I. Climate Science

This is a re-post from Andrew Dessler at the Climate Brink blog

In 2023, the Earth reached temperature levels unprecedented in modern times. Given that, it’s reasonable to ask: What’s going on? There’s been lots of discussions by scientists about whether this is just the normal progression of global warming or if something we don’t understand is happening — in other words, we’ve broken the climate.

from the Washington Post

In this post, I compare the observational temperature record to an ensemble of state-of-the-art CMIP6 models to see exactly how unusual 2023 was. It turns out that 2023 is just not that unusual when compared to the model ensemble.

Let’s start with observations. I’m going to be using the Berkeley Earth global average temperature data. In that data set, 2023 was a record-breaking 1.54C above the 1850-1900 average temperature. This temperature exceeded the previous record (set in 2016) by 0.17C.

Beating the previous record by 0.17C is huge: if we look at the temperature observations since 1970, the margin by which records were broken averaged 0.07C, with a median of 0.05C. And no record in the last 50 years had a margin larger than 0.17C.

What does the climate model ensemble show? I have analyzed 38 CMIP6 models over the period 1970-2030 driven by historical and SSP4.5 forcing. Here is a plot of the biggest margin for a record year vs. the year that record occurred:

based on CMIP6 models; each dot is one model; the orange cross is from the Berkeley Earth observations

As you can see, the record-breaking margin of 2023, 0.17C, was actually quite modest compared to the climate model ensemble. One model had a year that broke the previous record by nearly 0.45C — all I can say is holy crap, let’s hope that doesn’t happen in the real world.

A lot was also made of the fact that 2023 was the first year with a global average temperature anomaly to exceed 1.5C (in some data sets, at least). How unusual is that? Again, we can look at the models to see when they had their first year above 1.5C (as before, relative to the 1850-1900 baseline)1.

the black arrows indicate where a CMIP6 model passes 1.5C threshold relative to the 1850-1900 baseline, the red arrow is the Berkeley Earth observations

The median date for the model ensemble to have its first year above 1.5C is 2024, very close to when we actually did (2023). Thus, the model ensemble seems to be simulating the warming pretty accurately. And the ensemble does equally well for a more modern baseline, like 1970-1990.

no

Many others have looked at different aspects of the problem and reached similar conclusions. Here’s a plot that Zeke posted on Twitter that shows that the observed temperature time series still falls within the range of models.

This doesn’t mean we know everything about the climate of 2023. The extreme warmth was definitely surprising given the state of the climate in 2022, so important work remains to be done on understanding the physical mechanisms that were driving this record-breaking year.

But the real test of our climate understanding will come in the next few years. If global temperatures drop after the current El Niño fades, as expected, 2023’s high temperatures will be seen as an unusual blip in the long-term evolution of the climate (like “the pause” that occurred in the 2000s). However, if temperatures stay high or, heaven forbid, keep rapidly warming, it would suggest that we’ve broken the climate system. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "Is the science settled?". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there.

At a glance

Science, in all of its aspects, is an ongoing matter. It is based on making progress. For a familiar example, everyone knows that the dinosaurs died out suddenly, 65 million years ago. They vanished from the fossil record. The science is settled on that. But how and why that happened is still a really interesting research area. We know a monster asteroid smacked into the planet at roughly the same time. But we cannot yet conclude with 100% certainty that the asteroid bore sole responsibility for everything that followed.

With regard to climate science, the basis of the greenhouse effect was demonstrated in the 19th Century. The effect on global temperature through doubling the concentration of atmospheric CO2 had been calculated before 1900 and was not far off modern estimates. Raising global temperature causes Earth's climatic belts to shift polewards. Higher temperatures reduce the amount of land-ice on the planet. That in turn causes sea levels to rise. These are such simple basic physical principles that we can confidently state the science is settled on all of them.

Where the science is less settled is in the fine detail. For example, if you live in a coastal town at a low elevation, you would obviously like to know when it is likely to be affected by rising seas. But that's difficult.

Difficult because changes in sea levels, variations in the sizes of tides and weather patterns are all factors that operate independently of each other and on different time-scales. We may well know that a big storm-surge hitting the coast at high water on a spring tide is the worst-case scenario, but we don't know exactly when that might happen in the decades ahead. Too many variables.

Such minute but important details are where the science isn't settled. Yes we know that if we carry on spewing out tens of billions of tonnes of CO2 every year, things will get really bad. Where and when is the tricky bit. But if climate change was a deadly pathogen, for which there was a vaccine, most of us would get that jab.

In passing, the myth in the box above illustrates a key tactic of misinformation-practitioners, to mix up a whole bunch of talking-points into a rhetorical torrent. The classic example of the practice is the 'Gish-gallop'.

The term Gish-gallop was coined in reference to a leading American member of the creationist movement, Duane Gish (1921-2013). Gish was well-known for relishing fiery public debates with evolutionists. He perfected the method of presenting multiple arguments in a rapid-fire but scattergun manner so that they are impossible to answer in a structured form. It's the opposite of scientific discussion. The Gish-galloper appears to the viewers or listeners to be winning the debate. 'Appears' is the keyword here, though. If you can recognise a Gish-gallop developing, you can make your own mind up quickly.

Please use this form to provide feedback about this new "At a glance" section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above!

Click for Further details

In case you'd like to explore more of our recently updated rebuttals, here are the links to all of them:

Myths with link to rebuttal Short URLs Ice age predicted in the 1970s sks.to/1970s It hasn't warmed since 1998 sks.to/1998 Antarctica is gaining ice sks.to/antarctica CRU emails suggest conspiracy sks.to/climategate What evidence is there for the hockey stick sks.to/hockey CO2 lags temperature sks.to/lag Climate's changed before sks.to/past It's the sun sks.to/sun Temperature records are unreliable sks.to/temp The greenhouse effect and the 2nd law of thermodynamics sks.to/thermo We're heading into an ice age sks.to/iceage Positives and negatives of global warming sks.to/impacts The 97% consensus on global warming sks.to/consensus Global cooling - Is global warming still happening? sks.to/cooling How reliable are climate models? sks.to/model Can animals and plants adapt to global warming? sks.to/species What's the link between cosmic rays and climate change? sks.to/cosmic Is Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth accurate? sks.to/gore Are glaciers growing or retreating? sks.to/glacier Ocean acidification: global warming's evil twin sks.to/acid The human fingerprint in global warming sks.to/agw Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming sks.to/evidence How do we know more CO2 is causing warming? sks.to/greenhouse Explaining how the water vapor greenhouse effect works sks.to/vapor The tricks employed by the flawed OISM Petition Project to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change sks.to/OISM Is extreme weather caused by global warming? sks.to/extreme How substances in trace amounts can cause large effects sks.to/trace How much is sea level rising? sks.to/sealevel Is CO2 a pollutant? sks.to/pollutant Does cold weather disprove global warming? sks.to/cold Do volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans? sks.to/volcano How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions? sks.to/co2 Climate scientists could make more money in other careers sks.to/money How reliable are CO2 measurements? sks.to/co2data Do high levels of CO2 in the past contradict the warming effect of CO2? sks.to/pastco2 What is the net feedback of clouds? sks.to/cloud Global warming vs climate change sks.to/name Is Mars warming? sks.to/mars How the IPCC is more likely to underestimate the climate response sks.to/underestimat How sensitive is our climate? sks.to/sensitivity Evidence for global warming sks.to/warming Has the greenhouse effect been falsified? sks.to/falsify Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere? sks.to/breath What is causing the increase in atmospheric CO2? sks.to/CO2increase What is methane's contribution to global warming? sks.to/methane Plants cannot live on CO2 alone sks.to/plant Is the CO2 effect saturated? sks.to/saturate Greenhouse warming 100 times greater than waste heat sks.to/waste How will global warming affect polar bears? sks.to/bear The runaway greenhouse effect on Venus sks.to/venus What climate change is happening to other planets in the solar system? sks.to/planets Has Arctic sea ice returned to normal? sks.to/arctic Was Greenland really green in the past? sks.to/green Is Greenland gaining or losing ice? sks.to/greenland Human activity is driving retreat of Arctic sea ice sks.to/arcticcycle The albedo effect and global warming sks.to/albedo Does CO2 always correlate with temperature? sks.to/correlate Human fingerprints on climate change rule out natural cycles sks.to/cycle Global warming and the El Niño Southern Oscillation sks.to/elnino The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is not causing global warming sks.to/pdo Is the science settled? sks.to/settled

 

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The UK government has reclassified nearly £500m of aid for war-torn and impoverished countries as “climate finance”, in a bid to meet its international commitments under the Paris Agreement.

This follows reports that the UK’s pledge to spend £11.6bn on climate aid between 2021-22 and 2025-26 is slipping out of reach, due to government cuts.

A freedom-of-information (FOI) request by Carbon Brief reveals how, after the reclassification, money for humanitarian work in nations including Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia is now being double-counted as climate finance to help the UK hit its goal.  

The projects being double-counted include work to provide food and basic necessities that have no explicit link to climate action, Carbon Brief’s analysis reveals. Some of their internal reports even state clearly that they are not climate-finance projects. 

This is part of a wider revision of climate-finance accounting, introduced by the government in 2023 to ensure the UK achieves its £11.6bn target. 

By redefining existing funds pegged for development banks, investment in foreign businesses and humanitarian aid as “climate finance”, the government expects to add £1.72bn to its total.

Experts tell Carbon Brief it is “problematic” and “unjust” to relabel existing funds as climate finance rather than providing new money. One says the UK could meet its target, at least in part, by “double counting development and climate finance”.

The chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) group at UN climate talks says the UK’s actions are a “clear deviation from the path to climate justice”.

‘Moving the goalposts’

The UK government has committed to spending £11.6bn on international climate finance (ICF) between 2021-22 and 2025-26. This is the nation’s contribution to climate action in developing countries, which it is obliged to provide under the Paris Agreement. 

Developed countries, such as the UK, have committed to sending “new and additional” climate finance to developing countries. This is generally interpreted as spending extra money on top of existing foreign aid.

The UK government itself has described the £11.6bn goal as “dedicated ring-fenced funding that is distinguishable from non-climate [aid]”.

However, reports began to emerge in 2023 that the government was not on track to meet its target.

Experts attributed this to the government cutting its overall foreign aid budget. In November 2020, the government suspended a target to give 0.7% of national income as overseas aid – reducing it to 0.5% as a “temporary measure”. 

The government is also spending more of the remaining funds on supporting refugees within the UK. The latest figures show that in 2023, the UK spent more of its aid budget on supporting asylum seekers and refugees in the country than on overseas projects.

In order to remain on track for the £11.6bn goal, development minister Andrew Mitchell announced in October 2023 that the government was changing the way it calculated ICF spending.

This immediately sparked concerns that the government was inflating its climate-finance figures without providing any new aid money for developing countries. Mitchell provided limited details of how the government was getting its target back on track.

More information came in a report released in February by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI). It concluded that, by “moving the goalposts”, the government had reclassified £1.72bn of spending as climate finance between 2021-22 and 2025-26.

This figure includes four tranches of funding that had not previously been considered ICF:

• £746m from assuming that a share of the “core” funding the UK gives to the World Bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) will be assigned to climate-related projects.
• £497m from automatically labelling 30% of the humanitarian aid spent in the 10% of countries that are most vulnerable to climate change as ICF.
• An estimated £266m from defining more payments into British International Investment (BII), the UK’s overseas development finance institution, as ICF.
• £215m from civil servants “scrubbing” the aid portfolio – namely, going back over existing projects and adding any climate-relevant funding they had previously missed.

The figures cited by ICAI are based on unpublished government analysis, which Carbon Brief has now obtained via FOI. 

The analysis includes the annual contributions each of these sources are expected to provide over the period from 2021-22 to 2025-26, which can be seen in the coloured sections of the chart below.

Annual UK ICF spending, £bn, by financial year for the period 2011/12 to 2025/26. The grey area indicates ICF spending under the original accounting methodology used until October 2023. Beyond 2022/23 the figures are forecasts, with the light grey area indicating the upper bound and the darker grey indicating the lower bound. The coloured areas indicate the funding newly reclassified as counting towards ICF, following methodology changes introduced in October 2023. For multilateral development bank contributions, Carbon Brief understands that the UK will pledge £495m to the World Bank in 2025/26, and the remaining contributions that make up the £746m total are spread evenly across the 2011/12-2025/26 period. Source: UK government.

As the chart indicates, even with the methodology changes, the £11.6bn target is still “backloaded”, with a significant uptick in ICF spending required beyond 2023-24 to meet it. 

ICAI notes that, since the government cut its aid spending from the UN-backed benchmark of 0.7% to 0.5% of gross national income (GNI), “serious concerns remain over whether the heavily backloaded spending plan can be delivered”.

Core funding

The largest tranche of redefined ICF – some £740m – comes from the government starting to assume that a share of its “core” MDB funding counts as climate finance.

This is money that the UK government already hands to these organisations to distribute according to their own priorities, primarily through loans. None of this money has previously been counted by the UK government as ICF, even though some went towards climate action.

MDBs, including the World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and others have placed a growing emphasis on climate change in recent years. The World Bank, for example, has a target of spending 35% of its finance on climate-related projects.

Following the reclassification, the UK government will simply assume that 35% of the money it gives to the World Bank – some £495m of £1.4bn total due in 2025/26 – counts as ICF.

It will use a similar approach for its funding of other MDBs, with these changes adding a total of £740m to the amount of the UK’s aid spending that is classified as ICF.

This move will not result in the UK providing any new funds for climate action, as it was already planning on distributing this money. In fact, the government has cut its spending on MDBs in recent years, due to the overall cut in the UK’s foreign aid budget.

Humanitarian aid

The second-largest tranche of newly reclassified climate finance is from projects in climate-vulnerable countries, an additional £497m of which is being counted as ICF.

The government dataset obtained by Carbon Brief via FOI reveals the 28 humanitarian projects and five more general, country-specific funds that will contribute to this additional £497m. 

The projects are based in some of the poorest and most war-torn countries in the world – Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Yemen and Zimbabwe.

They largely focus on essential provisions, such as food and basic infrastructure.

Prior to the recent changes, these programmes would have contributed just £47.5m to ICF, according to the government data released to Carbon Brief.

By automatically counting 30% of their spend as ICF, this figure has now multiplied more than 10 times. The chart below shows, in red, these additional ICF funds.

Annual UK ICF spending, £m, sourced from humanitarian aid projects for the 10% most climate-vulnerable countries, as defined by the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative. Blue columns indicate the ICF spending that was expected from these projects prior to the methodology change, and red columns indicate ICF spending from these projects after the change. Source: UK government.

For the 23 of the 28 projects with documentation available online, Carbon Brief assessed the relevant sections of their “business case and summary” documents for evidence that they were related to climate action.

Many of the project documents reference climate change and say they will provide climate benefits. For example, all four projects in Somalia, a nation that has faced devastating drought and floods in recent years, mention the importance of climate resilience in their work.

However, some of the projects explicitly state that they are not intended to provide climate-finance. 

The summary document for the Assurance and Learning Programme (ALP) in Afghanistan, published in 2021, states: “The programme will not be eligible for ICF nor will it monitor ICF funded programmes.”

Similarly, the Congo Humanitarian, Resilience and Protection (CHRESP) Programme summary document, also published in 2021, notes “we do not anticipate that any of our programming under this programme will be eligible as ICF”.

Another project, titled Yemen: Access, Logistics, Liaison, and Accountability, will provide “few opportunities” to address climate change, according to the summary document. A further four project documents do not contain any reference to climate change. 

Despite this, following the government’s reclassification, these seven projects will collectively contribute £166.9m of UK climate finance in the coming years.

Euan Ritchie, a senior development finance policy advisor at the thinktank Development Initiatives, says blanket approaches to assigning climate finance are “problematic”. He tells Carbon Brief:

“Just because humanitarian aid is going to a country that is vulnerable to climate change doesn’t mean it addresses that vulnerability. And these projects have already been screened for their climate focus.”

He points to one of the projects, the Somalia Humanitarian and Resilience Programme, as an example. Ritchie says, based on International Aid Transparency Initiative data, that officials had already decided around 12% of this programme’s spending was ICF, and asks:

“So what rationale is there for bumping it up to 30%? Were officials wrong the first time?”

Fatuma Hussein, a programme manager at the thinktank Power Shift Africa, tells Carbon Brief such an approach is “unfair and unjust” as it “risks conflating” the “distinct needs” of climate aid and other humanitarian objectives.

In its guidance for categorising what counts as climate finance, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee recommends scoring many humanitarian projects “zero”, indicating programmes that “generally do not qualify” as climate aid.

More private investment

The third-largest tranche of reclassified development aid relates to state-backed private sector investment under British International Investment (BII).

The UK government will also now count more of its payments into BII as climate finance, amounting to around an extra £266m by 2025-26. Unlike aid spending, these are investments in the private sector and are expected to yield a financial return for the UK.

Previously, the government counted a fixed 30% of BII spending as climate finance. It now intends to include a higher percentage to reflect a growing focus on climate investments.

The new approach to BII investments assesses the share of each project that should count towards UK climate finance case-by-case, rather than using a blanket 30% share.

It will record 100% of investments in a programme covering the Philippines, Indonesia and other parts of south-east Asia as ICF, as part of the government’s “Indo-Pacific tilt”. Investments in other regions also contribute a higher share of ICF – rising as high as 46% in 2022-23.

The chart below shows the extra BII investment money (red) that now counts as ICF.

Annual UK ICF spending, £m, from British International Investment (BII) contributions. Blue columns indicate the ICF spending that was expected from BII prior to the methodology change and red columns indicate ICF spending from BII after the change. Source: UK government.

The figure above shows that the government expects private sector investment via BII to play an increasingly large role in its climate finance in the future.

Many observers have expressed concerns about the government leaning more on private investment through BII to boost its ICF spending. 

A report last year by the parliamentary international development committee criticised BII’s investment in, among other things, fossil fuels and “high-net-worth individuals”.

BII prioritises loans and projects in middle-income nations where there is money to be made, rather than the nations that are most in need of climate finance. 

ICAI highlighted this in its review of the UK’s climate finance commitments earlier this year, stating that private investment “is not always the most appropriate, realistic or preferred form of climate finance in the poorest and most fragile contexts”.

Not new, not additional

Developing countries will require trillions of dollars of investment in the coming years to meet their climate goals. 

To help achieve this, developed countries, such as the UK, are expected to provide finance under the UN climate system that is “new and additional”. Discussions around a new climate finance goal will take centre stage this year at the COP29 climate summit in Baku.

Experts tell Carbon Brief that the UK government’s changes to its ICF undermine the notion that it is providing new, “ring-fenced” funding. Regarding the “arbitrary” labelling of humanitarian funds as ICF, Ritchie says:

“If the UK is counting a fixed share of projects as ICF it can no longer claim that ICF is distinguishable from non-climate [aid].” 

Gideon Rabinowitz, director of policy and advocacy at the international development network Bond, tells Carbon Brief:

“The change of definition means they will be able to reach the target by spending less money than they would have done otherwise through double counting development and climate finance.”

Development NGOs say the best way for the UK to scale up its climate finance would be to return its foreign aid budget to 0.7% of GNI. However, with an election looming, neither the ruling Conservatives nor their Labour challengers have indicated a willingness to do this.

There will be considerable pressure on developed countries in the coming months to commit to providing plentiful, high-quality climate finance in the run up to COP29. 

Evans Njewa, the chair of the LDC group, to which nearly all of the UK’s humanitarian aid ICF recipients belong, tells Carbon Brief:

“Reclassifying existing donor aid as climate finance is a clear deviation from the path to climate justice, and closing the finance gap cannot be achieved this way.” 

Climate-finance reporting has been described as a “wild west”, with countries announcing figures based on vastly different definitions. This has led to nations counting money for coal, hotels and films in their totals, as there is no binding international standard to guide them.

The UK government noted last year that its changes are in line with other countries’ methods. But experts point out that the UK was previously viewed as setting a high standard for other countries to reach. 

In contrast, the new approach “risks breeding cynicism and mistrust because you are going to find programmes that have very little to do with climate change, but end up being reported in the pot as climate finance”, Rabinowitz says.

Hussein agrees, telling Carbon Brief:

“This not only highlights the disparity between western countries’ rhetoric on climate finance and their actual financial commitments to developing countries but also risks undermining trust that underpins global climate action.”

She argues that nations should agree on common definitions and accounting methodologies for climate finance to ensure that governments cannot backslide as the UK has.

Responding to Carbon Brief’s questions about the government’s methodology changes, a spokesperson from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said:

“Since 2011, UK funding has helped more than 100 million people cope with the effects of climate change, given 70 million people access to clean energy and reduced or avoided over 86m tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

“The UK remains on track to meet the £11.6bn international climate finance commitment.”

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The post Revealed: UK ‘double counting’ £500m of aid for war-torn countries as climate finance  appeared first on Carbon Brief.

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections

The June general election in Mexico could mark a turning point in ensuring that the country’s climate policies better reflect the desire of its citizens to address the climate crisis, with both leading presidential candidates expressing support for renewable energy.

Mexico is the 10th-most populated country with the 15th-largest economy and is also the 11th-most climate-polluting country in the world.

In international surveys conducted in 2022 and 2023, Mexico had one of the highest percentages of citizens worried about human-caused climate change at 92%, compared to just 63% of Americans.* And 88% of Mexican respondents reported that they consider climate change an important issue that their country should address as a priority, compared to just 58% of Americans. This concern may reflect that Mexico is highly vulnerable to droughts, heat waves, hurricanes, flooding, and food and water insecurity worsened by climate change.

But the Mexican government’s climate policy record has been inconsistent. At times, the country’s leaders have taken steps toward reducing its share of climate pollution, but its current and outgoing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, commonly known by his initials AMLO, has tended to prioritize domestic fossil fuel resources over low-carbon alternatives.

Mexico will hold its next general election on June 2, 2024. Voters will select the next president, who will succeed AMLO in October of this year.

A potential turning point

The leading presidential candidate, with about 60% support in polling, is Claudia Sheinbaum. She’s the former leader of Mexico City and an AMLO protégée, but also a scientist with a Ph.D. in environmental engineering who co-authored chapters in the Fourth and Fifth IPCC reports. She also plans to encourage private investment in renewable energy in Mexico.

Her closest opponent in the polls, with 35% support, is Xóchitl Gálvez, who has expressed an even more pro-clean energy position, declaring that she would end the country’s addiction to fossil fuels.

A brief history of Mexican climate leadership

Felipe Calderón was elected Mexican president for the 2006-2012 term (the Mexican constitution limits each president to a single six-year term). He had served as the country’s energy secretary in 2003-2004 and recognized the importance of addressing climate change. Under Calderón’s leadership, Mexico adopted a voluntary climate mitigation target in 2008 and passed a General Law on Climate Change in 2012. Among other provisions, the law set targets to generate at least 35% of power with clean technologies by 2024 and to reduce climate pollution 30% below business-as-usual levels by 2020 and 50% below 2000 levels by 2050. Unfortunately, the former two goals have slipped out of reach.

Calderón’s successor Enrique Peña Nieto had a more mixed record on climate and energy policy. His government passed a tax on carbon pollution, but it only applies to the additional emissions generated by burning coal or oil instead of natural gas. Peña Nieto signed a constitutional Reform on Energy that was aimed at loosening the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission’s (CFE’s) monopoly over the national power sector, which has historically relied heavily on fossil fuels. That move opened up Mexico’s electricity generation to private clean energy investment, and also its oil and gas reserves to external investors.

But AMLO moved to reverse those reforms when he replaced Peña Nieto in 2018, and he worked to maintain CFE’s share of Mexico’s power generation at a minimum of 54%. Clean energy investments in Mexico often come from foreign companies, and AMLO has expressed a preference for national ‘energy independence,’ which tends to favor domestic fossil fuel sources, which are also significant contributors to the federal budget. In fact, his energy ministry published rules for the national grid that would have prioritized energy security and fuel reserves (fossil fuels) over economic efficiency (cheaper wind and solar power). The Supreme Court of Mexico recently voided those rules.

That decision leaves Mexico’s energy and climate path at an important inflection point with a big election just a few months away.

Mexico’s current climate status

Mexico’s climate pollution predominantly comes from three sectors: transportation (30%), power (29%), and industry (27%). The country’s power sector emissions have been rising, especially over the past two years as the government has prioritized fossil fuels and drought has reduced its hydroelectricity production. Mexico’s share of clean electricity generation fell below 22% in 2023 after peaking at 27% in 2021 and thus will surely fall short of the 35% clean power target by 2024 set in its 2012 climate law. Most of the country’s power comes from natural gas, and more than three-quarters is produced by burning fossil fuels. As a result, Mexico’s overall climate pollution has risen about 33% above 2000 levels.

Mexican annual fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions. Created by Dana Nuccitelli with data from Global Carbon Budget.

Climate Action Tracker, an independent project that monitors whether governments’ actions measure up to the goals outlined in the Paris climate agreement, gave Mexico’s climate policies its worst rating of “critically insufficient” due to a lack of ambition and weakening of policies and targets under AMLO’s leadership. The project noted, “If all countries were to follow Mexico’s approach, warming would exceed 4°C” — a catastrophic level of global warming.

According to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, Mexico is also highly vulnerable to climate change impacts, especially extreme heat and drought, which could lead to food and water insecurity. Mexico City, which is the seventh-most populated city in the world with over 21 million residents, is already in danger of running out of water. A 2021 study estimated that climate change has so far reduced Mexican agricultural productivity by about 25-30%, and a 2010 paper suggested that these effects could lead to millions of Mexican climate immigrants coming to the U.S. border by 2080.

A potential 2024 inflection

Mexico has made little progress toward reducing emissions from its transportation sector, and electric vehicles account for just 0.26% of new car sales. But that could change relatively soon, as Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD has announced plans to build a factory in Mexico. The median income in Mexico is only about $6,000, which is about five to 10 times lower than that in the United States depending on how it’s measured, and so bringing BYD’s relatively cheap cars to the Mexico market could significantly increase electric vehicle adoption in the country. Mexico’s energy regulator will also have to issue guidelines to allow for the installation of more charging stations.

A 2020 paper published in Nature found that Mexico’s climate policies have tended to follow its National Development Plans. These are plans published during the first year of the new government to specify the national objectives, strategy, and priorities for Mexico’s development. The 2006 National Development Plan was the first to characterize climate change as an unequivocal environmental problem and to include targeted actions, and the Calderón government followed suit. The 2012 National Development Plan somewhat de-emphasized climate change, and the Peña Nieto government had a more mixed climate record. The 2019 plan included a section about rescuing the CFE from an onslaught of private energy investments, which became a focus of AMLO’s government to the detriment of clean energy production.

“Right now, nongovernmental actors are creating a proposal for the Plan Nacional de Descarbonización y Resiliencia Climática 2024-2030 [National Decarbonization and Climate Resilience Plan],” the 2020 Nature study’s lead author Arturo Balderas Torres wrote in an email. “Ideally any candidate who wins the election should commit to this proposal that is being generated in an unprecedented participatory way and include its proposals in the new NDP.”

In short, Mexico is a highly climate-vulnerable country with a very climate-concerned population. Its leadership has thus far taken insufficient steps toward addressing the climate crisis, but 2024 could change the trajectory of Mexico’s climate policies and clean technology solutions.

Cold-blooded sea creatures seeking refuge from warming ocean waters may find themselves at increasing risk of deadly cold shocks due to changes in ocean currents, new research warns. 

Climate change is pushing species to higher latitudes in an attempt to stay within their range of comfortable temperatures, but this migration can come with unforeseen consequences.

The new study, published in Nature, documents a mass mortality event in March 2021 that saw at least 260 dead sea creatures wash up on the shores of South Africa.

Using satellite data, ocean observations and data on the movements of bull sharks, the researchers link the event to a sudden influx of cold water coming up from the deeper ocean. 

They also show that such events have been increasing in frequency over the past three decades and forecast that this trend may continue into the future as the world continues to warm.

One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that “we predict this is going to become a more regular phenomenon and could impact a lot of different species”.

Marine migration

As the Earth warms, many species that are able to do so are migrating to higher latitudes, allowing them to maintain their place within their “thermal niche” – the set of temperatures at which they can comfortably survive.

Nowhere is this effect more pronounced than in the global oceans, where there are fewer barriers to migration than there are on land. On average, highly mobile marine species have been moving polewards by nearly 60km per decade since the 1950s, according to the latest report on climate impacts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But this migration comes with its own risks.

These shifting ranges due to climate change can introduce species to new, unfamiliar stressors – such as shipping lanes or fisheries, says Dr Natalie Posdaljian, a bioacoustician at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, who was not involved in the study. 

One of these risks is what the researchers describe as a temperature “bait and switch” – where creatures seeking warmer waters can instead be trapped by a sudden cold event. Posdaljian tells Carbon Brief that the new study is the first time that she’s seen evidence of this hazard.

Mass mortality

On 2 March 2021, dead sea creatures started washing up on the south-eastern shores of South Africa between Port Elizabeth and East London. In all, more than 250 individual organisms and 82 separate species were found, including large, migratory species such as manta rays and bull sharks. 

In deducing what had happened, the team of researchers examined the temperature data in the days leading up to the event. Using satellite and other observational data, they found that the temperature of the surrounding ocean had dropped by up to 9.2C in less than 24 hours. 

The cold event persisted for seven days and had “severe physiological consequences” for the marine organisms there, including hypothermia, malfunction and death, the paper says.

Similar cold shocks have previously occurred in south-eastern South Africa, dating back to at least 1989 and affecting a wide array of creatures, according to the study. But this instance was “probably the biggest cold-water shock [mass mortality event]” ever recorded, Dr Ryan Daly, a marine scientist at the Oceanographic Research Institute in Durban, South Africa, tells Carbon Brief. Daly is one of the authors of the new study.

The influx of cold water was due to a process called “upwelling”, which carries cold, nutrient-rich water from the ocean depths to its surface. 

The study identifies three factors that make rapid upwelling events likely to happen: strong currents interacting with the continental shelf, strong winds blowing from the east to the west and meanders in the current. Such winds occur predominantly during the southern hemisphere’s summer, between October and April. They often act as a harbinger of temperature drops occurring in the coming 0-72 hours, the study notes. 

All three of these factors are characteristic of both the south-eastern coast of South Africa and the eastern coast of Australia, where strong currents known as the Agulhas and the East Australian Current, respectively, run up against the continental shelf.

‘Trapped’

Dr Camrin Braun, an ocean ecologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, finds it surprising that even large, migratory species such as rays and bull sharks were killed by the cold snap. Braun, who was not involved in the new research, tells Carbon Brief that these animals “can move really far and really fast”. 

Daly says that this surprised the research team as well. But it’s possible, he says, that the onset of the cold temperatures was quick enough and large enough that the animals got “trapped” instead of being able to escape.

To underscore this, the researchers use data on bull shark movements and ocean temperatures from tags attached to sharks before, during and after the event. 

Bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas) at the Protea Banks dive site in Margate, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Credit: Alamy Stock Photo

They find that the sharks consistently demonstrate “attempted avoidance” of lower temperatures – moving closer to the surface while swimming through upwelling areas and only travelling at deeper depths once they reach warmer waters. 

The team also observe one shark taking up residence in a sheltered bay during one upwelling event to escape the cold waters. The researchers write that these actions “probably represent behavioural strategies to avoid/survive intense temperature declines”.

On its own, the shark-movement data is “kind of limited” and does not “make a very convincing case”, Braun says. But combining it with other data “really up[s] the ante on the importance” of the research, he adds.

Climate patterns

The researchers also look at several decades’ worth of sea surface temperature and wind data to understand whether these upwelling events are changing in frequency or intensity. 

They identify clear increasing trends in the proportion of winds that favour upwelling events across three sites in South Africa. (Previous research has shown a similar increase in such winds in south-eastern Australia.) 

Then, for the three South African sites and three Australian sites, they compare temperature data from three locations: “inshore”, defined as between 0-15km from the shore, “midshelf”, which is 15-30km from the shore and “offshore” – located within the warm “core” of the current. The inshore and midshelf locations fall within the upwelling zone, but the offshore ones do not.

If, as they hypothesised, upwelling events were becoming more frequent, the number of cold events inshore would increase over time, while the number of such events offshore would stay the same. Similarly, an upwards trend in the intensity of cold snaps would be revealed in the inshore and midshelf, but not the offshore, data.

The chart below shows that the proportion of upwelling-favourable winds (top left) at three sites in South Africa has been steadily increasing since the “upwelling season” – the period of upwelling-favourable winds stretching from October to April – of 1988-89. 

The other three charts show increasing trends in the number of cold events (top right), the average intensity of cold events (bottom left) and the average rate of onset of such cold events (bottom right) for a single site, Port Alfred, over the same period. All three characteristics increase over time for the inshore (blue) and midshelf (pink) locations, but not the offshore (green) one, supporting the idea that the cold snaps are linked to upwelling. 

Percentage of winds favouring upwelling (top left) at three sites in South Africa: Plettenberg Bay (orange), Port Alfred (blue) and Port Elizabeth (red) over the period 1988-2021. Over the same period, the number of cold events (top right), the average intensity of cold events, in degrees Celsius (bottom left) and the average rate of onset, in degrees Celsius per day (bottom right) for inshore (blue), mid-shelf (pink) and offshore (green) locations at Port Alfred. Source: Lubitz et al. (2024)

These increases persist over long enough time periods, the authors argue, to be clear evidence of long-term trends, rather than natural variation. Furthermore, the study points to previous research – dating back more than 30 years – that shows evidence of climate change increasing upwelling intensity due in part to increasingly strong winds driven by the land warming faster than the ocean. 

This trend analysis is one of the most valuable contributions of the new study, Posdaljian says. She tells Carbon Brief:

“It’s often hard to be able to have that kind of concrete evidence about how something could be increasing in intensity or frequency over time.”

The idea that climate change could lead to an increase in cold snaps may seem counterintuitive. But those increased temperatures “mean more energy in the climate [system] too”, Daly says. He explains:

“This wind-driven upwelling, linked to climate change, is essentially an extreme event – just like we might have more flooding and stronger cyclones and hurricanes.

“If you think about equivalent on land, that might be fires being fuelled by more intense wind. It takes an existing natural phenomenon and basically supercharges that to become [more] intense.”

He adds:

“Going forward, we predict that this is going to become a more regular phenomenon and could impact a lot of different species.”

The researchers “did a really good job of creating this foundational understanding” of how such cold events could hit marine ecosystems in future, Posdaljian says. 

Looking ahead, she adds that she would like to see more work focusing on projecting future trends in cold snaps and perhaps even being able to predict them. She tells Carbon Brief:

“A lot of these animals are not just dealing with one stressor from climate change…We can’t necessarily mitigate these [extreme events], but what we can do is maybe reduce the other stressors that we can control.”

‘Climate-altered’ Pacific could see conflict between tuna fishing and deep-sea mining

Marine life

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28.07.23

Guest post: Why ocean depth is key for how warming will affect marine life

Guest posts

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30.09.22

Guest post: Clam shells show how North Atlantic ‘tipped’ into Little Ice Age

Guest posts

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06.09.22

Guest post: How meeting the 2C goal cuts the climate risks for 25,000 marine species

Global temperature

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22.08.22

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A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 7, 2024 thru Sat, April 13, 2024. Story of the week

Our story of the week is about adults in the room setting terms and conditions of good behavior. Here it's not parents telling children what to do but instead the widely adopted, mutually agreed system of coercive behavior modification we call "rule of law." Legislators providing courts of justice with laws to apply are how we formalize overcoming widely harmful selfish actions— or negligent inactions. These are our proxy adults telling us what we can't do or must do— our aspirations for better nature given teeth. We could wish that we were all so perfect as to never need grownup guidance of a kind leading to fines or imprisonment, but if anything can serve to illustrate how this isn't realistic it's our failure to confront accountability for fossil fuels and what happens when nobody is willing to say "no."

Belatedly, in step our appointed adults— in this case the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Three articles we shared this week covered an important decision handed down by this court with respect to Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland. The court finds that Switzerland is negligent in pursuing climate mitigation plans and hence is harming human rights protected by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This is an extremely important precedent, an overdue acknowledgement of human rights being climate-connected. But the outcome is all the more remarkable given the ECtHR's previous agility in reasoning its way to tossing applicants' cases centered on human rights as they pertain to climate matters. Notably, the court has also just rendered unfavorable judgments  on two other climate-connected cases, in ways that sometimes seemed to defy common sense. The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law provides a short article providing context helping us to understand this single verdict as a sea change, in its introduction to a symposium on the topic.

Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:

Before April 7

• Scientists confirm record highs for three most important heat-trapping gases, The Guardian, Oliver Milman. Global concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide climbed to unseen levels in 2023, underlining climate crisis
• ‘Simply mind-boggling’: world record temperature jump in Antarctic raises fears of catastrophe, Environment, The Observer/The Gurdian, Robin McKie. "An unprecedented leap of 38.5C in the coldest place on Earth is a harbinger of a disaster for humans and the local ecosystem"
• Climate Adam: Is Global Warming Speeding Up?, ClimateAdam on Youtube, Adam Levy.
• Skeptical Science New Research for Week #14 2024, Skeptical Science, Doug Bostrom & Marc Kodack. Skeptical Science's weekly compendium of climate research.
• The Power List: Sophia Mathur, MacLean's, Katie Underwood. Governments are dragging their heels on emissions cuts. In Ontario, this 17-year-old activist is suing over it. She’s our No. 1 climate crusader.

April 7

• 2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #14, Skeptical Science, Baerbel Winkler, Doug Bostrom and John Hartz. Another batch of 34 articles shared in the week from March 31 to April 6, 2024
• Zambians Feel the Personal Consequences of Climate Change-and Dream of a Sustainable Future, Inside Climate News, Georgina Gustin. Lede: Zambia, like its southern African neighbors, depends on rain for its food, energy and economy. But it hasn’t gotten enough this year, and likely won’t in the future, a victim of a climate crisis it didn’t cause.
• Top Europe rights court to issue landmark climate verdicts, Phys.org, Antoine Pollez (AfP).

April 8

• How Nigeria is reeling from extreme heat fuelled by climate change, Carbon Brief, Solomon Elusoji. Since the start of this year, Africa’s most populous nation Nigeria has faced prolonged stretches of severe heat.
• Coastal wetlands can`t keep pace with sea-level rise, and infrastructure is leaving them nowhere to go, The Conversation - Articles (US), Randall W. Parkinson, Research Associate Professor in Coastal Geology, Florida International University.
• Climate-warming gases being smuggled into Europe, investigation says, Business, Reuters, David Stanway.
• Feeling depleted? So is the planet. Here’s how to move from exhaustion to empowerment, Environment, The Conversaion UK, Tom Oliver.

April 9

• Banks Made Big Climate Promises. A New Study Doubts They Work., NYT > Climate and Environment, Eshe Nelson. Using European Central Bank lending data, researchers said there was not evidence that voluntary commitments were effective in reducing emissions.
• Tenth consecutive monthly heat record alarms and confounds climate scientists, The Guardian, Jonathan Watts. If the anomaly does not stabilise by August, ‘the world will be in uncharted territory’, says climate expert
• Retired teachers return to Colorado classrooms to teach students about climate change, Yale Climate Connections, YCC Team. They’re helping students take action in their communities.
• The Transformation of European Climate Change Litigation: Introduction to the Blog Symposium, Climate Law Blog, Maria Antonia Tigre and Maxim Bönnemann.
• At a glance - The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is not causing global warming, Skeptical Science, John Mason. Rebuttal #60 to be updated with the at-a-glance section

April 10

• EGU2024 - Picking and chosing sessions to attend virtually, Skeptical Science, Bärbel Winkler. The upcoming General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) is a good opportunity to showcase our various resources giving facts a fighting chance against misinformation!
• Guest post: How climate change could reverse progress in global inequality, Carbon Brief, Carbon Brief Staff. Lede: According to most metrics, economic inequalities across the world have been declining since the late 1980s.
• Carbon Removal’s $100 Billion Conundrum, Climate, Heatmap, Emily Pontecorvo. "That’s how much the U.S. should be spending per year by 2050 to achieve net zero, according to a new Rhodium Group report."
• UN climate chief calls for "quantum leap in climate finance", Climate Home News, Joe Lo. Simon Stiell says far more money is required for developing countries to submit bold new climate plans, which would benefit all economies
• By the numbers, The Crucial Years, Bill McKibben. Sometimes we need to stop and take stock

April 11

• In-depth Q&A: How does climate change drive human migration?, Carbon Brief, Ayesha Tandon. The once-stable climate that people have lived in for millennia is now rapidly shifting.
• One of the world’s highest cities starts rationing water for 9 million people, Climate, CNN, Stefano Pozzebon.
• NASA's PACE data on ocean, atmosphere, climate now available, Phys.org, Erica McNamee, NASA. NASA is now publicly distributing science-quality data from its newest Earth-observing satellite, providing first-of-their-kind measurements of ocean health, air quality, and the effects of a changing climate.
• Taking CO2 out of the air would be an absurdly expensive way to fight climate change, The Verge - Science Posts, Justine Calma. New technologies that attempt to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would need hundreds of billions of dollars of government support, a new report says.
• Skeptical Science New Research for Week #15 2024, Skeptical Science, Doug Bostrom & Marc Kodack. Skeptical Science keeps you up to date with the latest academic and other research on human-caused climate change.

April 12

• Earth just had its warmest March on record, Yale Climate Connections, Jeff Masters. March 2024 was the planet’s 10th consecutive warmest month on record. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef suffered its worst coral bleaching in history.
• A Group of Women Took Switzerland to Court Over Climate Inaction-and Won, Inside Climate News, Kiley Price.

April 13

• Fact Brief - Did global warming stop in 1998?, Skeptical Science, SkS-Team & Sue Bin Park. The next fact brief published in collaboration with Gigafact!
• Strasbourg court`s Swiss climate ruling could have global impact, say experts, The Guardian, Isabella Kaminski. Decision by European court of human rights around vulnerability of older women to heatwaves marks significant shift

If you happen upon high quality climate-science and/or climate-myth busting articles from reliable sources while surfing the web, please feel free to submit them via this Google form so that we may share them widely. Thanks!

Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.

Did global warming stop in 1998?

While 1998 was an abnormally warm year, annual average temperatures have trended steadily upward in the decades since.

As a strong El Nino year, 1998 featured a significant spike in global temperatures. El Nino is the warm phase of a cyclic climatic pattern where sea temperatures in parts of the Pacific swing higher or lower than average. The 1998 El Nino stood out above the rising temperature trendline that is due to manmade global warming.

However, the long-term upward trend in globally-averaged temperatures has continued. In the past quarter century, the top ten hottest years on record have all occurred since 2010.

Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

ReliefWeb El Niño - 1998 Global Surface Temperature: Highest by a Wide Margin

Royal Meterological Society Coverage bias in the HadCRUT4 temperature series and its impact on recent temperature trends

NASA Global Temperature

About fact briefs published on Gigafact

Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer “yes/no” answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact — a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all of our published fact briefs here.

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed. 
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week ‘Historic’ court victory

FIRST-EVER RULING: The European Court of Human Rights this week ruled that insufficient action to tackle climate change is a violation of human rights, DeSmog reported. In a “historic” judgement, the court ruled that Switzerland’s inadequate action on cutting emissions breached the rights to respect for family and private life of some of its most vulnerable citizens, DeSmog said. The case was brought by a group of 2,000 older Swiss women, BBC News reported.

PORTUGUESE CASE: The same court also dismissed a climate case brought by six Portuguese young people, finding the group had not exhausted legal action through the national courts, the Financial Times reported. Gerry Liston, the lawyer for the Portuguese youths, said that, despite the judges dismissing the case, the court’s ruling on the Swiss women’s action was “a massive win for all generations”, added the outlet. 

INDIAN COURT: Also this week, India’s Supreme Court expanded the “right to life” to include “protection against adverse effects of climate change”, adding that “climate change threatens ‘constitutional guarantees of equality and health’, impacting factors such as air pollution, disease, and food security”, the Independent reported. An editorial in the Indian Express described the decision as a “call to action”, adding that the significance of the ruling “cannot be overstated”. 

Heat goes on

ROASTING MARCH: March 2024 was the “tenth straight month to be the hottest on record”, reported the Associated Press. March temperatures averaged at 14.14C – 1.68C warmer than in the late 1800s, when the fossil fuel era began, according to AP. It added that “climate scientists attribute most of the record heat to human-caused climate change from carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane emissions produced by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas”.

HEAT-TRAPPING GASES: Atmospheric levels of the three most important heat-trapping gases – CO2, methane and nitrous oxide – reached record highs again last year, the Guardian reported. The global concentration of CO2 rose to an average of 419 parts per million (ppm) in 2023, while methane rose to an average of 1,922 parts per billion (ppb) and nitrous oxide climbed slightly to 336ppb, the outlet said.

‘RAISE VOICES’: Amid the records, UN climate chief Simon Stiell urged “ordinary people everywhere” to “raise their voices” over climate change in a speech in London, the Financial Times reported. Stiell warned that humanity has just two years left to “save the world”, adding “we still have a chance… but we need these stronger [national climate] plans, now”, reported the Associated Press. 

Around the world

• EU INVESTIGATION: The EU launched an investigation to examine “whether Chinese companies participating in wind parks across Europe may have benefited from state support from Beijing”, said the Financial Times.
• BIGGEST ICEBERG: BBC News tracked the world’s biggest iceberg – more than twice the size of Greater London – which has “begun to drift at pace once more” after a “few weeks loitering on the fringes of Antarctica”.
• BIGGEST ECONOMIES: G20 countries and “the multilateral development banks they fund” put £112bn into overseas fossil fuel development over 2020-2022, the Guardian reported. Despite pledging in 2022 to halt such financing, oil and gas funding “has continued at a strong pace”, the outlet added.
• UK POLITICS: Politico reported that the UK’s rightwing populist party Reform, the brainchild of Brexiteer Nigel Farage, has plans to make scrapping climate policies a central part of its campaigning in the next general election.
• SEVERE FLOODING: Russia and Kazakhstan have ordered more than 100,000 people to evacuate after melting snow swelled rivers beyond bursting point, leading to the worst flooding in the area for at least 70 years, reported Reuters.
• CHINA COAL: China accounted for 95% of the world’s new coal power construction activity in 2023, according to the latest annual report from Global Energy Monitor covered by Carbon Brief.

1.37m km

The total length of “ghost roads” uncovered by researchers studying deforestation in the Asian Pacific, according to Carbon Brief. 

Latest climate research

• A new study in Nature Climate Change warned that meteorites holding potential clues to life’s origins or the prospect of alien existence are fast disappearing from Antarctica because of climate change. 
• Geoengineering methods that change the planet’s radiative forcing – aiming to reduce the amount of energy that reaches the surface of the Earth – could increase the incidence of fires in the Arctic, when combined with very high greenhouse gas emissions, new research in Communications Earth & Environment suggested. 
• A new study in npj Climate Action found that “Roman Catholics are less likely to believe in man-made climate change as compared to evangelical Christians”. However, the more positive a respondent’s view of Pope Francis, the more likely they are “to acknowledge the effect of human activity on global warming”, it said.

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

Carbon Brief has just published a two-part miniseries on the complex topic of climate migration. Carbon Brief’s explainer looked into the main drivers of why people move. Using data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), Carbon Brief analysis showed that most climate-linked internal displacement is due to floods and storms (see above). The series also includes a special report on climate-driven migration in rural Thailand. Carbon Brief’s science journalist Ayesha Tandon also produced a video on her investigation into climate-driven migration in Thailand.

Spotlight K-pop fans campaign for climate change

This week, Carbon Brief speaks to K-pop fans about their efforts to tackle climate change. 

Dayeon Lee is a Tokyo-based South Korean student, and before discovering and joining climate campaigns, she was a “guilty” K-pop fan.

“K-pop” is a term for popular music from South Korea. K-pop has witnessed an explosion in popularity since the term first appeared internationally in the 2000s.

“I think people have the stereotype of K-pop fans, thinking we are just a group of crazy girls being obsessed with boys, but we are more than that, we are also a group of young people who care about the planet,” Lee told Carbon Brief. 

“Korean entertainment companies produce a lot of album covers and we as fans buy hundreds of albums to support our idols. The companies don’t care about the environmental cost and waste, but we bear the guilt.”

Looking to make a change, Lee joined the campaign group Kpop4planet in 2021. The group, which is managed by K-pop fans, launched the campaign “No K-pop on a Dead Planet”, urging the industry to “make K-pop sustainable” and produce more eco-friendly albums. 

“We had K-pop fans returning hundreds of albums to the major entertainment companies in South Korea to make sure they are aware of the issue. Although they didn’t officially respond to us, they started to introduce digital albums with purchasing code fans can scan,” said Lee.

The online campaign has in total attracted more than 100,000 people to join and they hope to inspire more.

There are an estimated 178m active K-pop fans worldwide. Kpop4planet’s campaigns cover a wide range of environmental issues, from reducing the high cost of fashion worn by K-pop singers, to protecting a beach featuring in K-pop songs and zero-emissions concerts. 

“Since K-pop stars are involved with so many industries…that need to become more sustainable, we want to motivate and gather the power and influence of K-pop fans and the youth… to change the companies that are heavily polluting the environment by using fossil fuels,” said Lee. 

Lee told Carbon Brief that K-pop entertainment agencies have already listened to their concerns, with some of them, such as South Korean record label JYP, committing to use 100% renewable electricity to power its operation.

‘Drop coal’

Recently, Kpop4planet decided to target the Korean motor company, Hyundai, which had signed a deal with an Indonesian company to source aluminium from a coal-powered smelter in North Kalimantan, Indonesia. 

“Hyundai has a good image in Indonesia because they use the image of Korean band BTS as ‘their face’,” said Lee, adding that Kpop4planet hopes to leverage their K-pop fan stance to convince the company to “drop coal”. 

Another campaigner Nural Sarifah, based in Indonesia, told Carbon Brief that the group has undertaken a “series of activities” to campaign against Hyundai’s decision, including delivering a signed petition “with a touch of K-pop dance” outside the Hyundai Motor Studio in Jakarta.  

On 2 April, Reuters reported that Hyundai and its Indonesian supplier had “ended an aluminium supply agreement after calls by a climate campaigner backed by K-pop fans not to procure supplies of the metal produced using coal power”.

Hyundai announced in a statement that it had “decided to explore other opportunities independently” in Indonesia, according to the news agency. Lee told Carbon Brief:

“This move is a victory for thousands of K-pop fans who took action. We are glad that Hyundai is now exploring options to acquire transparent and sustainable sourcing materials in Indonesia.”

Lee added that their campaign will not stop there:

“Ultimately, we would like to use our collective power to [make] change. We want to secure the future that K-pop fans and the youth will inherit.”

Watch, read, listen

CHINESE SOLAR: The Financial Times published a Lex opinion piece saying “Chinese solar companies are paying a high price for victory” in a battle with European solar firms.

HAWAII’S CRISIS: CBS News released a documentary on YouTube about the water-related crisis on the Hawaiian islands.  

GREEN FUNERAL: The Anti-dread Climate Podcast explored the carbon costs of traditional burial and looked for more climate-friendly alternatives.  

Coming up

• 16-19 April: Scoping meeting for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on cities, Riga, Latvia
• 17 April: Solomon Islands parliamentary elections
• 19 April: Start of India’s general election

Pick of the jobs

• The United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service Office of Sustainability and Climate, climate communications resource assistant | Salary: $750 per week and $1,000 per month housing stipend. Location: Remote (US)
• European Space Agency, climate and long-term action knowledge exchange officer | Salary: Unknown. Location: Harwell, UK
• Chatham House, Mo Ibrahim Foundation Academy fellowship 2024-25 | Salary: Monthly stipend of £2,365. Location: London 
• Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change , programme manager, nature | Salary: Unknown. Location: London

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

DeBriefed 5 April 2024: Southern Africa’s drought ‘disaster’; Top electric car sales slump; Is Nigeria coping with extreme heat?

DeBriefed

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05.04.24

DeBriefed 28 March 2024: Amazon fund; China faces trade storm; How lifestyle changes could slash EU emissions

DeBriefed

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28.03.24

DeBriefed 22 March 2024: ‘Red alert’ for Earth; Heat-pump myths factchecked; Myanmar’s rare-earth mining crisis

DeBriefed

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22.03.24

DeBriefed 15 March 2024: Global methane surge; Europe faces ‘urgent’ climate risks; Surprising origin of Trump’s ‘drill, baby, drill’

DeBriefed

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15.03.24

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Open access notables

Global carbon emissions in 2023, Liu et al., Nature Reviews Earth & Environment

Annual global CO2 emissions dropped markedly in 2020 owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, decreasing by 5.8% relative to 2019 (ref. 1). There were hopes that green economic stimulus packages during the COVD crisis might mark the beginning of a longer-term decrease in global emissions toward net-zero emissions, but instead emissions rebounded and quickly exceeded pre-pandemic levels by 2021. However, year-on-year growth has slowed, with 5.4% increases in 2021 (ref. 2) (reaching 35.1 Gt CO2) and 1.9% increases in 2022 (ref. 3) (reaching 35.7 Gt CO2), rapidly using up the remaining carbon budget. Here, we outline global CO2 emissions (encompassing fossil fuel combustion and cement production) from the Carbon Monitor project (https://carbonmonitor.org) for the year 2023.

Moral hazards and solar radiation management: Evidence from a large-scale online experiment, Schoenegger & Mintz-Woo, Journal of Environmental Psychology

Solar radiation management (SRM) may help to reduce the negative outcomes of climate change by minimising or reversing global warming. However, many express the worry that SRM may pose a moral hazard, i.e., that information about SRM may lead to a reduction in climate change mitigation efforts. In this paper, we report a large-scale preregistered, money-incentivised, online experiment with a representative US sample (N = 2284). We compare actual behaviour (donations to climate change charities and clicks on climate change petition links) as well as stated preferences (support for a carbon tax and self-reported intentions to reduce emissions) between participants who receive information about SRM with two control groups (a salience control that includes information about climate change generally and a content control that includes information about a different topic). Behavioural choices are made with an earned real-money endowment, and stated preference responses are incentivised via the Bayesian Truth Serum. We fail to find a significant impact of receiving information about SRM and, based on equivalence tests, we provide evidence in favour of the absence of a meaningfully large effect.

Greenwashing, net-zero, and the oil sands in Canada: The case of Pathways Alliance, Aronczyk et al., Energy Research & Social Science

This article examines net zero greenwashing using the case of Pathways Alliance, a coalition of six companies representing 95% of oil sands production in Canada, one of the world's largest oil reserves. Drawing on a corpus of documents (n = 183) spanning a two-year period, including materials from the coalition's advertising and public relations campaign, we evaluate Pathways Alliance's public communication for indicators of net-zero greenwashing. We identify instances of selective disclosure and omission, misalignment of claim and action, displacement of responsibility, non-credible claims, specious comparisons, nonstandard accounting, and inadequate reporting. There is also evidence that their publicity campaign extends beyond the materials usually collected and assessed for greenwashing by researchers. The article calls for further research into net zero communication and an expanded conception of greenwashing able to account for the role of digital platforms, public relations, and sector-wide alliances in strategically coordinated climate communication.

Increase in concerns about climate change following climate strikes and civil disobedience in Germany, Brehm & Gruhl, Nature Communications

Climate movements have gained momentum in recent years, aiming to create public awareness of the consequences of climate change through salient climate protests. This paper investigates whether concerns about climate change increase following demonstrative protests and confrontational acts of civil disobedience. Leveraging individual-level survey panel data from Germany, we exploit exogenous variations in the timing of climate protests relative to survey interview dates to compare climate change concerns in the days before and after a protest (N = 24,535). Following climate protests, we find increases in concerns about climate change by, on average, 1.2 percentage points. Further, we find no statistically significant evidence that concerns of any subpopulation decreased after climate protests. Lastly, the increase in concerns following protests is highest when concern levels before the protests are low.

Cyclone Jasper’s rains in the context of climate change, Emanuel, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Cyclone Jasper struck northern Queensland in mid-December, 2023, causing extensive flooding stemming from torrential rain. Many stations reported rainfall totals exceeding 1 m, and a few surpassed 2 m, possibly making Jasper the wettest tropical cyclone in Australian history. To be better prepared for events like Jasper, it is useful to estimate the probability of rainfall events of Jasper’s magnitude and how that probability is likely to evolve as climate warms. To make such estimates, we apply an advanced tropical cyclone downscaling technique to nine global climate models, generating a total of 27,000 synthetic tropical cyclones each for the climate of the recent past and that of the end of this century. We estimate that the annual probability of 1 m of rain from tropical cyclones at Cairns increases from about 0.8% at the end of the 20th century to about 2.3% at the end of the 21st, a factor of almost three. Interpolating frequency to the year 2023 suggests that the current annual probability of Jasper’s rainfall is about 1.2%, about a 50% increase over that of the year 2000. Further analysis suggests that the primary causes of increasing rainfall are stronger cyclones and a moister atmosphere.

Integrating science and the arts to deglobalise climate change adaptation, Olazabal et al., Nature Communications

Language has so far been the key resource for awareness-raising, communication, planning, negotiation, and decision-making in the socio-political arenas of adaptation. In theory, language should not be limited to describing the present but also to imagining adaptation realities and challenging them to create disruptive pathways for action. At a time when adaptation had a limited role in policy discourses, language has been very useful in creating symbolism13 through universal abstractions regarding what adaptation involves (resilience, transformation, justice) or what it is not meant to involve (risk, maladaptation or vulnerability). However, it has not been successful in shaping imaginaries of what adaptation might look like on the ground. Two significant challenges hinder the use of language as an entry point for context-specific adaptation management: (1) its abstraction and technocratisation, and (2) its lack of local meaning. We here argue that, while the current language used in adaptation is a critical resource across stages of policy, planning, awareness and education, it alone cannot generate ownership and produce relevant action at the local level. Visuals are also necessary tools.

From this week's government/NGO section:  

Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind and Electric Vehicles, Eisenson et. al., Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia University

Getting the U.S. energy system onto an environmentally sustainable track will require rapid and widespread development of wind, solar, and other renewable energy facilities; corresponding storage, transmission, and distribution infrastructure; and timely industry-specific transitions, such as battery electric vehicles replacing their combustion-engine counterparts. Broad public support exists for transformative climate policies, with a June 2023 Pew Research Center survey finding that 67% of U.S. adults prioritize developing renewable energy sources over increased fossil fuel production. However, “misinformation” and coordinated “disinformation” have at times undermined support for renewable energy projects and electric vehicles. The authors address some of the more prevalent and persistent distortions about solar energy, wind energy, and electric vehicles, with the aim of promoting a more informed discussion. 

2035 and Beyond. Reconductoring With Advanced Conductors Can Accelerate the Rapid Transmission Expansion Required for a Clean Grid, Chojkiewicz et al., Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley and GridLab

The authors combines the latest energy cost data with state-of-the-art grid modeling to quantify three key elements: the cost of reconductoring with advanced conductors; the associated gains in transmission capacity; and the associated contribution to meeting transmission needs by 2035. 153 articles in 55 journals by 838 contributing authors

Physical science of climate change, effects

Antarctic meteorites threatened by climate warming, Tollenaar et al., Nature Climate Change Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41558-024-01954-y

Dynamics of an extreme low temperature event over South Africa amid a warming climate, Chikoore et al., Weather and Climate Extremes Open Access 10.1016/j.wace.2024.100668

Greenhouse gas-induced modification of intense storms over the west African sahel through thermodynamic and dynamic processes, Zhao et al., Climate Dynamics 10.1007/s00382-024-07193-3

Observations of climate change, effects

How extreme hydrological events correspond to climate extremes in the context of global warming: A case study in the Luanhe River Basin of North China, Gao et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.8459

Ocean heat content in 2023, Cheng et al., Nature Reviews Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43017-024-00539-9

Precipitation extremes in 2023, Fowler et al., Nature Reviews Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43017-024-00547-9

Precipitation, temperature and potential evapotranspiration for 1991–2020 climate normals over Africa, Lim Kam Sian et al., Theoretical and Applied Climatology 10.1007/s00704-024-04963-1

Soil moisture decline in China’s monsoon loess critical zone: More a result of land-use conversion than climate change, Wang et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 10.1073/pnas.2322127121

The increases in extreme climatic events over the northeastern Tibetan Plateau and their association with atmospheric circulation changes, Liu et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2024.107410

Trends of Sediment Resuspension and Budget in Southern Lake Michigan Under Changing Wave Climate and Hydrodynamic Environment, Zhu et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023jc020180

Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, effects

A method for homogenization of complex daily mean temperature data: Application at Beijing Observatory (1915–2021) and trend analysis, Chen et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.8434

A past and present perspective on the European summer vapor pressure deficit, Nagavciuc et al., Climate of the Past Open Access pdf 10.5194/cp-20-573-2024

Assessing climate impacts on slow-moving landslides in the western Alps of Piemonte: integration of monitoring techniques for detecting displacements, Narcisi et al., Frontiers in Earth Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/feart.2024.1365469

Radiative Effect of Two Contrail Cirrus Outbreaks Over Western Europe Estimated Using Geostationary Satellite Observations and Radiative Transfer Calculations, Wang et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2024gl108452

Representing natural climate variability in an event attribution context: Indo-Pakistani heatwave of 2022, Nath et al., Weather and Climate Extremes Open Access 10.1016/j.wace.2024.100671

Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects

Collapse and slow recovery of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) under abrupt greenhouse gas forcing, Curtis & Fedorov, Climate Dynamics 10.1007/s00382-024-07185-3

Extremes of summer Arctic sea ice reduction investigated with a rare event algorithm, Sauer et al., Climate Dynamics Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00382-024-07160-y

Global Projection of Flood Risk With a Bivariate Framework Under 1.5–3.0°C Warming Levels, Huang et al., Earth's Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023ef004312

Hydro-geochemical conditions under projected climate change scenarios of Marshyangdi River, Nepal, Singh et al., Theoretical and Applied Climatology Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00704-024-04890-1

Multi-model ensemble of frost risks across East Asia (1850–2100), Richards & Brimblecombe, Climatic Change Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10584-024-03723-4

Projected changes in rainfall and temperature using CMIP6 models over the Okavango River basin, southern Africa, Moses, Theoretical and Applied Climatology Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00704-024-04950-6

Response of west pacific subtropical high to northern hemispheric warming: insights from paleo climate models, Priya et al., Climate Dynamics 10.1007/s00382-024-07194-2

Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection

Decadal Evolution of Ice-Ocean Interactions at a Large East Greenland Glacier Resolved at Fjord Scale With Downscaled Ocean Models and Observations, Wood et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gl107983

Does a Scale-Aware Convective Parameterization Scheme Improve the Simulation of Heavy Rainfall Events?, Park et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023jd039407

Exacerbated summer European warming not captured by climate models neglecting long-term aerosol changes, Schumacher et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-024-01332-8

High-resolution meteorology with climate change impacts from global climate model data using generative machine learning, Buster et al., Nature Energy 10.1038/s41560-024-01507-9

Improving Earth System Model Selection Methodologies for Projecting Hydroclimatic Change: Case Study in the Pacific Northwest, Lybarger et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023jd039774

Observational constraint on a feedback from supercooled clouds reduces projected warming uncertainty, Cesana et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-024-01339-1

On the relation of CMIP6 GCMs errors at RCM driving boundary condition zones and inner region for Central Europe region, Holtanová et al., Open Access pdf 10.21203/rs.3.rs-3779508/v1

Cryosphere & climate change

Dynamics of the spatiotemporal velocity of glaciers on the eastern slope of Mount Gongga, China, under climate change, FU et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2024.04.004

Fifty years of firn evolution on Grigoriev ice cap, Tien Shan, Kyrgyzstan, Machguth et al., The Cryosphere Open Access 10.5194/tc-18-1633-2024

Globally consistent estimates of high-resolution Antarctic ice mass balance and spatially-resolved glacial isostatic adjustment, Willen et al., Open Access pdf 10.5194/tc-2023-119

Sea ice in 2023, Roach & Meier Holmes Stevens Swaminathan Wang Massonnet Johansson Johansson Johansson Zimin Fleury Kshitija Kopec Gavriluk Eriksson Yang Zhang, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43017-024-00542-0

Sea level & climate change

The Future of Developed Barrier Systems: 1. Pathways Toward Uninhabitability, Drowning, and Rebound, Anarde et al., Earth's Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023ef003672

The Future of Developed Barrier Systems: 2. Alongshore Complexities and Emergent Climate Change Dynamics, Anarde et al., Earth's Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023ef004200

Biology & climate change, related geochemistry

AI-driven remote sensing enhances Mediterranean seagrass monitoring and conservation to combat climate change and anthropogenic impacts, Chowdhury et al., Open Access pdf 10.21203/rs.3.rs-3304270/v1

Beyond boundaries: governance considerations for climate-driven habitat shifts of highly migratory marine species across jurisdictions, Santos et al., npj Ocean Sustainability Open Access pdf 10.1038/s44183-024-00059-5

Collective effects of rising average temperatures and heat events on oviparous embryos, Ma et al., Conservation Biology Open Access pdf 10.1111/cobi.14266

Exploring the mechanisms behind swimming performance limits to ocean warming and acidification in the Atlantic king scallop, Pecten maximus, Bock et al., Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution Open Access pdf 10.3389/fevo.2024.1347160

Future changes in society and climate may strongly shape wild large-herbivore faunas across Europe, Davoli & Svenning, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 10.1098/rstb.2023.0334

Increasing spread rates of tropical non-native macrophytes in the Mediterranean Sea, Wesselmann et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.17249

Invasion risk of the currently cultivated alien flora in southern Africa is predicted to decline under climate change, Omer et al., Ecography Open Access pdf 10.1111/ecog.07010

Long-Term Trends in the Distribution of Ocean Chlorophyll, Zhai et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gl106577

Plant responses to changing rainfall frequency and intensity, Feldman et al., Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 10.1038/s43017-024-00534-0

Precipitation and relative humidity favours tree growth while air temperature and relative humidity respectively drive winter stem shrinkage and expansion, Oogathoo et al., Open Access 10.2139/ssrn.4629007

Predicting the effect of climate change on the geographic range of the Mediterranean relict tree Liquidambar orientalis Mill, Kenar, Nordic Journal of Botany 10.1111/njb.04250

Predicting the responses of European grassland communities to climate and land cover change, Liu & Van Meerbeek, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 10.1098/rstb.2023.0335

Projected future climatic forcing on the global distribution of vegetation types, Allen et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Open Access pdf 10.1098/rstb.2023.0011

Projected ocean temperatures impair key proteins used in vision of octopus hatchlings, Hua et al., Global Change Biology Open Access pdf 10.1111/gcb.17255

Range and climate niche shifts in European and North American breeding birds, Zurell et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Open Access pdf 10.1098/rstb.2023.0013

Seasonality and response of ocean acidification and hypoxia to major environmental anomalies in the southern Salish Sea, North America (2014–2018), Alin et al., Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-2023-181

Simulated Abrupt Shifts in Aerobic Habitats of Marine Species in the Past, Present, and Future, Fröb et al., Earth's Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023ef004141

Temperature optima of a natural diatom population increases as global warming proceeds, Hattich et al., Nature Climate Change Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41558-024-01981-9

Towards a novel biosphere in 2300: rapid and extensive global and biome-wide climatic novelty in the Anthropocene, Ordonez et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 10.1098/rstb.2023.0022

Using ancient sedimentary DNA to forecast ecosystem trajectories under climate change, Alsos et al., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Open Access pdf 10.1098/rstb.2023.0017

GHG sources & sinks, flux, related geochemistry

Aircraft-based mass balance estimate of methane emissions from offshore gas facilities in the southern North Sea, Pühl et al., Open Access pdf 10.5194/acp-2022-826

Anthropogenic impacts on mud and organic carbon cycling, Bianchi et al., Nature Geoscience 10.1038/s41561-024-01405-5

Atmospheric oxygen as a tracer for fossil fuel carbon dioxide: a sensitivity study in the UK, Chawner et al., Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Open Access 10.5194/acp-24-4231-2024

Global carbon emissions in 2023, Liu et al., Nature Reviews Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43017-024-00532-2

High-resolution spatial patterns and drivers of terrestrial ecosystem carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide fluxes in the tundra, Virkkala et al., Open Access pdf 10.5194/bg-2023-61

How urbanization shapes the ecosystem carbon sink of vegetation in China: A spatiotemporal analysis of direct and indirect effects, Wang et al., Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2024.101896

Methane Distribution, Production, and Emission in the Western North Pacific, Wang et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 10.1029/2023jc020482

Real-world particulate, GHG, and gaseous toxic emissions from heavy-duty diesel and natural gas vehicles, Toumasatos et al., Atmospheric Environment 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2024.120512

Spatial and temporal variations of gross primary production simulated by land surface model BCC&AVIM2.0, Li et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2023.02.001

The African Regional Greenhouse Gases Budget (2010–2019), Ernst et al., Global Biogeochemical Cycles Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gb008016

The Net GHG Balance and Budget of the Permafrost Region (2000–2020) From Ecosystem Flux Upscaling, Ramage et al., Global Biogeochemical Cycles Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023gb007953

CO2 capture, sequestration science & engineering

Assessing the potential for CO2 storage in saline aquifers in Brazil: Challenges and Opportunities, Weber et al., Greenhouse Gases: Science and Technology 10.1002/ghg.2265

Estimating carbon sequestration potential and optimizing management strategies for Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys pubescens) forests using machine learning, Lv et al., Frontiers in Forests and Global Change Open Access pdf 10.3389/ffgc.2024.1338795

Quantifying soil organic carbon after biochar application: how to avoid (the risk of) counting CDR twice?, Rathnayake et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access pdf 10.3389/fclim.2024.1343516

Decarbonization

Bringing light, connectivity and waste to local communities: A study of the post-consumption value chain for off-grid solar devices in Kenya, Majale et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103516

Do laundry when the sun shines: Factors that promote loadshifting in Dutch households with solar panels, Hubert et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103514

GIS-based suitability mapping for offshore and onshore wind energy in the United Arab Emirates, Gherboudj, Energy for Sustainable Development 10.1016/j.esd.2024.101439

The electric vehicle transition: A blessing or a curse for improving extractive industries and mineral supply chains?, Boateng & Klopp, Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103541

Geoengineering climate

Moral hazards and solar radiation management: Evidence from a large-scale online experiment, Schoenegger & Mintz-Woo, Journal of Environmental Psychology Open Access 10.1016/j.jenvp.2024.102288

Stratospheric Aerosol Injection to Stabilize Northern Hemisphere Terrestrial Permafrost Under the ARISE-SAI-1.5 Scenario, Morrison et al., Earth's Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023ef004151

The politics of assembling pilots: Policy networks and selection strategies in top-down climate experimentation, Yang & Lo, Energy Research & Social Science 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103539

Black carbon

Direct radiative forcing of light-absorbing carbonaceous aerosols in China, Yang et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2024.107396

Aerosols

Effects of emission reductions on major anthropogenic aerosol-radiation-cloud interactions in East Asia in winter during 2007–2020, Hu et al., Atmospheric Environment 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2024.120499

Exacerbated summer European warming not captured by climate models neglecting long-term aerosol changes, Schumacher et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-024-01332-8

Sensitivity of global direct aerosol shortwave radiative forcing to uncertainties in aerosol optical properties, Elsey et al., Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Open Access 10.5194/acp-24-4065-2024

Climate change communications & cognition

Climate change in outskirts of Kathmandu Valley: local perception and narratives, Gharti Magar et al., Natural Hazards 10.1007/s11069-024-06473-9

Gaslighting Europe: Russia's energy disinformation in the Czech Republic, Pali?ková & ?ernoch, Energy Research & Social Science 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103497

Greenwashing, net-zero, and the oil sands in Canada: The case of Pathways Alliance, Aronczyk et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103502

Increase in concerns about climate change following climate strikes and civil disobedience in Germany, Brehm & Gruhl, Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-024-46477-4

Proud to limit the damage: Negatively framed eco-ratings motivate green intentions through anticipated pride, Gorissen et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology Open Access 10.1016/j.jenvp.2024.102290

Rectifying misinformation on the climate intervention potential of ocean afforestation, Smetacek et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-024-47134-6

Reply to: Rectifying misinformation on the climate intervention potential of ocean afforestation, Bach et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-024-47135-5

The role of tertiary education on CO2 emissions: evidence from 151 countries, Lee et al., Environment, Development and Sustainability 10.1007/s10668-024-04828-7

Transmitting the Transition in a Moment of Climate Crisis: An Analysis of Intermediaries’ Communication Practices, Wuebben et al., Environmental Communication 10.1080/17524032.2024.2339271

Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change

Assessing Climate Change Impacts on Crop Yields and Exploring Adaptation Strategies in Northeast China, Xu et al., Earth's Future Open Access pdf 10.1029/2023ef004063

Enhancing crop yields and farm income through climate-smart agricultural practices in Eastern India, Tanti et al., Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change Open Access pdf 10.1007/s11027-024-10122-8

Global warming determines future increase in compound dry and hot days within wheat growing seasons worldwide, He et al., Open Access pdf 10.21203/rs.3.rs-3220211/v1

Long-term straw return to a wheat-maize system results in topsoil organic C saturation and increased yields while no stimulating or reducing yield-scaled N2O and NO emissions, Yao et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2024.109937

Socioeconomic determinants of modern climate change adaptation of small-scale vegetable farmers in Bohlabela District, Mpumalanga Province, Maiwashe Tagwi & Khoza, Frontiers in Climate Open Access pdf 10.3389/fclim.2023.1039915

Vulnerability and resilience in the face of climate changes in Senegal's drylands: measurement at the household level and determinant assessment, Yessoufou et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access pdf 10.3389/fclim.2024.1330025

Hydrology, hydrometeorology & climate change

Change in the distribution of heavy 1 h precipitation due to temperature changes in measured values, model reanalyses and model simulations of future climate, Sokol et al., Atmospheric Research Open Access 10.1016/j.atmosres.2024.107395

Climate change impacts on evapotranspiration in Brazil: a multi-model assessment, Monteiro et al., Theoretical and Applied Climatology Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00704-024-04942-6

Cyclone Jasper’s rains in the context of climate change, Emanuel, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access pdf 10.1073/pnas.2400292121

Diverging hydrological sensitivity among tropical basins, He et al., Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-024-01982-8

How extreme hydrological events correspond to climate extremes in the context of global warming: A case study in the Luanhe River Basin of North China, Gao et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.8459

Nature-based solutions potential for flood risk reduction under extreme rainfall events, Manes et al., Ambio 10.1007/s13280-024-02005-8

Projecting drought trends and hot spots across Iran, Khoorani et al., Natural Hazards 10.1007/s11069-024-06574-5

The future is transient: Barriers and opportunities for improved UK water resource climate change assessments using the enhanced Future Flows and Groundwater (eFLaG) climate service products, Durant et al., Climate Resilience and Sustainability Open Access pdf 10.1002/cli2.69

Climate change economics

Exploring the link between CO2 emissions, health expenditure, and economic growth in Türkiye: evidence from the ARDL model, Çobano?ullar?, Environment, Development and Sustainability Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10668-024-04835-8

Reducing the cost of capital through international climate finance to accelerate the renewable energy transition in developing countries, Briera & Lefèvre, Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114104

Social Costs of Methane and Carbon Dioxide in a Tipping Climate, Wiskich, Environmental and Resource Economics Open Access pdf 10.1007/s10640-024-00864-z

Unlocking climate finance for social protection: an analysis of the Green Climate Fund, Aleksandrova et al., Climate Policy Open Access pdf 10.1080/14693062.2024.2338817

Climate change mitigation public policy research

Changing networks of power: A theoretical approach to the study of capitalized power in contemporary energy transitions, Levi & Israel, Energy Research & Social Science 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103495

Climate action from a gender perspective: A systematic review of the impact of climate policies on inequality, Alonso-Epelde et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103511

Climate true-cost analysis of industrial goods and its regulatory implications on value chains and global competition, Schlipf et al., Journal of Industrial Ecology Open Access pdf 10.1111/jiec.13469

Does corruption shape attitudes towards carbon taxes? Experimental evidence from Mexico and Sweden, Davidovic, Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103493

Effectiveness of policies for electric commercial vehicle adoption and emission reduction in the logistics industry, Yang et al., Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114116

Energy systems for Brazil's Amazon: Could renewable energy improve Indigenous livelihoods and save forest ecosystems?, Hampl, Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103491

Energy, material, and resource efficiency for industrial decarbonization: A systematic review of sociotechnical systems, technological innovations, and policy options, Kim et al., Energy Research & Social Science 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103521

Explaining energy transition: A systemic social mechanisms approach illustrated with the examples of Germany and Poland, Weisenfeld & Rollert, Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103512

Financially-constrained solar development: A comparative analysis of urban fabrics and scalar expression in Portugal and Rajasthan, Sareen, Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103503

From Fukushima to fossil fuels: Carbon emissions, climate narratives, and grassroots movements in Japan's energy transition, Thiri & Borsi, Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103520

Global urbanization and ruralization lessons of clean energy access gap, Alola, Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114101

Greenhouse gas neutrality: A qualitative analysis of perceived sustainability tensions in the German chemical industry, Heck et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103525

Identifying and analysing important model assumptions: Combining techno-economic and political feasibility of deep decarbonisation pathways in Norway, Inderberg et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103496

Increasing retrofit device adoption in social housing: Evidence from two field experiments in Belgium, Bielig et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology 10.1016/j.jenvp.2024.102284

Industrial process heat decarbonization: A user-centric perspective, McMillan & Wachs, Energy Research & Social Science 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103505

Labour implications of the net-zero transition and clean energy exports in Australia, McCoy et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103506

Land acquisition, renewable energy development, and livelihood transformation in rural Kenya: The case of the Kipeto wind energy project, NDI, Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103530

Land use and Europe’s renewable energy transition: identifying low-conflict areas for wind and solar development, Kiesecker et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access pdf 10.3389/fenvs.2024.1355508

Network dynamics of solar PV adoption: Reconsidering flat tax-credits and influencer seeding for inclusive renewable energy access in Albany county, New York, Sundaram et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103518

People of the sun: Local resistance and solar energy (in)justice in southern Portugal, Brás et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103529

Perceptions of competing agendas in carbon neutrality policies in Portugal: Adverse impacts on vulnerable population groups, Mahoney et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103509

Research on China’s regional carbon quota allocation based on the entropy weight-TOPSIS method and CRITIC-VIKOR model, Zhang et al., Environment, Development and Sustainability 10.1007/s10668-024-04804-1

Rethinking justice as recognition in energy transitions and planned coal phase-out in Poland, Tarasova, Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103507

Rethinking justice as recognition in energy transitions and planned coal phase-out in Poland, Tarasova, Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103507

Rural energy transition in the context of rural revitalization and carbon neutrality: improved multi-criteria-based decision-making, Li et al., Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 10.1007/s11027-024-10128-2

Significant Reduction of Unequal Population Exposure to Climate Extremes by Achieving the Carbon Neutrality, Oh et al., Open Access pdf 10.22541/essoar.170542258.83457109/v1

Socio-economic constraints to low-carbon transitions: insights from Kazakhstan’s Emissions Trading Scheme, Howie & Akmetov, Climate Policy 10.1080/14693062.2024.2337178

Struggles over solar in the United States: Oppositional coalitions and the limits of territorial resentment, Jacroux & Freshour, Energy Research & Social Science 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103532

Towards just transition: Tackling inequity and structural causes of vulnerability in key environment, health and climate related policies in Finland, Tikkakoski et al., Environmental Science & Policy Open Access 10.1016/j.envsci.2024.103736

Turning a groundswell of climate action into ground rules for net zero, Hale et al., Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-024-01967-7

Understanding the science-policy interface in urban climate governance from a co-production perspective: Insights from the cases of Hamburg and São Paulo, Schmidt et al., Environmental Science & Policy Open Access 10.1016/j.envsci.2024.103750

Untangling the forces behind carbon emissions in China's industrial sector - A pre and post 12th energy climate plan analysis, Yasmeen et al., Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2024.101895

“The ketchup effect”: Challenges in reconciling growth and justice in Northern Sweden's green transition, Garbis et al., Energy Research & Social Science 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103537

Climate change adaptation & adaptation public policy research

Climate change resilience strategies for safeguarding sustainable tourism in Zimbabwe, Chiwaridzo & Dzingirai, Environment, Development and Sustainability 10.1007/s10668-024-04885-y

Evaluating policy coherence and integration for adaptation: the case of EU policies and Arctic cross-border climate change impacts, Kivimaa et al., Climate Policy Open Access pdf 10.1080/14693062.2024.2337168

Harnessing climate services to support community resilience planning: lessons learned from a community-engaged approach to assessing NOAA’s National Water Model, Raub et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access pdf 10.3389/fclim.2024.1291165

Integrating science and the arts to deglobalise climate change adaptation, Olazabal et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-024-47400-7

Meta-analysis indicates better climate adaptation and mitigation performance of hybrid engineering-natural coastal defence measures, Huynh et al., Nature Communications Open Access pdf 10.1038/s41467-024-46970-w

Plan integration for urban extreme heat: Evaluating the impacts of plans at multiple scales in Tokyo, Japan, Yu et al., Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2024.101888

Quantifying climate risks to infrastructure systems: A comparative review of developments across infrastructure sectors, Verschuur et al., PLOS Climate Open Access pdf 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000331

Towards enhanced climate change adaptation: using traditional ecological knowledge to understand the environmental effects of urban growth in Abuja, Nigeria, Inkani et al., Environment, Development and Sustainability 10.1007/s10668-024-04819-8

Climate change impacts on human health

Climate change dominates the increasing exposure of global population to compound heatwave and humidity extremes in the future, Wei et al., Climate Dynamics Open Access pdf 10.1007/s00382-024-07199-x

Climate change exacerbates the compounding of heat stress and flooding in the mid-latitudes, Treppiedi et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.8453

How do energy efficiency measures affect the risk of summertime overheating and cold discomfort? Evidence from English homes, Lomas et al., Energy Policy Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114108

Climate change impacts on human culture

Capacity of the U.S. federal system for cultural heritage to meet challenges of climate change, Rockman, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 10.1073/pnas.2317158121

Not a dream wedding: the hidden nexus between gender discrimination, climate change and child marriage, Pastén et al., Environment, Development and Sustainability 10.1007/s10668-024-04813-0

Other

Persistent warming and anomalous biogeochemical signatures observed in the Northern Tropical Pacific Ocean during 2013–2020, Tian & Zhang, Climate Dynamics 10.1007/s00382-024-07184-4

Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives

Chronicling the climate of 2023, , Nature Reviews Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43017-024-00553-x

Climate change and biodiversity loss: new territories for financial authorities, Chenet, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability Open Access 10.1016/j.cosust.2024.101449

Articles/Reports from Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations Addressing Aspects of Climate Change

A Decade of Growth in Solar and Wind Power: Trends Across the U.S, Climate Central

America’s capacity to generate carbon-free electricity grew during 2023 — part of a decade-long growth trend for renewable energy. Solar and wind account for more of our nation’s energy mix than ever before. The authors analyzed historical data on solar and wind energy over 10 years, from 2014 to 2023. Their analysis shows that the amount of electricity produced from solar and wind power increased across the U.S. The U.S. generated 238,121 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity from solar in 2023 — more than eight times the amount generated a decade earlier in 2014. Wind power has more than doubled this decade, with 425,325 GWh coming from wind installations across the country in 2023. Together, these two renewable energy sources generated enough electricity in 2023 to power the equivalent of more than 61 million average American homes. The most solar power generation came from California (68,816 GWh) and Texas (31,739 GWh) in 2023. Texas also led the country in power generated from wind (119,836 GWh).

Renewables 2024 Global Status Report, Couzin et al., REN21

In 2023, global additions to renewable power capacity increased by an estimated 36% to reach 473 GW, a new record for the 22nd consecutive year. At the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai, 130 countries pledged to triple renewable energy capacity and double the annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030. As countries reshaped trade and industrial policies in 2023, the United States launched more than 250 clean energy manufacturing projects following the adoption of the Inflation Reduction Act, and the European Union proposed the Net-Zero Industry Act and launched the first phase of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. Employment in the renewables sector increased by 8% in 2022 to reach 13.7 million jobs. The number of people lacking electricity access globally fell from 756 million in 2022 to 745 million in 2023.

Corporate Climate Risk: Measurements and Responses, Li et al., Multiple

The authors conduct a textual analysis of earnings call transcripts to quantify climate risk exposure at the firm level. We construct dictionaries that measure physical and transition climate risks separately and identify firms that proactively respond to climate risks. The validation analysis shows that the measures capture firm-level variations in respective climate risk exposure. Firms facing high transition risk, especially those that do not proactively respond, have been valued at a discount in recent years as aggregate investor attention to climate-related issues has been increasing. The authors document differences in how firms respond through investment, green innovation, and employment when facing high climate risk exposure.

Community-Driven Relocation. Recommendations for the U.S. Gulf Coast Region and Beyond, Barnes et al., National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

As disaster recovery costs escalate, state and local governments cannot keep up, while federal recovery programs fall short of state requests for assistance. As households struggle to recover from one storm before the next one hits, families experience chronic stress with few opportunities for respite. Stress exacerbates other preexisting health conditions even as exposure to flooding and extreme heat aggravate those same conditions. These circumstances present an untenable long-term cycle of cumulative, compounding, and cascading risks, markedly increasing vulnerability. Addressing these growing challenges requires new ways of planning in anticipation of disasters and their growing potential for displacement. While disaster displacement is not a new phenomenon, the rapid escalation of climate-related disasters in the Gulf increases the urgency to develop pre-disaster policies to mitigate displacement and decrease suffering.

More Chilling Than Ever. Tackling Europe’s ongoing illegal trade in HFC climate super pollutants, Environemntal Investigation Agency

Significant levels of trafficking persist for hydrofluorocarbon (HFC), despite the worsening climate emergency. Commonly used in refrigeration and air-conditioning, HFCs are being phased out under the European Union (EU) F-gas Regulation. Driven by high profits and weak law enforcement, organized criminals are closely associated with this illicit trade. Traders are routing illegal HFC, sourced primarily in Türkiye and China, from Europe’s edge – Bulgaria – across the continent to the likes of Greece, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Traders are becoming more sophisticated and adapting their tactics to elude detection, for example by avoiding banned disposable cylinders and disguising HFCs as less regulated hydrofluoroolefin (HFO) refrigerant alternatives.

The Carbon Majors Database, InfluenceMap

The Carbon Majors database traces 1,421 GtCO2e of cumulative historical emissions from 1854 through 2022 to 122 industrial producers, the CO2 portion of which is equivalent to 72% of global fossil fuel and cement CO2 emissions since 1751. Over 70% of these global CO2 emissions historically can be attributed to just 78 corporate and state producing entities. Carbon Majors is a database of historic production data from 122 of the world’s largest oil, gas, coal, and cement producers. These data are used to quantify the direct production-linked operational emissions and emissions from the combustion of marketed products that can be attributed to these entities. The research shows that there are no leading regions when it comes to emissions reductions. Asia and the Middle East stand out as the regions associated with the highest emissions increases, alongside companies from Africa, Europe, and South America. North America is the only region to buck this trend, with a slim majority of companies linked to decreasing emissions.

Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind and Electric Vehicles, Eisenson et. al., Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia University

Getting the U.S. energy system onto an environmentally sustainable track will require rapid and widespread development of wind, solar, and other renewable energy facilities; corresponding storage, transmission, and distribution infrastructure; and timely industry-specific transitions, such as battery electric vehicles replacing their combustion-engine counterparts. Broad public support exists for transformative climate policies, with a June 2023 Pew Research Center survey finding that 67% of U.S. adults prioritize developing renewable energy sources over increased fossil fuel production. However, “misinformation” and coordinated “disinformation” have at times undermined support for renewable energy projects and electric vehicles. The authors address some of the more prevalent and persistent distortions about solar energy, wind energy, and electric vehicles, with the aim of promoting a more informed discussion.

Puerto Rico Grid Resilience and Transitions to 100% Renewable Energy Study (PR100), Baggu et al., National Renewable Energy Laboratory

The authors present a comprehensive analysis based on extensive stakeholder input of possible pathways for Puerto Rico to achieve its goal of 100% renewable energy by 2050. The authors defined and modeled multiple pathways for decision makers to consider for Puerto Rico to achieve its energy goals, driven by community priorities and perspectives.

2035 and Beyond. Reconductoring With Advanced Conductors Can Accelerate the Rapid Transmission Expansion Required for a Clean Grid, Chojkiewicz et al., Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley and GridLab

The authors combines the latest energy cost data with state-of-the-art grid modeling to quantify three key elements: the cost of reconductoring with advanced conductors; the associated gains in transmission capacity; and the associated contribution to meeting transmission needs by 2035. Obtaining articles without journal subscriptions

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The once-stable climate that people have lived in for millennia is now rapidly shifting.

Extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods, are forcing many people to flee their homes.

Meanwhile, in the face of slow-onset changes, such as sea level rise and droughts, others are making the difficult decision to leave in search of a better life.

Climate change can interact with other factors, such as conflict, economic opportunity and politics, to drive migration. If managed well, migration can be a valuable adaptation strategy to reduce peoples’ vulnerability to a warming climate and increase resilience to further changes.

Most migration happens within borders. However, the media focus is frequently on cross-border migration, often framing migrants as a threat to national security – despite the large body of research showing that, in the round, migration actually benefit societies.

Read more: Inside HABITABLE: Investigating climate-driven migration in rural Thailand

In this in-depth Q&A, Carbon Brief explores how climate change is already leading to displacement and migration, what future changes in human movement might look like, and the measures that are being taken to protect displaced people.

Carbon Brief has spoken to experts in climate change and migration, including scientists, lawyers, NGO leaders and communications experts. This article also pulls together case studies from around the world, offering a range of examples of climate-driven migration and displacement.

The post In-depth Q&A: How does climate change drive human migration? appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Climate change is already impacting human migration and displacement.

Extreme weather events displace tens of millions of people every year, while multi-year droughts and rising sea levels are making many densely populated regions increasingly hostile to human habitation.

However, the link between climate change and migration is complex.

A person’s decision to leave home depends on a range of factors, including their socioeconomic situation, their family connections and the politics of their home country.

To better understand these interlocking factors, an EU-funded research project known as HABITABLE is carrying out tens of thousands of interviews with rural communities in Sudan, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali and Thailand.

The four-year project, which ends later this year, aims to “significantly advance our understanding of the current interlinkages between climate change impacts, migration and displacement patterns, and to better anticipate their future evolution”.

The post Inside HABITABLE: Investigating climate-driven migration in rural Thailand appeared first on Carbon Brief.

China accounted for 95% of the world’s new coal power construction activity in 2023, according to the latest annual report from Global Energy Monitor (GEM).

Construction began on 70 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity in China, up four-fold since 2019, says GEM’s annual report on the global coal power industry.

This compares with less than 4GW of new coal power construction starting in the rest of the world – the lowest since 2014.

Outside China, only 32 countries have new coal projects at pre-construction phases of development and just seven have plants under construction.

While global coal power capacity – both overall and outside China – grew in 2023, GEM says this is likely to be a “blip” that will be offset by accelerating coal retirements in the next few years in the US and Europe.

Other key findings of the report include that construction of coal-fired power plants globally – excluding China – declined for the second year in a row. However, coal power plant retirements were also at the lowest level since 2011. 

‘Pivotal juncture’ for China

In China, 47.4GW of coal power capacity came online in 2023, GEM says. This increase accounted for two-thirds of the global rise in operating coal power capacity, which climbed 2% to 2,130GW.

China’s 70.2GW of new construction getting underway in 2023 represents 19-times more than the rest of the world’s 3.7GW. As the figure below highlights, the country’s trajectory (red line) is diverging significantly from the rest of the world (orange line). 

The level of new construction starting in China is nearly quadruple what it was in 2019, when the country hit a nine-year annual low of entirely new coal power stations starting. 

New coal capacity starting construction shown in GW for China (red line) and the rest of the world (orange line). Credit: GEM.

This is the fourth year in a row that the amount of new coal construction starting has increased in China. This is out of line with President Xi Jinping’s 2021 pledge to “strictly control” new coal power capacity, GEM states. 

In early 2022, China’s National Energy Administration’s 14th five‐year plan for a “modern energy system” stated that 30GW of coal power would be retired by 2025.

However, when counting larger coal units with capacity of at least 30 megawatts, less than 9GW of power plants have been shut down in the last three years, and few others have plans to retire, GEM notes. 

If China is to meet this 30GW retirement target, it “needs to take immediate action”, GEM adds.

In a statement, Qi Qin, China analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, said:

“The recent surge in coal power development in China starkly contrasts with the global trend, putting China’s 2025 climate targets at risk. At this pivotal juncture, it is crucial for China to impose stricter controls on coal power projects and expedite the transition towards renewable energy to realign with its climate commitments.”

Collectively, China, India, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Laos, Turkey, Russia, Pakistan and Vietnam account for 95% of global pre-construction capacity, according to the GEM report.

The 5% remaining is distributed among 21 countries, the tracker finds. Of these, 11 have one project and are on the brink of achieving the “no new coal” milestone, it adds. 

The tracker identifies 20.9GW of entirely new coal power proposals outside of China in 2023. This was led by India, which saw 11.4GW of new coal capacity proposed, more than any year since 2016. This was in part due to the revival of several stalled projects in the country, GEM explains. 

Kazakhstan also saw 4.6GW of new proposals and Indonesia saw 2.5GW. Some 4.1GW of previously shelved or cancelled capacity is now considered “proposed” again.

Another handful of countries – Russia, the Philippines, Botswana and Nigeria – also saw revived proposals and construction restarting in 2023. 

Retirements slow 

Globally, a total of 69.5GW of coal power came online in 2023, while 21.1GW was retired, GEM finds. This led to the highest net increase in global operating coal capacity since 2016, with a 48.4GW jump. 

New capacity also came online in Indonesia (5.9GW), India (5.5GW), Vietnam (2.6GW), Japan (2.5GW), Bangladesh (1.9GW), Pakistan (1.7GW), South Korea (1GW), Greece (0.7GW) and Zimbabwe (0.3GW). 

In total during 2023, the tracker found 22.1GW came online and 17.4GW was retired outside of China. This resulted in a 4.7GW net increase in the world’s coal fleet operating outside China. Globally, coal power capacity reached 2,130GW in 2023, up from 2% a year earlier. 

The US contributed nearly half of coal power retirements, GEM says, with 9.7GW shuttering in 2023. However, this is a drop in retirements from 14.7GW in 2022, and a peak of 21.7GW in 2015. 

Elsewhere, the EU and UK represented nearly a quarter of retirements, with 3.1GW closing in the UK, 0.6GW in Italy and 0.5GW in Poland. There is now just one operating coal-fired power plant in the UK, with the Ratcliffe-on-Soar set to close in September 2024. 

Overall, global coal power plant retirements were at their lowest level since 2011, as the figure below shows.

Coal-fired power station capacity annual retirements in GW, shown globally, in the US, the EU27 and UK, China and other. Black bars indicate 2023 data. Credit: GEM.

Outside of China, the number of coal-fired power plants starting construction declined for the second consecutive year, hitting its lowest level since data collection began in 2015, GEM notes. 

Less than 4GW of new projects began construction outside of China in 2023, far below the average of 16GW between 2015 and 2022. Just seven countries started construction, with one plant each in India, Laos, Nigeria, Pakistan and Russia, as well as three plants in Indonesia.

Construction has not started on any coal plants in Latin America since 2016, and none has started in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), European or Middle Eastern countries since 2019, GEM says. 

Nigeria’s Ugboba power station, located at the mine-mouth of the Idowu Falola Coal Mines in the Aniocha North local government area of Delta state, is the first known construction of a coal power plant in Africa since 2019, the report says. 

The G7 – which accounts for 15% (310GW) of the world’s operating coal capacity, down from 32% (443GW) in 2015 – has no new coal capacity under construction. However, there is still one proposed coal power plant in Japan and two in the US. 

Both of the proposed sites in the US, the 0.4GW CONSOL Project in Pennsylvania and the newly announced 0.4GW Susitna power station in Alaska, are expected to use carbon capture and storage technologies (CCS). 

GEM says that these technologies are “effectively uncertain and expensive distractions from the urgent need to phase out coal”.

The G20 is home to 92% of the world’s operating coal capacity (1,968GW) and 88% of pre-construction coal capacity (336GW). Brazil, the current G20 chair, saw its pipeline of pre-construction capacity fall in 2023, but still has two prospective projects remaining – the last pre-construction coal power plants in Latin America. 

No new coal nations

Overall, coal capacity reached an all time high in 2023, GEM’s tracker says. 

Operating coal capacity outside China grew for the first time since 2019, as less coal capacity retired than in any other single year in more than a decade, as the figure below shows.

Annual operating coal capacity globally in GW, showing coal added (brown/orange bars) and retired (green bars). The lines indicate net change (black) and the net change excluding China (grey). Credit: GEM.

The world’s operating coal power capacity is up 11% since 2015, when governments agreed to keep the global average temperature to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and aim to limit warming to 1.5C under the Paris Agreement. 

Outside of China, there are still 113GW of coal power projects under construction. While this is only slightly up from the previous year’s level of 110GW, it still highlights that the coal sector is not in line with the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) 1.5C scenario, GEM says. 

Across all IEA scenarios that meet international climate goals there is a rapid decline in global coal emissions. 

Globally, pre-construction capacity rose 6% in 2023, “crystallising the importance of calls to stop proposing and breaking ground on new coal plants”, GEM’s report says.

Only 15% (317GW) of currently operating coal power capacity has a commitment to retire in line with Paris Agreement goals, it adds. 

Phasing out unabated coal generation by 2040 – in line with the IEA’s 1.5C pathway – would require an average of 126GW of retirements every year for the next 17 years, GEM notes. This is the equivalent of two coal power plants per week. 

Even steeper cuts would be needed to account for the 578GW of coal power plants also under construction and in pre-construction phases of development, GEM says.

There were 12 new countries that committed to developing no new coal generation in 2023, by joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance. This brings the total number of countries up to 101 that have either formally declared they will have no new coal or have abandoned any coal plans they have had over the last decade, GEM notes. 

Since 2015, there has been a 68% reduction in global pre-construction capacity, GEM found. New construction starts are now at their lowest level outside of China, since data collection began. 

GEM’s report suggests that coal power projects that utilise CCS and those used to power industrial activities may be “a last frontier” for new coal proposals. 

For example, Zimbabwe’s 1.9GW of new coal capacity proposed in 2023 is made up of two projects, the Prestige power station and the Gweru power station, designed to power smelters for extracting chromium from ore.

Zimbabwe is one of one six countries, beyond China and India, to have increased its total planned capacity over the past year, along with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Zimbabwe, the US and the Philippines.

At COP28, 130 countries signalled their intent to phase out unabated coal power and stop investing in new unabated coal-fired power plants within this decade, by signing the Global Renewables and Energy Efficiency Pledge. 

In addition, the final global stocktake agreement at COP28 reiterated the pledge from COP26 to phase down unabated coal power, but still does not define what “unabated” means. Additionally, wording from earlier drafts on ending permitting of new coal power was omitted in the final text.

“Coal power is at the edge of a precipice, facing political and civil opposition and increasingly uncompetitive economics,” GEM’s report states.

In a statement, Flora Champenois, coal programme director for GEM said:

“Coal’s fortunes this year are an anomaly, as all signs point to reversing course from this accelerated expansion. But countries that have coal plants to retire need to do so more quickly, and countries that have plans for new coal plants must make sure these are never built. Otherwise we can forget about meeting our goals in the Paris Agreement and reaping the benefits that a swift transition to clean energy will bring.”

Analysis: UK emissions in 2023 fell to lowest level since 1879

Coal

|

11.03.24

Q&A: Why defining the ‘phaseout’ of ‘unabated’ fossil fuels is so important at COP28

Coal

|

05.12.23

Guest post: How quickly does the world need to ‘phase down’ all fossil fuels?

Coal

|

16.02.23

Fossil fuels: Is the world on track for moving past coal, oil and gas production?

Coal

|

04.10.22

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The post China responsible for 95% of new coal power construction in 2023, report says appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s Cropped. 
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

Key developments Latin America news roundup

TREE FELLING FALLS: Political shifts in Brazil and Colombia have “had a significant impact on tree felling”, with large reductions in deforestation occurring in both countries over 2023, according to analysis from the University of Maryland and the World Resources Institute that was covered by BBC News. Tree loss in the Brazilian Amazon decreased by 39%, although in the Cerrado – an important savannah in Brazil – it increased by 6%. In Colombia, primary forest loss decreased by nearly 50%, compared to last year. But, the outlet added, “increased tree felling and fires in Bolivia, Laos and Nicaragua wiped out many of these gains”. 

WHERE THERE’S SMOKE: According to satellite data released last week, Venezuela “is battling a record number of wildfires”, fuelled in part by intense drought in the region, Reuters reported. More than 30,000 “fire points” were recorded in the country during the first three months of the year. The newswire wrote: “Man-made fires that are often set to clear land for agriculture are spreading out of control thanks to high temperatures and low rainfall in northern South America, as well as a lack of prevention planning, researchers say.” A University of Oxford fire researcher said that the fires “could be a worrying sign for what’s ahead” when Brazil enters its dry season.

COMMISSION CHANGE: The scientific community must “speak out strongly” against proposed changes to Mexico’s National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO), two academics wrote in an editorial in the journal Science. They explained that the government intends to “reduce CONABIO from a multi-ministry federal government agency to a branch within the environment ministry” and argued that this change would “strip CONABIO of its independent voice, credibility and influence on national and international policy”. The government is expected to make a final decision by the end of this month.

DENGUE ‘SURGE’: The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) warned of a “surge in dengue cases in the Americas”, with more than 3.5m cases recorded to date – “three times more cases than those reported for the same period in 2023”, which was itself a record year, PAHO director Jarbas Barbosa said. According to PAHO: “Several environmental and social factors contribute to the spread of dengue, including rising temperatures, extreme weather events and the El Niño phenomenon.” Urbanisation and population growth also play a role, the organisation added.

Africa drought ‘disaster’

NATIONAL EMERGENCIES: More than 24 million people in southern Africa face hunger, malnutrition and water scarcity due to the combined impact of drought and floods, according to a warning from the charity Oxfam, CNN reported. It comes after Zimbabwe joined Zambia and Malawi in declaring a state of disaster over the drought, according to Sky News. Zimbabwe president Emmerson Mnangagwa made the emergency declaration in a speech on 3 April, where he called for $2bn (£1.6bn) in humanitarian aid, the broadcaster said. The Associated Press (AP) spoke to a mother affected by the drought in Zimbabwe.

CLIMATE ROLE: The “erratic” weather in southern Africa, which has lurched between drought and floods in recent months, is likely “spurred” by human-caused climate change, which is making extreme events more unpredictable, the AP said. It added that conditions have been worsened by El Niño, the naturally occurring climate phenomenon that periodically affects much of the globe. In southern Africa, El Niño “means below-average rainfall” and “sometimes drought”, the newswire reported.

EXTREME CONTINENT: Many other parts of the continent continued to face severe – and, in many cases, record-breaking – extreme weather. Much of northern Africa continued to face extreme heat, with the Moroccan city of Oujda recording a  “minimum temperature” for April that was 7C higher than the previous record, according to a Twitter account tracking extreme temperatures. That temperature was close to the all-time record, logged in the month of July. (“Minimum temperature” refers to the coolest temperature in a 24-hour period, with high minimum temperatures indicating dangerously hot nights.) West Africa also continued to face record heat. Carbon Brief reported on how Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, was coping with the extreme temperatures.

Spotlight The ‘grave threat’ of ghost roads

In this spotlight, Carbon Brief reports on a new study detailing the impact of “ghost roads” on deforestation rates in the Asia Pacific region.

“Ghost roads” – illegal or informal roads that do not appear on any map – are fast expanding in biodiversity-rich tropical nations.

Carved out by farmers, miners, loggers, land grabbers and drug traffickers, these illicit roads give more direct access to pristine tropical forests – and help extractors carry out their activities while evading detection by authorities or NGOs.

The absence of ghost roads from official records or international datasets makes understanding the scale of their impact on tropical forests extremely difficult. 

A new study published in Nature this week aimed to reverse this.

“I think we all knew that ghost roads were a serious problem, but they hadn’t been studied in a concerted way,” study author Prof Bill Laurance, a conservation biologist at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, told Carbon Brief.

Volunteer army

The research team focused on three tropical islands in the Asia Pacific: Borneo, Sumatra and New Guinea. 

To try to understand the extent of ghost roads on the islands, the researchers deployed an army of more than 200 trained volunteers.

Using satellite imagery, these volunteers studied over 1.42m plots, each one square kilometre in area, noting down the existence of roads that were missing from leading global datasets.

Study lead author Jayden Engert, a conservation ecologist and PhD student at James Cook University, told Carbon Brief that a broad range of people volunteered to help out with the mapping effort:

“We found volunteers through many different avenues, chiefly by advertising within our university and at other universities. We also ran a volunteer Map-athon with the Facebook group ‘Wild Green Memes for Ecological Fiends’, which brought in a decent amount of volunteers and also helped to raise awareness of the issue.”

Ghosts detected

The mapping effort revealed 1.37m km of ghost roads – 3-6.6 times more roads than were present in leading road datasets.

“I was blown away by how many unmapped roads there were,” Engert told Carbon Brief.

To understand how the ghost roads could be affecting deforestation rates, the scientists developed a map of their study area and quantified the percentage of forest loss in each plot.

They then used modelling to determine how the forest loss correlated with 38 biological and socioeconomic factors related to tree cover, including population density, distance to the nearest city and protected-land status – as well as ghost-road density and distance from ghost roads.

The research found that ghost-road density had by far the strongest link with forest loss out of all of the 38 factors studied. 

Furthermore, ghost-road building “almost always preceded local forest loss”, the researchers wrote in their study.

They also found that the relationship between road density and forest was nonlinear, “with deforestation peaking soon after roads penetrate a landscape and then declining as roads multiply and remaining accessible forests largely disappear”.

They concluded by saying:

“Collectively, our findings suggest that burgeoning, poorly studied ghost roads are among the gravest of all direct threats to tropical forests.”

Laurance told Carbon Brief that their findings are likely to apply to other parts of the tropics:

“There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that other developing tropical nations are facing similar challenges with ghost roads. We also have been working in the Amazon and central Africa for the past several decades, and there we see many similar and equally daunting realities on the ground.”

News and views

FARM FLU: The US Department of Agriculture has confirmed cases of the “highly pathogenic” avian influenza in dairy cows in Idaho, bringing the number of confirmed outbreaks to 12 herds across five states, with other tests ongoing in presumptive positive cases. The country’s largest fresh egg producer also reported an outbreak, leading to “rising concern” despite assurances that the “risk to the public remains low”, the Associated Press reported. The detection of the virus in cattle raises “critical questions about whether the country is equipped to handle an influenza outbreak after the coronavirus pandemic…exposed the weaknesses in the nation’s public health infrastructure and decimated the public’s trust in key federal agencies”, the Washington Post reported.

INDIGENOUS INDONESIANS: Indonesian president-elect Prabowo Subianto must prioritise ratifying the country’s Indigenous Peoples bill, two Indigenous-rights activists argued in China Dialogue. The bill was first proposed in 2009, but president Joko Widodo failed to ratify it despite “repeated promises to do so”, the writers noted, adding: “Prabowo’s new government appears set to continue expanding Indonesia’s domestic resource-processing capabilities…signal[ling] the continued, unjust plunder of Indigenous territory.” Indonesia is home to around 22 million Indigenous people and more than 2,500 Indigenous communities. They face “deforestation, agricultural crises, marginalisation and discrimination and the usurpation of customary rights”, as well as voter disenfranchisement, the activists said.

NEW BIODIVERSITY CHIEF: BusinessGreen reported that German diplomat and environmental-policy expert Astrid Schomaker has been appointed the next executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the UN body that oversees negotiations on biodiversity loss. According to the publication, Schomaker has spent the last seven years overseeing environmental diplomacy and global sustainable development at the European Commission. She replaces the acting executive secretary, British CBD veteran Dr David Cooper. Carbon Brief published an in-depth interview with the last permanent executive secretary, Tanzanian lawyer and diplomat Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, in 2022.

WHALE OF A TIME: Māori king Tuheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero VII and other Indigenous leaders in the Pacific have “urged the legal recognition of whales as persons with inherent rights”, according to the Pacific Islands News Association. The leaders are endorsing the He Whakaputanga Moana, or the Declaration for the Ocean, which “outlines a comprehensive plan” for protecting whales from “unsustainable practices, pollution and climate change”, the outlet explained. It will do so through establishing protected areas and integrating Indigenous knowledge with other science. Travel Tou Ariki, a high chief from the Cook Islands, said: “Whales play a vital role in the health of our entire ocean ecosystem…We must act with urgency to protect these magnificent creatures before it’s too late.”

BIG MEAT COP: Lobbyists from the world’s largest meat companies have celebrated a “positive outcome” from the last global climate summit, COP28, according to a DeSmog investigation. Speaking on a virtual panel organised by the trade outlet FeedStuffs, three representatives for US livestock firms said they were left “excited” and “enthusiastic” for their industry’s prospects after the summit, which saw countries commit to a series of voluntary pledges for tackling agricultural emissions without addressing meat consumption. Constance Cullman, the president of the US lobby group the Animal Feed Industry Association (AFIA) said COP28 left her organisation with “a far more positive outcome than we had anticipated”, according to DeSmog.

STANDING TOGETHER: Advocacy groups in Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guatemala, Kenya, Liberia and Mexico have launched a new initiative to protect environmental defenders, Liberia’s Daily Observer reported. The initiative will provide “partnerships, financial support and training” for civil-society organisations to protect them against the risks that environmental defenders face, such as threats, violence and smear campaigns, the newspaper said. Three environmental defenders were recently killed during protests in Kinjor, Liberia.

Watch, read, listen

WASTED WETLANDS: An investigation by Ireland’s Noteworthy found that the planting of non-native trees on peatlands could put some of the country’s “cleanest” rivers and streams at risk.

SALINE INHABITANTS: Hakai Magazine wrote about how Utah’s shrinking Great Salt Lake is imperilling the strange creatures found in its waters.

TREE SMUGGLING: A four-part investigation by the Africa Report, in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network, examined timber trafficking from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH: A feature in High Country News explored how drones can be used in service of conservation of predators in the Rocky Mountains.

New science

Threat of mining to African great apes
Science Advances

Up to one-third of Africa’s great apes face risks from mining projects, new research found. The study looked at the overlap between industrial mining projects and great ape distribution in 15 African countries, excluding the Democratic Republic of the Congo due to a lack of available data. The research found that industrial mining projects overlap with the habitat of nearly 180,000 apes. It also found that the overlap was largest in west African nations, including Senegal and Sierra Leone. In the paper, the authors noted that the “rapid growth of clean energy technologies is driving a rising demand for critical minerals”, which are increasingly being mined in Africa.

The asymmetric impacts of international agricultural trade on water use scarcity, inequality and inequity
Nature Water

A new study found that the water “embedded” in agricultural trading “disproportionately benefits the rich and widens both the water scarcity and inequity gap between the poor and the rich”. Researchers used a global model of crop water requirements to simulate the amount of water used for irrigation for 26 different crops, then analysed how international trade affects water scarcity and inequity in eight countries. They found that the poorest people in developing countries “suffer[ed] from both increased water scarcity and inequity”, but poor populations in developed countries were more likely to benefit. They also identified the trade of staple crops as “the major driving factor” affecting these in most countries, due to the large volumes of staple crops traded. 

Significant shifts in latitudinal optima of North American birds
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

The optimal location for North American birds has shifted northward by an average rate of 1.5km each year in response to climate change, a new study found, representing a total distance moved of 82.5km over the past 55 years. The research uses modelling to estimate the “latitudinal optima” of 209 American bird species, drawing on bird population abundance data over the past half-century. It found that one-third of the species studied showed a “significant shift of their optimum” over the study period, with birds in western North America experiencing the biggest shifts. The results “directly implicate climate-induced increases in temperature as the primary driver” of bird abundance shifts, the researchers said.

In the diary

• 10-12 April: 2024 Ocean Decade conference | Barcelona
• 16-19 April: Scoping meeting for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on cities | Riga
• 19 April: Start of India’s general election
• 23-29 April: Fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment | Ottawa

Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org

Cropped 27 March 2024: Bankrolling meat and dairy; EU nature restoration pushback; Missing cherry blossoms

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27.03.24

Cropped 13 March 2024: Drought hits food supplies; ‘Mass bleaching’ of coral reefs; Industrialising African ag

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13.03.24

Cropped 28 February 2024: Chocolate crisis; Tree-planting scrutinised; EU restoration law

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28.02.24

Cropped 14 February 2024: Nature fund gets real; Migratory species in peril; EU rolls back regulations

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14.02.24

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The post Cropped 10 April 2024: ‘Ghost roads’ deforestation; Record wildfires; Southern Africa drought appeared first on Carbon Brief.

This year's General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) will take place as a fully hybrid conference in both Vienna and online from April 15 to 19. I decided to join the event virtually this year for the full week and I've already picked several sessions I plan to attend. Among them are two sessions, I'll be presenting in. This blog post provides an overview of my itinerary.

Monday

The week kicks off right away at 8:30 in the morning with a Union Symposia (US2) about the Climate emergency, human agency: making sense of the current state of scientific knowledge on climate change to strengthen climate literacy.

This Union Symposium will build on key findings from the Sixth Assessment Cycle of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It will place the current scientific understanding in this context of climate science history and lay out what is the current state of climate, with the observed intensification of global and regional changes, and what are physically plausible futures, unpacking how science underpins the understanding of the climate emergency. The presentations will be given by Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, IPSL, France and Joeri Rogelj, Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College, London, Great Britain.

Then it's time for a short course (SC2.2) starting at 10:45 providing an introduction to science for policy. This will be a repeat for me, but I found this session - convended by Chloe Hill - interesting when I attended it in previous years.

This session will provide an introduction into some key ‘science for policy’ themes and provide specific details about when and how scientists can engage with policy to increase the impact of their efforts. It will also provide resources and tips for scientists so that they can start their science for policy journeys. The last part of the Short Course will include a Q&A with those working on the science-policy interface. This session will be relevant to all career levels and scientific disciplines.

In the afternoon, I plan to join short course (SC3.3) Scared of giving presentations to a (geo-)scientific audiences? as this cannot hurt in the run-up to my own presentations on Tuesday and Wednesday.

This short course deals with the various reasons and symptoms of stage fright and how they can be overcome. Scientists will share their experiences and what has helped them to deal with their fear of presenting. There will be practical tips and room for questions as well as exchange of experiences. This year, we're exploring a fresh angle: science communication. While the stage is set for scientific discourse, effective communication is key. Meet our speakers, Dr. Simon Clark and Dr. Heather Handley, seasoned communicators, sharing insights!

To finish day 1 of EGU24, I picked yet another short course (SC2.6) Climate change, morals and how people understand the politics of climate change

Update April 11: Unfortunately, session SC2.6 was withdrawn, but there is an interesting alternative, I plan to join instead and it's also a short course: SC2.5 Ethics for geoscientists in a time of crisis:

What does 'ethics' mean and what is the role of ethics in your daily practices as a scientist? Where and how do ethics enter into your geoscientific research and teaching? Although ethics as a subject of study is traditionally the domain of social sciences and humanities, as scientists we are confronted with ethical questions and decisions every day. In the context of climate emergency, mass extinction and global social injustices, it is increasingly important to understand the role played by our research and the systems and structures within which our work is embedded. Ultimately, we could ask ourselves a question: does our research contribute to building a world that corresponds to our values?

In between these sessions - or if I find out that one I planned to attend isn't quite a good fit for my interests - I may pay a virtual visit to Gather.town to check out some virtual posters or find some people to chat with.

Tuesday

The morning is mostly taken up by a "double slot" Education and Outreach session (EOS4.4) titled Geoethics: The significance of geosciences for society and the e nvironment. This session is convened by Silvia Peppoloni with Svitlana Krakovska, Giuseppe Di Capua and David Crookall as co-conveners.

Geoscience knowledge and practices are essential for effectively navigating the complexities of the modern world. They play a critical role in addressing urgent global challenges on a planetary scale (including, climate change and its social, humanitarian, and health impacts), informing decision-making processes and guiding education at all levels. However, the response to these challenges remains largely inadequate across the board. By equipping both citizens and the wider societal stakeholders with the necessary knowledge background, geosciences empower them to engage in meaningful discussions, shape policies, contribute to reduce inequities and injustice, and implement solutions for local, regional, and global social-environmental problems. Within this broad scope, geoethics strives to establish a shared ethical framework that guides geoscientists’ engagement with sensitive and significant issues concerning the interaction between geoscience and society.

I may pop-out of that session for a bit to listen to a press conference starting at 10:00 about Unveiling Antarctica’s secrets: new research brings us one step closer to predicting the future of the icy continent.

At 14:00 it's time for Education and Outreach session (EOS1.8) Telling climate stories: platforms, tools, and methodologies for accurate and engaging science communication.

Scientists, communicators, citizens, and the media: public awareness of climate change calls for interdisciplinary collaboration to create clear and cohesive narratives to reach a wide and diverse audience and create a real impact. Climate change narratives can take different paths and focus on different perspectives, professions, sectors, and the audience addressed. The role of trust is also pivotal, as different publics are likely to reject information, regardless of its accuracy, if the message doesn’t resonate with an individuals' personal experiences. [...] This session is also designed to host a space of dialogue among researchers, fact-checkers, and communications experts to assess how disinformation affects science credibility and society and present tools to tackle it, enhancing the quality of information with a positive effect on public trust in science and resilience.

My slot to present Resources to give facts a fighting chance against misinformation is from 16:50 to 17:00 with 8 minutes alloted for the presentation itself. I'll briefly introduce participants to Skeptical Science, mention our rebuttals updates factory and quick debunking of "Climate the Movie" before mentioning the Debunking Handbook, the Conspiracy Theory handbook, the FLICC taxonomy of science denial techniques and how to learn about them with the help of the Cranky Uncle game. Sounds like a lot? Yes, but it all fits within the 8 minutes, if only barely! You can take a "sneak peek" at my presentation here.

Wednesday

Wednesday will be a rather interesting day for me. It starts at 8:30 with Union Symposia (US6) Misunderstanding or malice? Getting to the bottom of geoscience disinformation and much to my surprise I was invited to be one of the panelists for this almost 2 hour long session. This will obviously be a first for me, so I'm still not quite sure what I'm getting myself into with agreeing to being on the panel. However, given that the conveners are well aware of my background, I'll be able to talk about the "stuff" I'm familiar with, including at least some of the items mentioned in the presentation for EOS1.8 or other comparable presentation I already did at EGU and/or elserwhere. This Union Symposia is convended by Flora Maria Brocza with Chloe Hill, Viktor J. Bruckman, Kirsten v. Elverfeldt and Christina West as co-conveners. Apart from myself, the confirmed speakers for the session are Vita Crivello (Science-Policy & Science Communication expert), Gaura Naithani (Project Manager & Researcher, European Journalism Centre) and Simon Clark (Science communicator & author).

The spread of false and misleading information can erode trust in public institutions, governments, and the scientific community. It fosters polarisation, disrupts informed decision-making, obstructs constructive dialogue, and subsequently poses a threat to social cohesion and democracy. As researchers, we stand in the eye of the storm. As professional “knowledge generators”, we produce and evaluate facts and should be well-equipped to debunk information we read elsewhere. At the same time, we may not be as well equipped as we think and our research may be taken out of context, with single facts inserted into a wider misleading narrative.

During this Union Symposium, an expert panel will outline what mis- and disinformation is, how it is created and spread in the digital age, why false experts gain traction and how they intentionally misrepresent scientific research, and how the dissemination of doubt and denial can undermine public trust, influence policy decisions, and impact society as a whole. The session will also discuss the role and responsibility of the scientific community in managing and preventing the spread of misinformation as well as the other tools that exist to deal with it.

In the afternoon, I plan to join the closely related short course (SC2.10) From Misunderstanding to Malice: Countering Mis- and Disinformation. The course is convenced by Kirsten v. Elverfeldt with Flora Maria Brocza, Maida Salkanovic, Chloe Hill and Simon Clark as co-conveners.

The research we conduct doesn’t fall into a vacuum. Once published, it enters a large information ecosystem, where we hope that our findings will resonate. As researchers, we devote our whole careers to the study of a narrow field of knowledge. This devotion is not shared by other players in this ecosystem who engage with our research, which might lead to misunderstandings and thus unintentional misinformation. Even others in the ecosystem intentionally seek to spread false information or foster ideologically driven disinformation campaigns. Thus, the players in the ecosystem range from fellow scientists from the same or other disciplines, journalists, politicians, social media influencers, the general public, to troll farms. Clearly, not all of them have or seek an in-depth understanding of the scientific context in which a particular piece of information slots into, and some merely seek to generate attention or outrage with their writing.

Many scientists feel somewhat uneasy in this ecosystem - lacking the tools to engage meaningfully. For example, when talking to journalists, information on the uncertainty of data may not be conveyed for the sake of clear and easy-to-follow storylines. Facts may be simplified or even misrepresented, which might lead to a certain reluctance of scientists to talk to journalists. However, especially this type of direct science-media-interaction is crucial for the debunking of mis- and disinformation.

In the late afternoon - starting at 16:15 - I tentatively plan to join the first part of Education and Outreach session (EOS1.1) Science and Society: Science Communication Practice, Research, and Reflection. Based on previous years' experiences, I'm expecting to learn about several interesting projects related to science communication in this session convended by Solmaz Mohadjer and Roberta Bellini, Francesco Avanzi, Usha Harris and Maria Vittoria Gargiulo as co-conveners.

Science communication includes the efforts of natural, physical and social scientists, communications professionals, and teams that communicate the process and values of science and scientific findings to non-specialist audiences outside of formal educational settings. The goals of science communication can include enhanced dialogue, understanding, awareness, enthusiasm, improving decision making, or influencing behaviors. Channels can include in-person interaction, online, social media, mass media, or other methods. This session invites presentations by individuals and teams on science communication practice, research, and reflection, addressing questions like: What kind of communication efforts are you engaging in and how you are doing it? How is social science informing understandings of audiences, strategies, or effects? What are lessons learned from long-term communication efforts?

 

Thursday

While putting together my itinerary it looked as if Thursday morning would be an empty slot, but only until I realized that session EOS1.1 had 3 timeslots all told, with two of them happening on Thursday morning starting at 8:30! So, the same description as above applies for Education and Outreach session (EOS1.1) Science and Society: Science Communication Practice, Research, and Reflection. To see the list of presentations click here for part 2 and here for part 3.

In the afternoon it's time for short course (SC3.2) Elevate your Pitch: Developing Engaging Short Scientific Presentations. Perhaps this will also contain some helpful tips for non-scientific presentations which based on the learning objectives of this short course could well be the case:

• Structuring a killer elevator pitch – learning from 1/2/3-min examples
• Knowing your audience – harnessing the power of tailored openings/closings
• Captivating delivery – leveraging body language to your advantage
• Harnessing creativity - choosing the right medium
• Enunciating to engage – communicating across borders
• Effectively practising your pitch – making the best of your time

The final session for me on Thursday will most likely be Education and Outreach session (EOS4.1) Science Policy Interface: Shaping Debates and building bridges. I picked this for two reasons: it's another repeat for me and earlier sessions were interesting. And, it's a session in the fun - if somewhat hectic - PICO format, with a whirlwiind of 2-minute long pitches followed by longer discussions with abstract authors at their onsite or virtual screens. The session is convened by Marie Heidenreich with Susann Birnstengel, Giorgia StasiECS, Chloe Hill and Maria Vittoria Gargiulo as co-conveners.

Scientific knowledge is crucial for shaping policies related to climate, environment, sustainability, and resources. To have an impact on politics, research needs to communicate in a way that addresses needs and offers solutions. However, it is important to identify the most effective science policy formats that can contribute to enriching political debates. While there are now many resources available to scientists who would like to engage in the policymaking process, finding specific information or practical examples that relate to a specific discipline or field of research can be challenging.

This session aims to bridge that gap by highlighting success stories from scientists who have engaged in policy and made critical societal impacts – either on a European, national, or local level – across different scientific disciplines and science officers who have facilitated successful science-policy-dialogues. It will also aim to examine the various challenges that researchers face when engaging on the science-policy interface and various strategies that others have taken to manage and overcome them.

Friday

Right now, it looks like I might have a "late start" to the day on Friday (unless I hang out in Gather.town!) with a Great Debate (GDB8) about Artificial Intelligence in scientific publishing: blessing or bane? This may or may not be of interest for me, so I'll take a look and then decide if I watch it or not. 

The rise of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, including Large Language Models (LLM), presents both challenges and opportunities for scientific publishing. How can we use these tools responsibly and effectively?

The discussion will explore several aspects of the topic, including:

• Best practices in employing AI tools for scientific writing
• The potential of AI to assist in the peer review process
• Responsibilities and ethical considerations for authors, reviewers, editors and publishers

In the afternoon Great Debate (GDB6) If informing is not enough, how should scientists engage to accelerate the social transformation required by climate change and biodiversity collapse? will most likely be my last session for this year's EGU conference.

Numerous geoscientists are producing and disseminating knowledge about climate change and contemporary environmental degradation to increasingly wider audiences, from civil society to policymakers. This knowledge is notably gathered in alarming reports by scientific institutions such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and it indicates that rapid and radical transformations of our societies are simply vital.

Still, ongoing efforts to trigger such transformations, whether by political, economic, or civil society stakeholders, often fall short of the urgent actions recommended. It has increasingly been suggested that putting most efforts into ever-improving knowledge and communication is a strategy that can only address part of the obvious gap between Science and the required societal change (see review articles by Stoddard et al., 2021 and Oreskes, 2022).

Summary

As you can see, I'm planning for quite a busy week and will most likely not be twiddling my thumbs much! In addition to attending the sessions above, I also plan to offer a few Networking Pop-Up Events to talk about our resources and Cranky Uncle if people take me up on the offer. This year, these events can be scheduled to happen somewhere in Gather.town so that should bef fun to try out!

Like in previous years, I intend to write up my take on the sessions attended and also keep an eye on how well things work in this fully hybrid conference format. We'll then see how much of the week goes as planned!

According to most metrics, economic inequalities across the world have been declining since the late 1980s.

This has been driven by decreasing inequalities between countries – due to rapid economic growth in Asia – and has occurred despite increasing inequalities within a number of countries.

However, this trend could be reversed by the impacts of climate change. 

While the repercussions of a warming climate are being felt in all corners of the world, the scale of these impacts on different countries, regions, communities and individuals varies hugely. The degree of economic inequality in the future will largely depend on how well different groups can adapt. 

In a new review study, published in Environmental Research Letters, we analysed the existing literature and gathered evidence on whether, where and how climate change exacerbates economic inequality. 

We find robust evidence that climate change impacts do indeed increase economic inequality and disproportionately affect the poor – both globally and within countries on all continents.

Climate change increases inequalities locally and globally

Our review covers 127 peer-reviewed studies into climate change and inequality. 

These research papers cover a wide range of geographies, climate impacts, types of economic inequality measured (such as income disparities, differences in consumption or welfare disparities), methods used (such as econometric models or surveys) and findings.

The vast majority of studies confirm that climate change is exacerbating economic inequalities or hitting the poorest the hardest. This finding holds true across regions, types of physical impacts, sectors, types of inequalities and assessment methods. It is particularly prominent in studies that compare the impact of climate change across countries. 

There are only two studies that find that climate change reduces inequality, but they focus on specific local circumstances – that is, flooding in Pakistan or price disparities among fishers and traders in Mexico. 

Similarly, four papers find that the wealthy – whether households or countries – are more affected by climate change than the poor. However, these instances are exceptions and mostly limited to specific circumstances. For example, one study shows that the tropical cyclone Bulbul in Bangladesh caused higher losses for richer shrimp farmers, because they had larger farms.

The chart below summarises these overarching results across the 127 studies, categorised by the percentage of studies showing a negative (red), positive (blue) or mixed (yellow) impact on inequality. Orange indicates a finding that does not fit one of the categories, while grey shows studies that could not reach a conclusion.

The different bars represent the geographical focus of the different studies. Most of the studies we reviewed either look at the global picture (46) or focus on individual countries (44).

Effect of climate change on economic inequality according to geographical scope of the studies in our review. These are categorised as regressive (red), progressive (blue), mixed (yellow), other (orange) or no conclusion (grey). Note that the x-axis gives the share of occurrences within studies at that geographical scope, while the number between brackets indicates the total number of studies in that category. Source: Méjean et al. (2024).

When it comes to global studies, the consensus is that climate change is widening inequalities or affecting the poor the most, with around 78% of the papers reaching this conclusion. 

Some studies also highlight other groups being disproportionately impacted by climate change, such as rural communities, urban populations, women or specific regions and sectors. 

However, there’s a minority of papers that remain inconclusive about both the impact of climate change on inequalities and which groups are most affected.

When it comes to national studies, the trend remains consistent: around 68% of these papers find that climate change is driving up economic inequality or hitting the poorest the hardest (30 out of 44 papers). 

As the map below shows, this holds true in all parts of the world. The purple shading indicates the number of studies finding a negative climate impact on inequality for each country.

Map of countries where studies show a regressive effect (that climate change increases economic inequality or that the poor are more impacted). This map includes studies with a national or subnational scope and multi-country studies where that result is valid for single countries. This map excludes global studies. Source: Méjean et al. (2024).

The countries with the highest number of studies (more than five) showing that climate change increases economic inequality or disproportionately affects the poor are China, Brazil, Ethiopia and the US.

Different climate impacts contribute to inequality

Looking at the breakdown of studies, we found that the percentage of papers pinpointing a particular climate impact as exacerbating inequality or affecting the poor more significantly ranges from 60% for changes in rainfall to 89% for sea level rise.

You can see this in the left-hand chart below, which shows the findings of the literature review separated by climate impact. The right-hand chart shows the findings separated by sector. The categories are the same as in the earlier chart.

Impact of climate change on economic inequality by physical impact (left) and channel (right). These are categorised as regressive (red), progressive (blue), mixed (yellow), other (orange) or no conclusion (grey). Note that the x-axis gives the share of occurrences within studies for a given category, while the number in brackets indicates the total number of studies in that category. The sum of those numbers may differ from the total number of papers (127), as some papers may fall into several subcategories, for instance in the case where several types of physical impacts are discussed in a single paper. Source: Méjean et al. (2024).

A majority of studies focus on the impact of rising temperature, with 72% of these concluding that temperature changes worsen economic inequality or affect the poor the most. 

Most of the studies that find a reduction in inequality concern extreme weather events. This is often because these studies assess the impact on physical assets, which are predominantly owned by the wealthiest.

There are several channels through which biophysical climate change impacts translate into economic effects. These channels include broad economic effects that influence all sectors, changes in agricultural revenues due to factors such as crop yield declines, impacts on labour productivity, changes to infrastructure and physical assets, shifts in energy demand or water availability. 

We found that studies identifying labour productivity or energy as the main channel through which climate change affects economic inequalities overwhelmingly conclude that inequalities increase or that the poor are more impacted. 

A decline in labour productivity may indeed increase inequality if it disproportionately affects low-skilled workers, especially those who work outdoors or in non-air-conditioned environments. 

Notably, a large proportion of the studies where physical assets are identified as the main channel suggest that inequality actually decreases due to climate change or that the wealthy suffer more. This is because rich individuals tend to face greater losses due to the higher value of their property. 

Tackling climate impacts on inequality

Our investigation into the impacts of climate change on economic inequality was motivated by the need to better understand the climate change impacts are distributed across the world. This provides the other side of the coin to the effects of mitigation policies on inequality, which are often more widely discussed. 

The evidence strongly indicates that the impacts of a warming climate are regressive across countries. Tackling the impacts of climate change on economic inequality will demand substantial policy changes and financial resources. 

At the national level, policymakers will need to ensure that adaptation finance and loss and damage compensation effectively reach low-income households to reduce their vulnerability and increase their resilience to climate change impacts. 

The results of our review underscore the importance of policymakers integrating climate risk management strategies into the design of “climate-proof” social programmes in poor regions, which are crucial for achieving climate justice objectives.

Of course, other forms of inequality beyond economic inequality, such as gender inequality, are important and interact with climate change, but this is a topic for another review.

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Guest post: Mapping where tree-planting has the greatest climate benefit

Guest posts

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26.03.24

Guest post: Climate adaptation becomes less effective as the world warms

Guest posts

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15.03.24

Guest post: The challenge of consensus decision-making in UN climate negotiations

Guest posts

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05.03.24

Guest post: Heavy use of CO2 removal would trigger high sustainability risks

Energy

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02.02.24

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The post Guest post: How climate change could reverse progress in global inequality appeared first on Carbon Brief.

On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a "bump" for our ask. This week features "The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is not causing global warming". More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebuttal and to join the discussion in the comment thread there.

At a glance

Oscillate. To move repeatedly from side to side or up and down between two points, or to vary between two states or amounts. To vary above and below a mean value. To move or travel back and forth between two points. To swing backward and forward like a pendulum.

These and similar definitions are to be found if you look up the meaning of 'oscillate' online. Yet global warming is wobbling its way up a one-way course. We've just witnessed the hottest year since temperature records began (2023). Every few years that record goes again. Conclusion: global warming is not an oscillation.

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation or PDO is one of a number of phenomena that affect the world's major oceanic basins. It is a good example of heat being moved around within the ocean and atmosphere. Like all climatic oscillations it has warm, neutral and cool modes and these may endure for years or decades. Oscillations like this do not correspond to a timetable, but are irregular in nature.

The PDO is directly driven by conditions in the northern Pacific but has considerable reach in its effects. Prevailing winds and atmospheric pressure-patterns over that ocean dictate the mode. When winds are predominantly from the southwest, warmer conditions occur along the western USA seaboard. That is due to the onshore transport of warm, subtropical waters. Conversely, when winds are mainly from the north, upwelling of cool and nutrient-rich waters occurs in the open ocean, with cooler conditions prevailing.

Notable long, warm modes of the PDO include 1925-1946 and 1977-1998. 1947-1976 was a lengthy cool phase. More recently, the flip-flopping has been of a much shorter duration with cold and warm phases lasting just a few years. The reason for this switch is incompletely understood.

Like the El Nino Southern Oscillation or ENSO, which flips around over annual timescales, the PDO affects weather patterns, particularly in Asia and North America. It also has considerable impacts on fisheries and if there was one good reason to understand the PDO, it's right there. However, despite the loose coincidence with global temperatures in the early and mid-20th Century, that apparent relationship is no more. For example, a negative PDO mode commenced at the end of 2019 and was still ongoing in mid-2023, the latter having been the warmest year globally since records began.

Like all oscillations, there is no net gain or loss of heat involved in the PDO. It is merely a pattern involving how the heat in the system is being moved around within it. Global warming is different because it involves impeding the loss of heat, originally reaching the planet as sunshine, back out to space. That makes it a climate forcing agent. Big difference.

Oscillate. It's all in the name.

Please use this form to provide feedback about this new "At a glance" section. Read a more technical version below or dig deeper via the tabs above!

Click for Further details

In case you'd like to explore more of our recently updated rebuttals, here are the links to all of them:

Myths with link to rebuttal Short URLs Ice age predicted in the 1970s sks.to/1970s It hasn't warmed since 1998 sks.to/1998 Antarctica is gaining ice sks.to/antarctica CRU emails suggest conspiracy sks.to/climategate What evidence is there for the hockey stick sks.to/hockey CO2 lags temperature sks.to/lag Climate's changed before sks.to/past It's the sun sks.to/sun Temperature records are unreliable sks.to/temp The greenhouse effect and the 2nd law of thermodynamics sks.to/thermo We're heading into an ice age sks.to/iceage Positives and negatives of global warming sks.to/impacts The 97% consensus on global warming sks.to/consensus Global cooling - Is global warming still happening? sks.to/cooling How reliable are climate models? sks.to/model Can animals and plants adapt to global warming? sks.to/species What's the link between cosmic rays and climate change? sks.to/cosmic Is Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth accurate? sks.to/gore Are glaciers growing or retreating? sks.to/glacier Ocean acidification: global warming's evil twin sks.to/acid The human fingerprint in global warming sks.to/agw Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming sks.to/evidence How do we know more CO2 is causing warming? sks.to/greenhouse Explaining how the water vapor greenhouse effect works sks.to/vapor The tricks employed by the flawed OISM Petition Project to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change sks.to/OISM Is extreme weather caused by global warming? sks.to/extreme How substances in trace amounts can cause large effects sks.to/trace How much is sea level rising? sks.to/sealevel Is CO2 a pollutant? sks.to/pollutant Does cold weather disprove global warming? sks.to/cold Do volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans? sks.to/volcano How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions? sks.to/co2 Climate scientists could make more money in other careers sks.to/money How reliable are CO2 measurements? sks.to/co2data Do high levels of CO2 in the past contradict the warming effect of CO2? sks.to/pastco2 What is the net feedback of clouds? sks.to/cloud Global warming vs climate change sks.to/name Is Mars warming? sks.to/mars How the IPCC is more likely to underestimate the climate response sks.to/underestimat How sensitive is our climate? sks.to/sensitivity Evidence for global warming sks.to/warming Has the greenhouse effect been falsified? sks.to/falsify Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere? sks.to/breath What is causing the increase in atmospheric CO2? sks.to/CO2increase What is methane's contribution to global warming? sks.to/methane Plants cannot live on CO2 alone sks.to/plant Is the CO2 effect saturated? sks.to/saturate Greenhouse warming 100 times greater than waste heat sks.to/waste How will global warming affect polar bears? sks.to/bear The runaway greenhouse effect on Venus sks.to/venus What climate change is happening to other planets in the solar system? sks.to/planets Has Arctic sea ice returned to normal? sks.to/arctic Was Greenland really green in the past? sks.to/green Is Greenland gaining or losing ice? sks.to/greenland Human activity is driving retreat of Arctic sea ice sks.to/arcticcycle The albedo effect and global warming sks.to/albedo Does CO2 always correlate with temperature? sks.to/correlate Human fingerprints on climate change rule out natural cycles sks.to/cycle Global warming and the El Niño Southern Oscillation sks.to/elnino The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is not causing global warming sks.to/pdo

 

If you think that projects like these rebuttal updates are a good idea, please visit our support page to contribute!

3-4 September | Amsterdam

The key stakeholders in the road freight sector must be aligned in strategy and outlook in order to accelerate the sector’s transition and enable operators to make the investments needed. Reuters Events: Sustainable Road Transport Europe will unite executives from across multinational retail corporations, transport operators, vehicle manufacturers, utilities and governments to discuss leading initiatives, cutting edge technology and industry shaping challenges around the corner.

Ben Scott, Head of Automotive, will be moderating the Day 2 panel: Revolutionise Your Fleet: Unleash Operational Excellence Through Strategic Sustainable Finance and Investment

Download the official brochure today to discover the agenda and speaking roster!

Use Carbon Tracker’s discount code CARBONTRACKERSRT200 for €200 off!

Reuters Events is the trusted voice of the global energy transition. Here’s how Reuters Events can join us in shaping the course of transition change:

• Join the Nexus of Executive Learning and Cutting-Edge Strategy: With a diverse roster of 150+ C-suite and executive speakers from across the freight value chain, peek behind the curtain of the Europe’s most important stakeholders.
• Take Practical Steps Forward on Your Transition Journey through a combination of presentations, panel discussions and exclusive workshops.
• Make valuable connections with over 6 hours of networking, get to know the important leaders in your industry and solution providers for your job.

Early confirmed speakers for 2024 include:

• Beatriz Yordi, Director CLIMA B, Carbon Markets & Clean Mobility, European Commission
• Dominic Phinn, Senior Policy Manager, Climate Group (EV100+)
• Alastair Shooter, Vice President and Global Head of Transport, DHL
• Patrick Schuster, Vice President, Global Head Strategy, Road Logistics, Kuehne + Nagel
• Richard Bruce, Director of Transport Decarbonisation, Department of Transport UK
• Stéphanie Berlioz, EVP and Chief Financial Officer, Geopost
• Frank Verhoeven, CEO, Vos Logistics
• Jereon Eijsink, CEO, Girteka Group
• Jessica Sandström, SVP, Sales Northern Europe, Volvo Trucks
• Mark Allen, Senior Director, Sustainability, PepsiCo
• Nicholas Mazzei, VP, Sustainability, DP World
• Roel Staes, Head of Sustainability Europe, FedEx
• Cordi O’Hara, President, Electricity Distribution, National Grid
• Christoph Wolff, CEO, Smart Freight Centre
• Raluca Marian, Director EU Advocacy, International Road Transport Union (IRU)
• Roel Staes, Senior Vice President Legal, Head of Sustainability, FedEx
• Angie Farrang, Associate Vice President, Global Transportation, Environmental Defense Fund
• Sita Haltslag, Director, Europe, Calstart

Looking forward to seeing you there!

 

The post Sustainable Road Transport Europe 2024 appeared first on Carbon Tracker Initiative.

This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any).

Thanks to climate change, 2023 has shattered heat records, and 2024 is continuing where last year left off. With this devastating heat driving extreme weather - from heatwaves to downpours to wildfires - across the globe, scientists are increasingly asking if global warming could be accelerating. So what does the evidence show? Is the heating up of our planet speeding up? If so, what does this climate change mean for our future? And can we still hit the brakes and halt global warming?

Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam

Since the start of this year, Africa’s most populous nation Nigeria has faced prolonged stretches of severe heat.

A recent quick-fire analysis found that the conditions in February, when temperatures exceeded 40C, were made 10 times more likely by human-caused climate change.

But the heat is still ongoing, with temperatures reaching a record 44.8C in Sokoto, a city in north-western Nigeria, on 1 April.

With records of heat and its impacts lacking in Nigeria, Carbon Brief speaks to doctors, farmers and meteorologists about how this episode of extreme weather is affecting the country.

Health impacts

The ongoing extreme heat in Nigeria is having a range of health impacts – and most of these are not being routinely recorded, experts tell Carbon Brief.

On 28 March, Nigeria’s national electricity grid collapsed, plunging the country into a general blackout for the second time during the heatwave.

Despite its wealth of oil and gas, blackouts are common in Nigeria and many people rely on petrol and diesel generators to cool their homes. However, fuel prices have skyrocketed in the past year, putting such alternatives out of the reach for many Nigerians.

The impact of the heat is “catastrophic”, Dr Ugo Uguwanyi, a doctor in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city, tells Carbon Brief:

“Don’t even bother to step out from 10am to 6pm. And make sure you burn the diesel to power the air conditioning to be able to sleep at night.”

Information about the heatwave’s impact is limited, but this does not mean the weather conditions are not dangerous, according to the authors of the recent analysis into the role of climate change in Nigeria’s extreme heat. Rather, a lack of systematic reporting may obscure what they described as a “silent killer”.

The study’s authors called for “improved monitoring and research on the impacts and risks associated with heatwaves”.

Nigeria’s dry season runs approximately from December through to March – although it is longer in the north of the country and shorter in the south. Temperatures build during this season, typically bringing more reported cases of “meningitis, stress, stroke, blood pressure and stroke”, Dr Uguwanyi says.

Such cases are likely to increase during intense heatwaves, which are projected to become more common if global warming continues to accelerate, he adds.

Dr Ebbi Robinson, chairman of the Nigeria Medical Association in the oil-rich, southern state of Rivers, adds that while “there is no specific documentation”, extreme heat typically brings an increase in hospital visits to dermatologists, with symptoms such as rashes and itching.

He says that his association is rolling out new methods to warn people of the health impacts from extreme heat:

“We are making radio jingles and banners to let people know these heatwaves are real and sensitise them on how to mitigate against the direct and indirect consequences.”

In mid-February, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) issued a public forecast warning on the prolonged heatwave.

The agency advised citizens to stay hydrated, wear light clothing and avoid direct exposure to high temperatures during peak periods. A group of Nigerian doctors also issued safety tips.

Wasiu Adeniyi Ibrahim, a meteorologist at NiMet, tells Carbon Brief:

“Heatwaves, characterised by prolonged periods of excessively hot temperatures and humidity, are becoming more frequent and intense. 

“We have observed a departure of 2-4C from normal (long-time average temperature, 1991-2020) in the month of February. It is clear that climate change is bringing more and more dangerously hot days to Africa.”

Workforce impacts

In February, NiMet’s director of weather forecast services, Vincent Weli, advised that a state of emergency be declared in states most affected by the heatwave and workers be allowed to take breaks between noon and 3pm. Speaking to Nigeria’s Channels Television, Weli said:

“Of course, you know, with high temperature, cognitive development will be affected and productivity will be affected. There will be a loss of concentration.”

The call was necessary as “the condition was favourable for an outbreak of meningitis”, Ibrahim explains to Carbon Brief:

“We observed high dust concentration combined with this excessive heat which could trigger a meningitis outbreak. Epileptic power supply, low ventilations and other factors could make the situation worse, if not properly controlled.”

Meningitis, an inflammation of the membranes covering the brain and the spinal cord, is more easily spread in extreme heat and dusty conditions.

However, no such directive has been issued by state governments.

“Many state governments in Nigeria are not taking weather and climate information very seriously,” Ibrahim says.

Meanwhile, in Lagos, Nigeria’s most populated city, ride-hailing drivers are operating under “melting” conditions, stuck between preserving their health or livelihood, according to a Rest of World report.

Agricultural impacts

The heatwave is also expected to reduce agricultural productivity, a sector that contributes about 22% to Nigeria’s gross domestic product (GDP) and accounts for more than a third of total employment. Ibrahim tells Carbon Brief:

“Heatwaves can reduce agricultural productivity by causing heat stress to crops and livestock.

“It could negatively affect crop growth and development by disrupting physiological processes, such as photosynthesis, respiration and water uptake. High temperatures can lead to wilting, leaf scorching and reduced nutrient uptake, impairing plant growth, fewer fruits and reducing yields.

“In animals, heatwaves may reduce feed intake, lower weight gain, decrease milk production, reduce reproductive performance and [cause] animal mortality, if proper mitigation measures are not in place.”

Cattle in the shade of a tree in Nigeria. Credit: Jorge Fernandez / Alamy Stock Photo

Again, there is not a lot of data on how the current heat is affecting agriculture in Nigeria.

However, the national secretary of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria, Yunusa Halidu, tells Carbon Brief its members expect the heatwave to affect productivity yield this year. He says:

“The heat is extreme this year,although we have been expecting it, as we work with the Nigerian Meteorological Agency. We know it is global warming and we are working to see how we can mitigate the effects.”

A shorter version of this article was first published in DeBriefed, Carbon Brief’s weekly climate newsletter, on 5 April. Subscribe for free.

Climate change made west Africa’s ‘dangerous humid heatwave’ 10 times more likely

Attribution

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21.03.24

No ‘statistically significant’ link between climate change and Chile’s wildfires

Attribution

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22.02.24

Climate change: Intensity of ongoing drought in Syria, Iraq and Iran ‘not rare anymore’

Attribution

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08.11.23

Analysis: Africa’s extreme weather has killed at least 15,000 people in 2023

Extreme weather

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25.10.23

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The post How Nigeria is reeling from extreme heat fuelled by climate change appeared first on Carbon Brief.

A listing of 34 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 31, 2024 thru Sat, April 6, 2024. Story of the week

Proxy measurement via Facebook "engagement" suggests a widely welcoming audience for Prof. Andrew Dessler's The Climate Brink article How extreme was the Earth's temperature in 2023. With our recent Earth surface temperature record gaining prominent media coverage— including many direct remarks by scientists employing adjectives not normally found in scientific parlance— it's not surprising that readers may appreciate an oasis of context and perspective of the kind Dessler provides. A couple of well supported key points come through in this treatment. Only a few years ago we saw a surface temperature graph remarkably similar to what's unrolling right now. Meanwhile, our recent experience remains within projections of climate models and can't truly be seen as an unanticipated outcome (do let's note: as usual we're seeing how climate models are fit for purpose and yield useful climate prognosis). Untreated in popularized analysis is the recent behavior of the world ocean's temperature. Given the much larger amount of energy involved and our general discomfort with hugely consequential mysteries of this kind, it would be helpful to have this gap plugged— but that is a more fundamentally difficult scientific problem. 

Before March 31

• New tech won’t save us from climate change. Here’s what will, Nature, BBC Science Focus Magazine, Dr Jonathan Foley. The one thing we need to save us from climate catastrophe is the one thing technology can’t provide.
• From Michigan to Nebraska, Midwest States Face an Early Wildfire Season, Science, Inside Climate News, Kristoffer Tigue. Lede: "The blazes come after a record dry winter in the region. 'Year to date, we've had 'close to 300 wildfires statewide' a Wisconsin official said. “The normal year-to-date 10-year average is about 40 fires.' ”
• Hacking planet Earth will not save us from ourselves, Newsroom, Kevin Trenberth. A number of geoengineering methods have been proposed as a way to cool our warming planet but the problem is the increasing amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – the pressure instead must increase to cut emissions and use of fossil fuels
• Natural Gas Is Scamming America, Climate Town on Youtube, Rollie Williams.
• Geoengineering Faces a Wave of Backlash Over Regulatory Gaps and Unknown Risks, Today's Climate, Inside Climate News, Kikley Price. "Technologies to slow global warming by manipulating the environment are rapidly advancing, but some experts want to pump the brakes"

March 31

• ExxonMobil accused of `greenwashing` over carbon capture plan it failed to invest in, The Guardian, Ben Webster. Investigation reveals project oil giant promoted may never leave drawing board and has received no licence or government support
• 2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #13, Skeptical Science, Baerbel Winkler. Doug Bostrom, John Hartz. Listing of 34 articles we found interesting during the last week, March 24 to 30, 2024
• Election of Donald Trump `could put world`s climate goals at risk`, The Guardian, Fiona Harvey. Former UN climate chief warns of global impact of a possible regression in US green policies
• Can We Engineer Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis?, Climate, New York Times, David Gelles.
• Europe is cooking at double speed! Are Europeans ready?, "Just have a Think" on Youtbue, Dave Borlace. The latest "Just Have a Think" video summarizing the Climate Risk Assessment 2024 recently published by the European Environment Agency
• The Show Must Go On? Music Festival-Goers Are At Risk As Extreme Weather Events Become More Frequent and Severe, Inside Climate News, Kiley Price. Concert attendees are braving the elements as climate change accelerates, sometimes with grave consequences.
• As climate change and pollution imperil coral reefs, scientists are deep-freezing corals to repopulate future oceans, Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories, Mary Hagedorn.

April 1

• How federal tax dollars meant to fight climate change could end up boosting Louisiana`s fossil fuel production, The Conversation, Ned Randolph. Billions of federal tax dollars will soon be pouring into Louisiana to fight climate change, yet the projects they’re supporting may actually boost fossil fuels – the very products warming the planet.
• How extreme was the Earth's temperature in 2023, The Climate Brink, Andrew Dessler. If 2023 Earth were a chicken tender, would it be mild, medium, Caliente!, Mui Caliente!, or Fire In The Hole!
• Democrats rebuke Biden for fighting young climate activists in court, Climate Wire, E&E News, pr 1, 2024, Lesley Clark. "DOJ is using 'extraordinary and oppressive efforts' to stop the Juliana youth climate case, 30 lawmakers told a federal appeals court."

April 2

• Bird Flu Is Picking its Way Across the Animal Kingdom-and Climate Change Could Be Making it Worse, Inside Climate News, Kiley Price. A person in Texas recently tested positive for avian influenza. The virus has already spilled over into a number of mammalian species since it first appeared.
• Who are today`s climate activists? Dispelling 3 big myths for Earth Month, The Conversation, Dana R. Fisher.
• US aiming to ‘crack the code’ on deploying geothermal energy at scale, Environment, The Gurdin, Oliver Milman . "Recent $74m investment made alongside assessment that 10% of electricity could be generated by geothermal by 2050"

April 3

• Global Warming Will Enable Tropical Species From the Atlantic to Colonize the Mediterranean Sea, Inside Climate News, Bob Berwyn. A new study documents large-scale ocean system changes that threaten the stability of marine ecosystems in the sea between Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
• Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles, Climate Law Blog, Jacob Elkin and Matthew Eisenson.
• A Virtual Reality Film That Makes the Climate Crisis Feel "Real", State of the Planet, Adrienne Day.
• Chevron Owns This City`s News Site. Many Stories Aren`t Told., DeSmog, Miranda Green/Floodlight, David Folkenflik/NPR. The oil and gas company-owned Richmond Standard tells mostly positive stories about the major industry that dominates this California city and its skyline.

April 4

• Should Big Oil Be Tried for Homicide?, Inside Climate News, Nicholas Kusnetz. Lede: A group of activists and legal experts are promoting the argument that fossil fuel companies should be charged for homicide and other crimes for their roles in driving climate harms.
• Is the Fight Against Climate Change Losing Momentum?, News, Politics, Opinion, Commentary, and Analysis, Bill McKibben. Some financial institutions are backing away from emission pledges.
• Forecasters predict an extremely active 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, Eye on the Storm, Yale Climate Commuknications, Jeff Masters. "Colorado State University’s hurricane forecasting team is calling for a near-record active season with 23 named storms, 11 hurricanes, and five major hurricanes."
• America’s new high-risk, high-reward $20 billion climate push, Climate Solutions, Washington Post, Maxine Joselow. "In an ambitious effort to fight climate change, the EPA is assisting local groups in financing clean-energy projects"
• Vast Majority of Global CO2 Emissions Tied to Just 57 Entities, DeSmog, Joe Fassler. A new report details the state and corporate producers that bear responsibility for 80 percent of carbon dioxide emissions since the Paris Agreement.
• Factcheck: Why the recent `acceleration` in global warming is what scientists expect, Carbon Brief, Zeke Hausfather. Over the past year, there has been a vigorous debate among scientists – and more broadly – about whether global warming is “accelerating”.
• Future Trends in Climate Litigation Against Governments, Climate Law Blog, Lucy Maxwell, April Williamson and Sarah Mead.
• Are rainforests doomed? Not necessarily., Down to Earth, Vox, Benji Jones. In a grim new analysis of tropical forests, there are a few important glimmers of hope.

April 5

• I Watched The Climate Deniers' New Movie So You Don't Have To, The Climate Laundry, Dave Vetter. A British filmmaker's latest attempt to convince us that climate change isn't happening is a feeble affair. But propaganda doesn't have to convince everyone to be effective.
• It`s Never Too Late to Take Climate Action, Scientific American Content: Global, James K. Boyce. The depiction of the climate crisis as a cliff—once we fall off the edge, it’s game over—is nonsense
• Australia should prepare for 20-year megadroughts as the climate crisis worsens, study finds, The Guardian, Aston Brown. Climate modelling by the Australian National University found Australia has experienced megadroughts every 150 to 1,000 years and is due for another

April 6

• Gigafact and Skeptical Science collaborate to create fact briefs, Skeptical Science, John Mason and Bärbel Winkler. Together with Gigafact we are re-starting a collaboration to create short fact briefs based on our rebuttals.

If you happen upon high quality climate-science and/or climate-myth busting articles from reliable sources while surfing the web, please feel free to submit them via this Google form so that we may share them widely. Thanks!