Science & Tech by Kumar Manish

Global Methane Tracker 2024 Published by: International Energy Agency - Methane is responsible for around 30% of the rise in global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution, and rapid and sustained reductions in methane emissions are key to limiting near-term global warming and improving air quality.

World Air Quality Report 2023 Published by: IQAir Key takeaways: According to a report released by Swiss air quality monitoring body, IQAir, India was declared as the third-most polluted country in 2023, after Bangladesh and Pakistan. India had the third worst air quality out of 134 countries in 2023. In 2022, India was ranked as the eighth most polluted country with an average PM2.5 concentration of 53.3 micrograms per cubic metre. In the report's list of the top 50 most polluted cities in the world, 42 cities were in India.

What is climate finance? Climate finance refers to large-scale investments required for actions aiming to mitigate or adapt to the consequences of climate change. How much climate finance is being provided? Different organisations have debated over the actual amount of money being provided to developing nations. Last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) - largely a group of rich countries including the US, the UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, Canada, and others - said that the developed world provided $83.3 billion in 2020 to the low income countries as climate finance. However, Oxfam contested the figure, accusing the developed countries of using dishonest and misleading accounting to inflate their climate finance contributions to developing countries by as much as 225%. "Oxfam estimates between just $21-24.5 billion as the 'true value' of climate finance provided in 2020, against a reported figure of $68.3 billion in public finance that rich countries said was provided (alongside mobilised private finance bringing the total to $83.3 billion)," it said. Moreover, the higher income countries have also been criticised for giving most of the money as non-concessional loans. "This has added to debt pressures across regions and income groups, according to a UN report.

The five Lagrangian points for the Sun-Earth system. L1 and L2 are on the line joining the Sun to the Earth. Aditya-L1 has seven instruments for the observation of all the radiation and charged particles. Its location, 1.5 million km away from Earth towards the Sun (more on that next), allows uninterrupted observations. Ll is the spot between Earth and the Sun, where the gravitational force exerted on a spacecraft by the two celestial bodies, and the centrifugal force cancel each other.

⭐️ Indian space startup Agnikul Cosmos successfully launched its first suborbital test vehicle powered by the world's first single-piece 3D-printed rocket engine, after calling off its launch at least four times previously. Agnibaan SOrTeD (Sub-Orbital Technology Demonstrator) is a mission of many firsts. While it is the second launch by a private startup in India, it is the first to use a private launchpad that the company has set up at the country's only operational spaceport at Sriharikota.