Scientists have observed swirling motions of clouds of sand in the atmosphere of a distant planet, having a 22-hour day and orbiting two stars over a 10,000-year period. The international team of researchers, including those from the University of Exeter, UK, made the discovery using data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The pace and scale of what has been done so far, as well as the current pledges of emission cuts by nations, are insufficient to tackle climate change and the world may well breach the dangerous threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature rise (from the 1850-1900 level) by 2030, warns UN climate panel IPCC in its latest report.

"Terminator zones" on distant exoplanets, or zones where the "day" side of the planet meets the "night" side, could potentially harbour extraterrestrial life, according to a new study. Astronomers from University of California, Irvine (UCI), US, describe "terminator" as the dividing line between the day and night sides of the planet, which have one side that always faces its star and one side that is always dark.

Scientists have projected using climate models a substantial increase in cases of hypoxia, or low oxygen conditions on coral reefs, by the year 2100 under all warming scenarios. According to them, the increase ranges from 13 to 42 per cent under one scenario to 97 to 287 per cent under a more extreme scenario relative to now.