Daily Quiz 24 August 2023

Explanation:

The Prime Minister of India and Chinese President may attend the East Asia Summit in Indonesia in September 2023.

• Option (3) is the correct answer: The East Asia Summit (EAS) is the Indo-Pacific’s premier forum for strategic dialogue. It is the only leader-led forum at which all key Indo-Pacific partners meet to discuss political, security and economic challenges facing the region, and has an important role to play in advancing closer regional cooperation. The EAS has 18 members – the ten ASEAN countries (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam) along with Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Russia and the United States. ASEAN leads the forum, and the chair position rotates between ASEAN Member States annually. The EAS calendar culminates in the annual Leaders’ Summit, which is usually held alongside ASEAN Leaders’ meetings in the fourth quarter of every year.

Explanation:

• Statement 1 is correct but Statement 2 is incorrect: Recently, the World Bank released a report titled ‘Digital-in-Health: Unlocking the Value for Everyone’, during the G20 Health Ministers Meeting in Gandhinagar. Important key highlights of the report:
• Health systems across the world struggle with delivering high-quality care to all, leading to disparities in health outcomes. Inadequate Use of Evidence: Only a portion of care is in line with evidence-based guidelines, leading to suboptimal and sometimes ineffective treatments. Only 50 percent to 60 percent of care is delivered in accordance with the highest level of evidence or consensus-based guidelines.
• Current health systems across the world are facing threat from the slowly growing health crises such as:
• The impact of climate on health (over 60 percent of all known human pathogens will be aggravated by climatic hazards);
• The rising shares of older people with more complex, chronic medical needs.
• Significant increases in the need for mental health services; and
• The growing burden of non-communicable diseases, the cause of 75 percent of all deaths in the world in 2022.

Explanation: 

• Statements 1 and 2 are correct: Climate Change is posing a severe threat to agriculture and long-term food security, there is an urgent need to adopt measures. Beyond a certain range of temperatures, warming tends to reduce yields because crops speed through their development, producing less grain in the process. And higher temperatures also interfere with the ability of plants to get and use moisture. For example, the 2022 heatwave has resulted in an estimated 10-35 percent reduction in wheat yields in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Moreover, Global warming leads to more incidence of insect transmitted plant diseases through range expansion and rapid multiplication of insect vectors. According to World Economic Forum (WEF), with every increase in one degree of global warming, losses of crops to insects will increase from 10% to 25%. The warming of the Indian Ocean due to climate change is cited as the main reason for the 2019–2020 locust attacks across Rajasthan, Gujarat and Punjab. With the global warming, there has been an increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme events such as floods, droughts, heatwaves, and landslides etc., which can destroy standing crops and reduce yields.
• Hence statement 2 is the correct explanation of statement 1.

Explanation:

Alongside expecting El Niño, which can harm the monsoon in the coming months, the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) has been observed to have undergone a significant change that could also affect the weather.

• Option (4) is correct: The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is an ocean-atmosphere phenomenon that occurs in the Indian Ocean. It is characterized by the fluctuation of sea surface temperatures and atmospheric pressure patterns between the eastern (Bay of Bengal) and the western Indian Ocean (Arabian Sea). The IOD can significantly impact weather patterns and climate in the surrounding regions, including parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, and Australia. Strong correlation is found over Europe, northeast Asia, North and South America and South Africa concurrent with IOD events. Over these regions, positive IOD events are associated with warm land surface anomalies and reduced rainfall.

Explanation: 

• Statements 1 and 2 are correct: The neutral phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) refers to a condition when there is no significant difference in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) between the western and eastern parts of the Indian Ocean. In a normal year, driven by the Walker Cell, the warmer waters in the western Pacific near Indonesia cross over into the Indian Ocean and make that part of the Indian Ocean slightly warmer. That causes the air to raise above this area and falls over the western half of the Indian Ocean basin. However, the positive phase of the IOD is driven by warmer than normal SSTs in the western part of the Indian Ocean and cooler than normal SSTs in the eastern part of the Indian Ocean. This configuration of surface sea temperatures reverses the normal circulation with easterly winds setting up across the equatorial Pacific, weakening the Walker cell. Hence, positive IOD is often associated with El Niño. Note: El Niño is a climate pattern that describes the unusual warming of surface waters in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.
• Hence statement 2 is the correct explanation of statement 1.