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NEW DELHI: The World Health Organization (WHO) has called for urgent action to avoid climate change by reducing emissions of black carbon, ozone and methane as well as carbon dioxide.

A new WHO report has called for an urgent need to reduce emissions of black carbon, ozone and methane — as well as carbon dioxide — which all contribute to climate change.

A new WHO report highlights the urgent need to reduce emissions of black carbon, ozone and methane - as well as carbon dioxide – which all contribute to climate change.

Black carbon causes millions of deaths every year and contributes to the warming of the planet. In the atmosphere it appears as air pollution, with emissions arising mainly from the combustion of diesel fuel and biofuels, coal-fired power stations, biomass cook stoves, brick kilns and vegetation burning in open fields.

The inclusion of indirect land use change (ILUC) emissions in the life-cycle assessment of biofuels in several biofuel policies has led to increased attention to the question of whether there are similar, behavior-induced emissions sources that could, or should, be added when assessing the life-cycle carbon intensity (CI) of oil production.

This paper addresses questions about how the problems related to black-carbon are being addressed or could be addressed within shipping sector. It examines available technologies and ongoing regulatory efforts, as well as regulatory gaps. Following this, it proposes an Agreement on Black Carbon (ABC) as a viable means for bridging such gaps.

India says that it will produce 40% of its energy from sources other than fossil fuels by 2030, and will reduce the intensity of its carbon dioxide emissions by roughly one-third. The country’s highly anticipated announcement on 2 October comes ahead of United Nations talks in Paris this December, at which nations hope to reach an updated agreement to fight climate change.

The Kathmandu Valley in South Asia is considered as one of the global "hot spots" in terms of urban air pollution. It is facing severe air quality problems as a result of rapid urbanization and land use change, socioeconomic transformation and high population growth.

Original Source

The climate of West Africa is characterized by a sensitive monsoon system that is associated with marked natural precipitation variability. This region has been and is projected to be subject to substantial global and regional-scale changes including greenhouse-gas-induced warming and sea-level rise, land-use and land-cover change, and substantial biomass burning.

South Africa has one of the largest industrialized economies in Africa. Emissions of air pollutants are particularly high in the Johannesburg-Pretoria metropolitan area, the Mpumalanga Highveld and the Vaal Triangle, resulting in local air pollution. This study presents and evaluates a setup for conducting modeling experiments over southern Africa with the Weather Research and Forecasting model including chemistry and aerosols (WRF-Chem), and analyzes the contribution of anthropogenic emissions to the total black carbon (BC) concentrations from September to December 2010.

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