10 PM Current Affairs Quiz #64 January 17, 2020

Explanation: Recently, Indian Meteorological Department(IMD) is celebrated its 145th Foundation day on 15th January,2020.
About India Meteorological Department (IMD)
•India Meteorological Department (IMD) was established in 1875.It is an agency of the Ministry of Earth Sciences of the Government of India.
•It is the principal agency responsible for meteorological observations, weather forecasting and seismology.
•IMD is also one of the six Regional Specialised Meteorological Centres of the World Meteorological Organization.
About Meghdoot:
•Meghdoot is a mobile app launched to assist farmers.It has been developed by the Indian Meteorological Department and Indian Institute of Tropical meteorology and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research.
•The app provides forecast relating to temperature, rainfall, humidity, and wind speed and direction which play critical roles in agricultural operations and advisories to the farmers on how to take care of their crops and livestock.
•It provides information in the form of images, maps and pictures to help the farmer to have a clearer picture of what is in store.
About SAMAR:
•The Indian Meteorological Department(IMD) had launched a System of Aerosol Monitoring and Research(SAMAR) in 2016.
•It helps the country in studying concentration of black carbon in the atmosphere due to air pollution and its impact on climate.
•It is equipped with many sophisticated equipments including 12 sky radiometers which studies aerosols different properties and determine how it impacts the climate over a longer period of time.

Explanation: World Bank released Women Business and the Law (WBL) 2020 index which measures economic empowerment of women. It uses 8 indicators to measure legal differences between men and women as they transition through different stages of working life.
Key takeaways from Women Business and the Law (WBL) 2020 index
•Countries that score 100 on the Women, Business and the Law index: Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Latvia, Luxembourg, and Sweden.
•The economies that improved the most are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Nepal, and South Sudan.
•India scored 74.4 and ranked 117th among 190 countries.

Explanation: The United Nations has confirmed that 2019 was the second hottest year ever. The hottest year ever recorded was 2016.
Key Takeaways State of Global Climate 2019 released by WMO:
•High Temperatures in 2019: The global average temperature in 2019 (January to October) was about 1.1 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial period.
•Record greenhouse gas concentrations: Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit a record level of 407.8 parts per million in 2018 and continued to rise in 2019.
•Acceleration of global mean sea-level rise: In October 2019, the global mean sea level reached its highest value since the beginning of the high-precision altimetry record (January 1993). This is because of the melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.
World Meteorological Organization (WMO):
•It is an intergovernmental organization with a membership of 192 Member States and Territories. It is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) for meteorology, operational hydrology, and related geophysical sciences.
•Other than the annual State of Climate report, WMO releases Greenhouse Gas Bulletin annually.
•WMO was established by the ratification of the WMO Convention on 23 March 1950. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

Explanation: The World Economic Forum has released the ‘Global Risks Report 2020’.
About Global Risks report:
•The report describes changes occurring in the global risks landscape from year to year and identifies global catastrophic risks.
•This is the first time in the report’s 10-year-history that all of the top five issues that are likely to impact the world this year are environmental.
Other takeaways from the report:
•It reports that Climate-related risks had the greatest likelihood of severe impacts.
•It foresees a year of increased domestic and international political instability.The retreat from multilateralism has threatened the ability of the world to deal with global risks.
•It also forecasts a year of economic slowdown.The International Monetary Fund had expected growth to be at 3% in 2019, which is the lowest since the economic crisis of 2008-09.
•The Digital Technology is in its peak of evolution.However,the unequal access of the technology across the globe will increase.
•The social demographic, environmental and technological pressure on health systems is growing.

Explanation: The US has removed China as a currency manipulator as the two countries are preparing to sign a trade deal.
About Currency manipulator:
•Currency manipulation happens when governments try to artificially tweak the exchange rate to gain an unfair advantage in trade.
•US defines currency manipulation as when countries deliberately influence the exchange rate between their currency and the US dollar to gain unfair competitive advantage in international trade.
Criteria for designation as a currency manipulator:The US Treasury has established three criteria for currency manipulator which are:
•A significant bilateral trade surplus with the US is one that is at least $20 billion.
•A material current account surplus is one that is at least 3% of GDP.
•A persistent, one-sided intervention reflected in repeated net purchases of foreign currency and total at least 2% of an economy’s GDP over a year.