1) GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH: It is a garbage patch, gyre of marine debris particles, in the central North Pacific Ocean. The collection of plastic and floating trash originates from the Pacific Rim, including countries in Asia, North America, and South America.
- North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG) consists of the Kuroshio, North Pacific, California, and North Equatorial currents. It moves in a clockwise direction.
- These currents flow adjacent to 51 Pacific Rim countries. Any trash that enters one of these currents, from any of these countries, could become part of the gyre.
- Inside this gyre, just north of Hawai’i, lies a long east-west strip where some of the debris in these currents has collected over the years. The eastern part of this is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is more than 50 years old.
- According to scientists it is the largest plastic dump on earth with 80% of the plastic originating from land
2) Neopelagic Community: The introduction of a vast sea of relatively permanent anthropogenic rafts since the 1950s” has given rise to a new kind of “standing coastal community … in the open ocean”. They’ve named it the neopelagic community.
- While coastal species have been found on human-made objects in the open ocean before, they were always considered to have been “misplaced” from their intended habitats.
- The neopelagic community, on the other hand, is not misplaced but lives on plastic items in the garbage patch, including reproducing there.
3) MAHARISHI Initiative: G20 Meeting of Agricultural Chief Scientists (MACS) in Varanasi will feature the MAHARISHI Initiative, which stands for Millets And Other Ancient Grains International research Initiative. Secretariat: Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR), Hyderabad
- Technical Support: International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), One CGIAR Centres, and other international organizations
- MAHARISHI Initiative will focus on Research and Awareness about agro-biodiversity, food security, and nutrition aligning with International Year of Millets 2023.
4) Polar crown prominence (PCP): These are similar to normal solar prominences, which are loops of plasma, or ionized gas, that is ejected from the solar surface by magnetic fields.
- They occur near the sun’s magnetic poles at latitudes between 60 and 70 degrees North and South. Due to the much stronger magnetic fields near the poles they collapse back towards the sun. This collapse back to the sun has earned them the nickname “plasma waterfalls.”
- Solar prominence is a large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun’s surface.
- These are anchored to the Sun’s surface in the photosphere, and extend outwards into the Sun’s hot outer atmosphere, called the corona.
5) G7 ministers meet: They stopped short of endorsing a 2030 deadline for phasing out coal that Canada and other members had pushed for but agreed to prioritise “concrete and timely steps” towards accelerating the phase-out of “domestic, unabated coal power generation”, as a part of a commitment to decarbonise power sector by 2035.
- The members pledged to collectively increase offshore wind capacity by 150 gigawatts by 2030 and solar capacity to more than 1 terawatt.
- They agreed to accelerate “the phase-out of unabated fossil fuels” without using technology to capture the resulting C02 emissions to achieve net zero in energy systems by 2050.
- They left the door open for continued investment in gas
- They targeted 2040 for reducing additional plastic pollution to zero, bringing the target forward by a decade.
- India participates as a guest country.
