South Asia

Weekly Climate News

October 8, 2020

  • The European Parliament voted in favor of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 60 percent by 2030, an update from the previous 40 percent. 

  • South Asia is in the midst of the worst monsoon season it has experienced in the past decade with an estimated 17.5 million people in India, Bangladesh and Nepal affected by the severe flooding. The floods, combined with the pandemic, have heightened the need for significant economic recovery and damage finance. 

  • COVID-19 has exposed Mexico City’s increasing water crisis, with vulnerable households experiencing shortages while gated communities have sufficient access to supplies. 

  • The August complex fire which started in California has expanded beyond one million acres, requiring it to take on the new classification of “gigafire,” the first in modern history. 

  • New data shows that 2020 had the warmest September on record. 

  • Woodlands in the Northeast experience changes as a result of climate change. Read about it here. 

  • The racial achievement gap in United States schools has been widening as a result of increasing temperatures, a new study shows, which is yet another example of how the impacts of climate change are being felt disproportionately by people of color.

  • A new partnership between the U.S. and Qatar is working on finding buried water in earth’s deserts. 

  • The ice loss in Greenland is likely to be more this century than at any other time in the history of civilization.