Climate Overshoot

• The period of time in which warming is increasing past the 1.5°C mark and then cooling back down is called a climate overshoot.
• About 90% of climate models predict a period of climate overshoot, with years if not decades of higher global temperatures, before stabilizing at 1.5°C.
• Impacts – Increased coastal flooding and forced human migration, greater devastation and frequency of forest fires, and loss of biodiversity.
• The conversion of new land for agricultural use may put additional stress on animal habitats.
• When temperatures level off and cool, animals migrate in search of habitats that no longer exist.
• Earth Overshoot Day – The date is announced annually by the Global Footprint Network, the global organisation calling for urgent climate action and sustainable consumption.
• Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when we have used all the biological resources that the Earth can renew during the entire year.
• It was conceived by Andrew Simms, UK think tank New Economics Foundation, which collaborated with Global Footprint Network in 2006 to launch the first global Earth Overshoot Day campaign.
• It is computed by dividing the planet’s bio capacity, by humanity’s Ecological Footprint, and multiplying by 365, the number of days in a year.
• Bio capacity is the amount of ecological resources Earth is able to generate that year, and ecological footprint is the humanity’s demand for that year.

UPAg Portal

The Centre launched the Unified Portal for Agricultural Statistics (UPAg), an online platform for management of agricultural data.

• The UPAg, developed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare (DA & FW).
• UPAg Portal was being envisaged as a public good wherein users will benefit by reduced search costs and frictions and access to credible, granular and objective data.
• The platform is designed to generate crop estimates and integrate with other systems generating agriculture statistics such as price, trade, procurement, stock.
• The UPAg portal will address various challenges including lack of standardised data, lack of verified data, dispersed data etc.
• It aims to provide real-time, standardised, and verified data on agricultural commodities, facilitating data-driven decision-making for policymakers, researchers, and stakeholders.
• This initiative aligns with the principles of e-governance, bringing smartness, transparency, and agility to India’s agriculture sector.

Anorthosite

A hefty supply of the anorthosite soil from Sittampoondi and Kunnamalai villages ensured the Chandrayaan-3 mission's success.

• Anorthosite, type of intrusive igneous rock composed predominantly of calcium-rich plagioclase feldspar.
• It contains Aluminium, Silicon and Calcium, minerals that are high in demand.
• Plagioclase – It is a member of the feldspar group (like orthoclase) and is a framework silicate.
• Plagioclase consists of a solid solution between the albite and anorthite end-members, and together with quartz is the most common of the rock forming minerals.
• All anorthosites found on Earth consist of coarse crystals, but some samples of the rock taken from the Moon are finely crystalline.
• Most anorthosites formed during Precambrian times.
• In India, this soil is available in abundance in places like Sithampoondi and Kunnamalai villages surrounding Namakkal, and also in some areas in Andhra Pradesh and northern parts of the country.

UNESCO Heritage in Danger List

The UN's cultural organisation placed World Heritage Sites in the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv and Lviv on its in danger list.

• The decision, taken at UNESCO's annual world heritage committee meeting in Riyadh, is a step towards better protection of the historic sites.
• UNESCO had added Kyiv's Saint Sophia Cathedral and the medieval buildings of the city's Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery site to the list.
• The two historic sites have remained under permanent threat since the commencement of the war.
• Kyiv's Saint Sophia cathedral dates back to the 11th century and is one of the city's best-known landmarks.
• Lviv, the western Ukrainian city near the Polish border, was founded in the late middle ages and its historic centre was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1998.
• Garamba National Park is located in Congo and Lake Turkana is located in Kenya.
• India – Manas Wildlife Sanctuary and Hampi are the two heritage sites from India placed under the Danger List.

Cosmological Constant

• The cosmological constant is presumably an enigmatic form of matter or energy that acts in opposition to gravity.
• It is considered by many physicists to be equivalent to dark energy.
• Albert Einstein, came up with the cosmological constant, which he called the universal constant, in 1915.
• The cosmological constant was intended to balance certain calculations in his theory of general relativity.
• At the time, physicists believed the universe was static, neither expanding nor contracting.
• However, Einstein's work suggested that gravity would cause it to do one or the other.