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Climate satellite to hold methane polluters accountable

MethaneSat can help ‘name and shame’ methane polluters.

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Credit: Janusz Walczak / Unsplash

Methane is responsible for 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions. These are mainly caused by ‘leaks’ that oil and gas companies fail to prevent.

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a US-based NGO spent $88 million to build a methane tracking satellite in collaboration with the New Zealand Space Agency (NZSA).

The satellite, dubbed MethaneSat was launched on Monday, aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9. It operates at 590 km altitude in polar orbit, circling the earth about 15 times a day.

MethaneSat will detect methane emissions from oil and gas industry, and thus will  be the gold standard for methane measurements.

It’s measurements would be even more precise and accurate than NASA’s upcoming Emit mission. MethaneSat has a resolution of 140 meters, which can help it track minor methane leaks over a confined area. In comparison, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Sentinel 5P earth observation satellite, had a resolution of six kilometers. Its measurements can supplement the UN’s current International methane emissions observatory.

“MethaneSat is a tool for accountability,” said Mark Brownstein, EDF’s senior vice-president to The Guardian.

“From the sky, MethaneSat can see what others can’t, helping good actors and holding bad actors accountable,” said Kelly Levin, the chief scientist at the Bezos Earth Fund, which helped fund the project.

Methane leaks are easy to fix technically, said Steven Hamburg, EDF’s chief scientist.

“Some call it low hanging fruit,” he said. “I like to call it fruit lying on the ground.”

“I’m sure many people think this could be used to name and shame companies who are poor emissions performers, and that’s true,” said Brownstein. “But [it] can [also] help document progress that leading companies are making in reducing their emissions.”

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Meltwater ponds might have sheltered life during earth’s deep freeze

During this time, the planet was believed to be encased in ice, with global temperatures plummeting to as low as -50°C

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Researchers Ian Hawes (University of Waikato) and Marc Schallenberg (University of Otago) assess the physical and chemical properties of a meltwater pond. Credit: Roger Summons

In a study published in Nature Communications, scientists from MIT have proposed that shallow meltwater ponds may have provided critical refuges for early complex life during one of Earth’s most extreme ice ages — the “Snowball Earth” period, which occurred between 635 and 720 million years ago.

During this time, the planet was believed to be encased in ice, with global temperatures plummeting to as low as -50°C. Despite the harsh conditions, complex cellular life — known as eukaryotes — managed to survive. The new research suggests that these life forms could have found sanctuary in small, briny pools formed on the surface of equatorial ice sheets.

“Meltwater ponds are valid candidates for where early eukaryotes could have sheltered during these planet-wide glaciation events,” said lead author Fatima Husain, a graduate researcher in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, in a media statement. “This shows us that diversity is present and possible in these sorts of settings. It’s really a story of life’s resilience.”

The team drew parallels between ancient equatorial ice sheets and modern Antarctic conditions. They studied contemporary meltwater ponds on Antarctica’s McMurdo Ice Shelf — an area first dubbed “dirty ice” by explorers in the early 20th century. These ponds, formed by sun-warmed dark debris trapped within surface ice, provided a modern analog to the possible melt environments of the Cryogenian Period.

Samples taken from these Antarctic ponds revealed clear signatures of eukaryotic life. Using chemical and genetic analysis, including the identification of sterols and ribosomal RNA, the researchers detected algae, protists, and microscopic animals — all descendants of early eukaryotes. Each pond supported unique communities, with differences shaped largely by salinity levels.

“No two ponds were alike,” Husain noted. “There are repeating casts of characters, but they’re present in different abundances. We found diverse assemblages of eukaryotes from all the major groups in all the ponds studied.”

These findings suggest that meltwater ponds — overlooked in previous hypotheses — could have served as vital “above-ice oases” for survival and even diversification during Snowball Earth.

“There are many hypotheses for where life could have survived and sheltered during the Cryogenian, but we don’t have excellent analogs for all of them,” Husain explained. “Above-ice meltwater ponds occur on Earth today and are accessible, giving us the opportunity to really focus in on the eukaryotes which live in these environments.”

The study was co-authored by MIT’s Roger Summons, Thomas Evans (formerly MIT), Jasmin Millar of Cardiff University, Anne Jungblut of the Natural History Museum in London, and Ian Hawes of the University of Waikato in New Zealand.

By uncovering how life may have persisted through Earth’s frozen past, the research not only deepens understanding of our planet’s history — it may also help inform the search for life on icy worlds beyond Earth.

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In ancient India, mushy earth made for perfume scent

Kannauj, a city in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, offers a sustainable alternative in producing perfumes using traditional modes of distillation.

Khushboo Agrahari

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Copper stills involved in dheg-bhakpa hydro-distillation | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

A sweet scent typically lingers around in the air at Kannauj, an ancient city in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh. It’s an imprint of the countless occasions when it had rained, of roses that bloomed at dawn, and of sandalwood trees that once breathed centuries of calm.. Though mushy smells are not unique to Kannauj, the city utilized traditional distillation methods to make perfume out of these earthly scents.

Kannauj has had a longstanding tradition in perfume-making since four centuries ago. The city, colloquially known as the country’s ancient perfume capital, still uses rustic copper stills, wood-fired ovens, and bamboo pipes leading to sandalwood oil-filled vessels, or attar as it is colloquially known, to make their perfume. Though it gives a pre-industrial look, a closer peek would reveal an ecosystem of complex thermal regulation, plant chemistry, sustainability science, and hydro-distillation chemistry at work.

When synthetically-made but sustainable perfumes, and AI-generated ones share the spotlight today, Kannauj’s tryst with perfumes offer an alternative, sustainable model in traditional distillation, which is inherently low-carbon, zero-waste, and follow principles of a circular economy; all in alignment with sustainable development goals.

Traditional perfume-making is naturally sustainable

In industrial processing, hydro-distillation is a commonly done to separate substances with different boiling points. Heating the liquids produce vapors, which can later be liquefied in a separate chamber. Perfumers in Kannauj follow the same practice, except it promises to be more sustainable with the copper stills, a process colloquially known as dheg-bhakpa hydro-distillation.

There’s no alcohol or synthetic agents in use. Instead, they heat up raw botanicals – such as roses, vetiver roots, jasmine, or even sunbaked clay – to precise temperatures well short of burning, thereby producing fragrant vapor. The vapors are then guided into cooling chambers, where they condense and bond with a natural fixative, often sandalwood oil. Plant residue is the only byproduct, which finds use as organic compost to cultivate another generation of crops.

The setup for dheg-bhapka hydro-distillation to make perfume | Photo Credit: By special arrangement.

Trapping earthly scent to make perfume

In the past five years, Kannauj’s veteran perfumers noticed a quiet, but steady shift in their timely harvest and produce. Rose harvests have moved earlier by weeks. Vetiver roots grow shallower due to erratic rainfall. Jasmine yields are fluctuating wildly. The local Ganges river, which influences humidity levels essential for distillation timing, is no longer as predictable. For an entire natural aromatic economy built on seasonal synchrony, this uncertainty has rung alarm bells.

“The scent of a flower depends not just on the flower itself,” Vipin Dixit, a third-generation attar-maker whose family has distilled fragrance for decades, said to EdPublica.

“It depends on the weather the night before, on the heat at sunrise, on the moisture in the air. Even the soil has a scent-memory.”

Vipin Dixit, a third-generation attar-maker, whose family have distilled fragrance for decades | Photo Credit: By special arrangement.

As a result, perfumers in Kannauj have begun to adapt, applying traditional wisdom through a modern scientific lens. Local distillers are now working with botanists and environmental scientists to study soil microbiomes, measure scent compounds using chromatography, and develop community-based rainwater harvesting to ensure sustainable crop health.

One of the most surprising innovations is trapping petrichor — the scent of first rain — through earth attars. Clay is baked during extreme heat waves, mimicking summer conditions, then distilled to trap the scent of rain hitting dry soil. This aroma, called mitti attar, is one of the few scents in the world created from an environmental phenomenon; and not a flower.

At a time when the world is scrambling to save biodiversity, the humble attar may become a template for green chemistry — one that doesn’t just preserve scent, but also restores the relationship between science, nature, and soul.

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A Region on the Edge: Ocean Heat, Island Peril, and a Global Wake-up Call

Real-world impacts in the South-West Pacific — from disappearing glaciers to cultural erosion in Fiji — illustrate what is at stake.

Dipin Damodharan

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Image credit: Gonzalo de Martorell from Pixabay

In a stark warning for the world, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released its latest report in June first week, The State of the Climate in the South-West Pacific 2024, painting a vivid picture of escalating climate extremes across ocean and land. The report, released to coincide with the 2025 Global Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction in Geneva and ahead of the 2025 UN Ocean Conference, warns that the South-West Pacific is already grappling with the climate future the rest of the world fears.

A record-breaking Year

2024 marked the warmest year on record for the region, driven by El Niño conditions and unprecedented ocean heating. Nearly 40 million square kilometers — over 10% of the global ocean surface — was scorched by marine heatwaves.

“2024 was the warmest year on record in the South-West Pacific region. Ocean heat and acidification combined to inflict long-lasting damage to marine ecosystems and economies. Sea-level rise is an existential threat to entire island nations. It is increasingly evident that we are fast running out of time to turn the tide,” said WMO Secretary-General Prof. Celeste Saulo in a recent media statement.

The heat was not limited to oceans. Extreme temperatures shattered records in Australia and the Philippines, increasing health risks and straining already vulnerable infrastructure.

Storms, floods, and vanishing ice

The report recounts an unprecedented cyclone season in the Philippines: 12 storms in just three months, affecting over 13 million people and displacing 1.4 million. Meanwhile, Indonesia’s last tropical glacier in New Guinea may vanish by 2026. Satellite estimates show a 30-50% ice loss since 2022.

Precipitation patterns swung to extremes. While Malaysia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea faced above-average rainfall and floods, parts of Australia and New Zealand were parched by drought.

The ocean in crisis

The annual sea surface temperature in 2024 was the highest since records began in the early 1980s. Combined with acidification and deoxygenation, ocean warming is devastating marine life and altering storm patterns.

Worryingly, the South-West Pacific sea-level rise already exceeds the global average, threatening islands where over half the population lives within 500 meters of the coast.

Displacement and cultural loss

The Fijian island of Serua, battered by floods and eroding shores, exemplifies the dire choices communities must make.

Despite government offers to relocate, many residents resist because of their deep connection to the land, or “vanua,” a concept embedding identity, spirituality, and ancestry.

“On two separate occasions, the island experienced such extreme flooding that it was possible to cross the entire island by boat without encountering land,” the WMO report said.

Hope in anticipation: Early warnings save lives

Not all is bleak. A case study from the Philippines showcased how early warning systems and anticipatory action helped mitigate the toll of the 2024 cyclone season. The Food and Agriculture Organization’s anticipatory action teams helped relocate fishing boats and distribute cash aid ahead of the storms.

“While the frequency of tropical cyclones may decrease, their intensity will rise. Building resilience is essential,” the report warns.

A Global Response: UNOC3 Signals Change, But Action Must Follow

As the WMO’s warnings echoed, the United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3) concluded in Nice, France (June 9-13, 2025), providing a parallel platform of hope and accountability.

  • The High Seas Treaty reached 49 ratifications, nearing the 60 needed for enforcement.
  • Nearly $10 billion in funding was pledged for ocean health, though experts note that the real need is $175 billion annually.
  • Countries endorsed the 30×30 conservation goal and backed measures against deep-sea mining and plastic pollution.

“We must move from plunder to protection,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his closing address.

These developments reinforce the urgency of the WMO findings. Real-world impacts in the South-West Pacific — from disappearing glaciers to cultural erosion in Fiji — illustrate what is at stake.

The South-West Pacific is not a distant front line. It is the epicenter of an unfolding climate reality. With international mechanisms like the High Seas Treaty nearing activation and early warning systems proving effective, the question is no longer whether we can respond — but whether we will act in time.

As the seas rise and the clock ticks, it’s not just islands at risk. It’s the future of global climate stability.

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