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  Ethanol is an agricultural by-product which is mainly obtained from the processing of sugar from sugarcane, but also from other sources such as rice husk or maize.  Blending of ethanol with petrol to burn less fossil fuel while running vehicles is called ethanol blending . Currently, 10% of the petrol that powers vehicles in India, is ethanol.  India aimed to increase this ratio to 20% by 2030 but in 2021, NITI Aayog put out the ethanol roadmap, under which the deadline was advanced to 2025. WHY ETHANOL BLENDING ? Ethanol blending is expected to reduce the share of oil imports, which is a largest compulsory import for the country and it is draining our foreign exchange reserves rapidly. The NITI Aayog report of June 2021 says, “India’s net import of petroleum was 185 million tonnes at a cost of $55 billion in 2020-21,” and ethanol blending programme can save the country $4 billion per annum.  Secondly, more ethanol output is expected to help increase farmers...

 European Space Agency’s Swarm satellite mission has detected a completely new type of magnetic wave that generates across the outermost part of Earth’s outer core every seven years.  According to, Nicolas Gillet, from the University Université Grenoble Alpes and lead author of the paper,  “Geophysicists already theorised  the existence of such waves, but they were thought to take place over much longer time scales than our research has shown.   Measurements of the magnetic field from instruments based on the surface of Earth suggested that there was some kind of wave action, but we needed the global coverage offered by measurements from space to reveal what is actually going on. The waves called as "Magneto-Coriolis" waves because they move along the Earth’s axis of rotation, as per the Coriolis effect moving from East to West in tall columns that can travel up to 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) per year.  Earlier German Champ mission and Danish Ørsted m...

  India is the second-largest producer of wheat in the world, with China being the top producer & Russia the third-largest and Ukraine is the world’s eighth-largest producer of wheat. But this year, production has been less than usual. The Centre has lowered its wheat production estimates by 5.7% to 105 million tonnes from the projected 111.32 MT for the crop year ending June. Wheat procurement by government agencies is also expected to be only half of the target set for this season. Unprecedented heat waves across the north, west and central parts of the country, have caused substantial loss to the yield this year.    The production is expected to fall on account of unusually warm weather conditions that persisted during March to April in most parts of the key grain-producing States of Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh as well as Uttar Pradesh. Unprecedented heatwaves in March & April being the hottest in over 100 years, have caused substantial loss to the yield a...

The Pacific forms the largest division of the World Ocean with 165.25 million square km in area. It means it covers  about 46 per cent of the earth’s water surface and about one-third of its total surface area, making it larger than all of the Earth’s land area combined.  Because of the sheer size of the Pacific waters, its influence on weather and climate extends from the Americas & Asia to West Asia and Europe. This is best seen in alternating El Nino means abnormal warming & La Nina means abnormal cooling of the Equatorial Eastern Pacific that lies closer to the Americas. Corresponding to this, the west of the Pacific, lying closer to Asia turns cooler during an El Nino and warmer during a La Nina.  The warming of the ocean due to  summer heat, sets up lower atmospheric pressure and triggers convection (the process of cloud-building) and precipitation (rainfall). Cooling is associated with higher atmospheric pressure that suppresses cloud-building and rain...