‘Weight loss tops 2018 New Year’s resolutions’

NEW YORK: Being a better person and weight loss share the top spot as the most popular New Year's resolution for 2018, a US poll has found.

The survey of 1,074 adults aged 18 and above was conducted by The Marist Poll.

Among Americans who planned to make a resolution, 12 per cent reported that they want to be a better person, and the same proportion (12 per cent) said they want to lose weight. Exercising more, eating healthier, and getting a better job each garnered nine per cent while seven per cent want to improve their overall health, the poll found.

Six per cent of US residents resolving to make a change want to kick the smoking habit, and another six per cent plan to spend less and save more money. 30 per cent mentioned another resolution altogether, the poll found.

Last year, being a better person (16 per cent) edged out weight loss (10 per cent) and exercising more (10 per cent) to take the number-one slot.

The proportion of resolution makers who plan to look for a better job has nearly doubled from five per cent last year to nine per cent currently, according to the poll. "With weight loss tying for the number-one resolution and exercise and healthy eating making the top five, health is top of mind," said Lee M Miringoff, Director of The Marist College Institute for Public Opinion in US. LONDON: Over a quarter of the world's land could become significantly drier even if global warming is limited to the target of two degree Celsius, according to scientists including one of Indian origin. The change would cause an increased threat of drought and wildfires. However, limiting global warming to under 1.5 degree Celsius would dramatically reduce the fraction of the Earth's surface that undergoes such changes.

Researchers from University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK and Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTECH) in China studied projections from 27 global climate models.

They identified the areas of the world where aridity will substantially change when compared to the yearto-year variations they experience now, as global warming reaches 1.5 or two degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Aridity is a measure of the dryness of the land surface, obtained from combining precipitation and evaporation. "Our research predicts that aridification would emerge over about 20-30 per cent of the world's land surface by the time the global mean temperature change reaches two degrees Celsius," said Manoj Joshi from UEA.

"But two thirds of the affected regions could avoid significant aridification if warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius," said Joshi, one of the authors of the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Drought severity has been increasing across the Mediterranean, southern Africa, and the eastern coast of Australia over the course of the 20th Century, while semi-arid areas of Mexico, Brazil, southern Africa and Australia have encountered desertification for some time as the world has warmed.

"Aridification is a serious threat because it can critically impact areas such as agriculture, water quality, and biodiversity. It can also lead to more droughts and wildfires - similar to those seen raging across California," said Chang-eui Park from Sustech.

"Another way of thinking of the emergence of aridification is a shift to continuous moderate drought conditions, on top of which future year-to-year variability can cause more severe drought," said Park.

"For instance, in such a scenario 15 per cent of semi- arid regions would actually experience conditions similar to 'arid' climates today," he said.

"The world has already warmed by one degree Celsius. But by reducing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere in order to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius or two degrees Celsius could reduce the likelihood of significant aridification emerging in many parts of the world," Joshi said.