- Topics
- Feature
- Opportunities & Events
- About
- Hindi Portal
- Data
- Topics
- Feature
- Opportunities & Events
- About
- Hindi Portal
- Data
The recently introduced Bharat Forecast System (BharatFS) has increased hopes of managing disasters better and has been found to have the capacity to transform weather forecasting in India by increasing the accuracy of predictions for heavy rains by 30 percent. BharatFS is a locally developed technology created by teams from the India Meteorological Department, NCMRWF-Noida, and IITM-Pune that provides accurate and local forecasts, and has been introduced as a part of the ‘Make in India’ campaign.
BharatFS can greatly help farmers in crop planning, irrigation, and harvesting by providing hyper-localised forecasts at the panchayat cluster level. It can also help water management and disaster response teams by utilising state-of-the-art technology and supercomputing breakthroughs and reduce the risk of flooding by optimising reservoir operations during the monsoons.
It uses a novel Triangular Cubic Octahedral (TCo) dynamical grid, that provides real-time forecasts at a 6 km horizontal resolution which is a significant advance over the 12 km resolution of the preceding GFS T1534 model. This high resolution helps in capturing local weather patterns in a better way, especially in intricate landscapes like the Western Ghats and the Himalayas.
India’s supercomputing facilities, Arka (IITM, Pune) and Arunika (NCMRWF, Noida), have also cut prediction runtimes from 12 hours to 3–6 hours to provide timely and valuable insights (SIGMAEARTH)
In a powerful recognition of grassroots climate action, a women farmers’ collective in Karnataka has been named among the ten global winners of the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Equator Prize 2025, an award for protecting nature and tackling climate change.
The award has been announced on the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, and it honours indigenous peoples and local communities who are using nature-based solutions to improve livelihoods, protect the environment and build climate resilience.
The award winning collective named Bibifathima Swa Sahaya Sangha SHG, is a women-led group that works across 30 villages in Karnataka and supports over 5,000 farmers in cultivating climate-resilient millets through mixed cropping. The SHG encourages conservation of traditional seeds and runs a women-managed millet processing unit powered by solar energy, thus reducing carbon footprints while boosting local economies.
A community seed bank distributes indigenous seeds free of cost, and women lead every step from farming to processing and marketing, thus creating jobs for women, improving food security, restoring degraded lands and improving biodiversity (Down To Earth).
A quiet revolution has taken place in Pipra village and its neighbouring settlements in Singrauli district of Madhya Pradesh. It is now rare to see anyone hauling firewood, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders or bottles of kerosene. More than half the households in the village have installed biogas plants, with women leading the charge.
This shift has been life changing for women as they now do not have to spend a major part of their lives searching for wood, cylinder or kerosene. Each household is saving between Rs 800 and Rs 1,100 a month on LPG cylinders and firewood, kerosene and electricity bills, while women are enjoying cleaner kitchens free from smoke.
The Deenbandhu Model biogas plant is a low cost design that generates gas from cow dung and organic waste, for cooking. The by-product is a nutrient-rich slurry, that can be used as an organic fertiliser to boost crop yields. The plant is very efficient and almost seventy percent of the dung used in a biogas plant returns as slurry within 24 hours. It is odourless and can be directly applied to the fields in dry or wet form. Each cubic metre of biogas generates about 1.25 kilowatt hour of green energy (Down To Earth).
The Banni grasslands stretch across 2,300 sq km in the arid expanse of the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat and serve as critical carbon sinks, holding 27.69 million tonnes of carbon in its soil, reveals a recent study.
The study determined soil organic carbon (SOC) storage, a process where carbon is locked in the soil, reducing atmospheric greenhouse gases. The study found that with an average SOC density of 119.61 tonnes per hectare, Banni grasslands performed much better than other tropical grasslands and seasonally flooded savannas, highlighting its crucial ecological importance.
The study also found that locally restored grasslands called ‘vaadas’, managed by pastoralists through removal of the invasive tree Prosopis juliflora (gando baval), stood out with the highest SOC density at 142.72 tonnes per hectare.
This is because invasive trees limits the capacity of grasslands to store carbon. While wetlands and saline brushlands also store substantial carbon, areas with mixed Prosopis and native vegetation show the lowest SOC density, indicating that woody encroachment serve to reduce carbon storage. The study thus found that while restoration boosted carbon, unchecked Prosopis invasion could threaten long-term SOC stability of the grasslands (INDIATODAY).
Indigenous tribal communities from Arunachal and downstream Assam are raising their voices against the proposed mega dam over the Siang River, which has an estimated capacity of more than 11,000 MW and will be constructed at a height exceeding 500 metres above sea level.
This is because the project will lead to potential displacement of over 1.5 lakh people from the Adi and other indigenous tribes and could lead to the submergence of 27 villages, leading to the loss of ancestral homes, agricultural land and livelihood and cultural heritage sites. One of the threatened cultural heritage sites includes the Kekar Moying, a historic Adi landmark where the historic Anglo Abor (British-Adi) fight took place.
Communities also fear that it can lead to destruction of biodiversity-hotspots, loss of indigenous medicinal plants, cutting down of traditional forests and disruption of riverine ecosystems in the crucial seismic zone thus increasing the threat of disasters such as dam- triggered earthquakes and erosion, flooding, etc. GLOF (Glacier Lake Outburst Flooding) was also highlighted as an eminent threat due to climate change induced rapid glacier melting of Rivers in Arunachal, including those in Siang and Dibang rivers of India (Hindustan Times)
This is a roundup of news updates from August 1, 2025 to August 15, 2025. Read our policy updates here .