Global Climate Change

IIT Kharagpur discovers Isotopes in Fossil Trees from Deccan Trap Lavas that Indicate Wetter Future Due to Global Warming

IIT Kharagpur discovers Isotopes in Fossil Trees from Deccan Trap Lavas that Indicate Wetter Future Due to Global Warming

  Deccan Trap lava hills in Western Ghats (Left) and columnar basaltic lavas (Right) which erupted 66 million years back killing dinosaurs and most life on earth. A team of scientists from IIT Kharagpur and Academia Sinica, Taipei have indeed found evidence of triple oxygen isotopes of intertrappean fossil woods that led to very high annual rainfall during the catastrophic volcanism of Deccan trap that erupted in India about 66 million years back. The eruption drove a major mass extinction killing nearly 80% of all species of animals including the Dinosaurs. The depleted values of the oxygen isotopes suggest a…
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A Study on Rising Atmospheric Pollution in Rural India

A Study on Rising Atmospheric Pollution in Rural India

Researchers from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur have found increasing atmospheric pollution in rural India using Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) measurements from satellites. Prof. Jayanarayanan Kuttippurath and Research Scholar Mansi Pathak of Centre for Ocean, River, Atmosphere and Land Sciences (CORAL) of IIT Kharagpur analysed the significant impact of urban pollution on the air quality of rural India by differentiating the pollution in two zones - rural and urban - and assessing the extent of air pollution in rural India. The researchers found that air pollution is not typically an urban phenomenon but can also affects the environment in rural…
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Worldwide increase in extreme precipitation: A manifestation of climate change

Worldwide increase in extreme precipitation: A manifestation of climate change

Since the 1970s, global climate change and consequent warming of atmospheric system have led to a significant increase in extreme precipitation across the world, revealed by the IIT Kharagpur researchers through a global analysis. “The global climate change and consequent warming of atmospheric system have altered the regular spatio-temporal distribution of precipitation. Our researchers also found that, the extent of increase in precipitation extremes is comparatively less near equator and reaches peak around mid-latitudes.”, mentioned the lead researcher, Prof Rajib Maity, Department of Civil Engineering. The researchers have considered gridded observational- reanalysis precipitation dataset (1948-2012) and two important extreme precipitation…
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