In the past two years, major scientific developments have suggested that all of our eyes should be on a place that only a tiny fraction of us will ever visit — Antarctica, the frozen South Pole continent that’s larger than the continental United States and contains the majority of the planet’s land-based ice.

In 2014, scientists revealed that key parts of remote West Antarctica may have been destabilised by warm ocean waters reaching the bases of vast submarine glaciers and melting them from below. West Antarctica, as a whole, contains nearly 3.3 metres of potential sea level rise. And last year, research hinted that a similar vulnerability may exist for the truly gigantic Totten Glacier of East Antarctica.

Citing global problems of climate change, energy crisis and deadly diseases, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday asked Indian students to take up the challenge of finding solutions to these through innovation and research instead of merely doing “cut-paste” work.

Addressing the convocation ceremony of the Benares Hindu University (BHU) here, he asked students to “keep the mind receptive and eager to fresh knowledge” even after their formal education was complete.

It is the greatest environmental hazard of the age. Nothing focuses our concern for the future more, divides rich and poor, exercises science, business, politicians, old and young. It is an existential threat, a generational battle. All political and financial resources must be concentrated on stopping climate change.

But now that governments have signed up to the unambitious Paris climate agreement and pledged to try to limit greenhouse gas emissions, we must ask whether we have lost sight of everything else. Is the environment just about carbon and parts per million of gases in the atmosphere? What about the environment that we can smell, see and touch today?

Coral will become deformed and increasingly fall victim to outbreaks of herpes-like viruses as humans continue to pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to two new studies.

Combined, the two effects suggest coral reefs will have trouble recovering from bleaching events, like the the world is currently experiencing.