FACEBOOK TWITTER LINKEDIN EMAIL Roxy Koll The writer is a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology and contributor to IPCC reports Every seven years or so, a report is released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on how human-induced climate change is gathering pace and as a result, how extreme weather events have reached our doorsteps. So, what is new in the sixth assessment report of IPCC released yesterday? The key takeaway from this report is that the mitigation strategies submitted by nations through the Paris Agreement are insufficient to keep the global temperature increase within the 1.5°C or even 2°C limits. It is also important to note that globally, we have failed to even reach near the committed curbs on emissions. Deluge: Indian Ocean is warming at the fastest rate This points to the chilling fact that we are going to face way more challenging climate extremes in the near future. The IPCC report tells us that some of the
TUESDAY, Jan. 12, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Unlike regular pneumonia , COVID-19 pneumonia spreads like many "wildfires" throughout the lungs, researchers say. This may explain why COVID-19 pneumonia lasts longer and causes more harm than typical pneumonia, according to the researchers at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. The research team said that their aim is to make COVID-19 more like a bad cold. For the study, the team analyzed immune cells from the lungs of COVID-19 pneumonia patients and compared them to cells from patients with pneumonia caused by other viruses or bacteria. While other types of pneumonia rapidly infect large regions of the lungs, COVID-19 begins in numerous small areas of the lungs. It then uses the lungs' own immune cells to spread across the lungs over many days or even weeks. This is similar to how multiple wildfires spread through a forest, the study authors explained. As COVID-19 pneumonia slowly moves through the lungs, it leaves damaged