since 1901, with the average minimum temperature settling 0.90 degrees Celsius above the long-period average. The annual mean land surface air temperature across India in 2024 was 0.65 degrees Celsius above the long-term average (1991-2020 period), Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, director general of the India Meteorological Department (IMD), said at a virtual press briefing. The year 2024 now ranks as the warmest year on record since 1901, surpassing 2016, which had recorded a mean land surface air temperature 0.54 degrees Celsius above normal. According to the European climate agency Copernicus, 2024 likely ended as the warmest year on record and the first year with a global average temperature 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. A yearly review report by two groups of climate scientists -- World Weather Attribution and Climate Central -- said that the world experienced an average of 41 more days of dangerous heat in 2024.
Over 77 per cent of Earth's land experienced a drier climate during the three decades leading up to 2020, compared to the previous 30-year period, according to a report released by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) on Monday. During the same period, global drylands expanded by approximately 4.3 million square kilometres an area nearly a third larger than India now covering more than 40 per cent of the Earth's land. The report, launched at the 16th conference of the UNCCD in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, warned that if efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions fail, another 3 per cent of the world's humid areas are projected to transform into drylands by the end of this century. Meanwhile, the number of people living in drylands has doubled to 2.3 billion over the past three decades. Models suggest that as many as 5 billion could inhabit drylands by 2100 in a worst-case climate change scenario. These billions of people face even greater threats to their lives and liveliho
For the second year in a row, Earth will almost certainly be the hottest it's ever been. And for the first time, the globe this year reached more than 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming compared to the pre-industrial average, the European climate agency Copernicus said Thursday. It's this relentless nature of the warming that I think is worrying, said Carlo Buontempo, director of Copernicus. Buontempo said the data clearly shows the planet would not see such a long sequence of record-breaking temperatures without the constant increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere driving global warming. He cited other factors that contribute to exceptionally warm years like last year and this one. They include El Nino the temporary warming of parts of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide as well as volcanic eruptions that spew water vapour into the air and variations in energy from the sun. But he and other scientists say the long-term increase in temperatures beyond fluctuations like E
Cities in the Global South are equipped with only about 70 per cent of the "cooling capacity" provided by urban greenery in cities in the Global North and are, therefore, are more vulnerable to extreme heat, a new research has found. As the planet warms, researchers said that rising temperatures, along with 'urban heat island' effects, make cities hotter than rural areas. As a result, heat-related illness and deaths in these areas are becoming more common. An international team, including researchers from the University of Exeter, UK, analysed satellite data on 500 of the world's largest cities to assess 'cooling capacity' -- how much do the urban green spaces cool down a city's surface temperatures? "Our analysis suggests green spaces can cool the surface temperature in the average city by about 3 degrees Celsius during warm seasons -- a vital difference during extreme heat," author Timothy M. Lenton, from the University of Exeter, said. "However, a concerning disparity is evident