Current Affair 1:

World Wetlands Day

2 February each year is World Wetlands Day to raise global awareness about the vital role of wetlands for people and our planet. This day also marks the date of the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands on 2 February 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian Sea.

The theme for this year's World Wetlands Day is 'Wetland's action for people and nature showing the actions required to ensure the conservation and sustenance of wetlands.

About Convention:

Ramsar Sites are the wetlands that have international importance. The term was coined when the International Treaty for the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Wetlands was signed at a city of Iran called Ramsar in 1971.

The Convention’s mission is “the conservation and wise use of all wetlands through local and national actions and international cooperation, as a contribution towards achieving sustainable development throughout the world”.

Under the three pillars of the Convention, the Contracting Parties commit to:

What do wetlands do?

Wetlands are being degraded and lost due to the increasing demands of the growing human population.

Over-exploitation of the remaining wetlands is increasingly threatening their capacity to provide essential services. To counter this, we must ensure the wise use of wetlands and of the water in them, restore degraded wetlands and create new ones if necessary, to regain the services we need.

1. Wetlands store water and ensure its quality, providing resilience against drought.
2. They protect against flooding and the impacts of storms.
3. They provide food and other services such as transport and recreation.
4. They provide diverse habitats which support genetic, species, and ecosystem biodiversity and play key roles in the life cycles of many species and in annual migration patterns.

Parties continue to designate wetlands for inclusion in the List. They select suitable wetlands for designation by referring to the Criteria for identifying Wetlands of International Importance. There is total nine criteria:

     

Two new Ramsar sites — Khijadiya wildlife sanctuary in Gujarat and Bakhira wildlife sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh — were announced on the occasion of World Wetlands Day.

India currently has 49 sites designated as Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar Sites), with a surface area of 1,093,636 hectares.

Current Affair 2:

. Rising ‘heatwaves’ in Indian Ocean could hit monsoon

Analysis of data over the past four decades indicates that marine heatwaves (MHW) in the Indian Ocean are increasing in frequency, and this further impacts the Indian monsoon.

• The study, led by the Centre for Climate Change Research at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, found that in the central region of the Indian subcontinent, summer monsoon rainfall (June-September) will start to reduce, while rains over southwest India will go up, in the future.
• This study is the first to have established a link between marine heatwaves in the Indian Ocean and changes in precipitation over the subcontinent. It further found that the western Indian Ocean region generally experienced a higher increase in heatwaves than the north Bay of Bengal.

Marine heatwaves (MHWs) are deadly events that can last for weeks or months, impairing ocean ecosystems, bleaching corals, affecting the fishing industry, and impacting weather. Changes in the monsoon can have potentially devastating consequences, including crop failure.

Marine heatwave mechanisms

Heatwaves in the ocean are patches of abnormally warm water in an area that persist for a minimum of five days, but mostly extending to weeks or even months. They are caused by a wide range of factors, including building up of ocean currents.

In the aforementioned study, the researchers found that an increase in solar radiation and a drop in cooling from evaporation due to weak winds, led to the formation of the heatwaves in the Indian Ocean.

In the western part of the Indian Ocean, which extends from the Eastern coast of Africa through the Arabian Sea, the weakened winds restricted the movement of warm oceanic currents even more, from the equatorial region up towards the tropics. This further intensified the marine heatwaves here. Between 1982-2018, the western Indian Ocean experienced 66 MHWs, while the Bay of Bengal had 94.

Current Affair 3:

Coal Gasification

Just read first basic introduction:

What is coal gasification?

It is the process of producing syngas, a mixture consisting carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen (H2), carbon dioxide (CO2), natural gas (CH4), and water vapour (H2O).

Current Affair 4:

Term of the Day: Certificate of Deposits (CDs)

Certificate of Deposits are negotiable/tradable, unsecured money market instruments issued by Scheduled Commercial Banks (and some All India Financial Institutions like NHB, SIDBI etc. but mostly by banks) for a maturity period up to one year against funds deposited at the bank.

For example, if a bank is issuing a Rs.100 CD paper to raise money from the money market then it will have to keep some percent (of Rs. 100) as reserves. These Certificate of Deposits are different from the 'deposit certificate' that we individuals get while doing Fixed Deposit in the bank. Our 'deposit certificates' are not tradable.

 

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