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DeBriefed 14 February 2025: Nearly 95% of countries miss UN climate deadline; 1.5C on horizon; Behind-the-scenes of CB analysis
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
1.5C EXAMINED: The run of record heat last year suggests the world is close to exceeding the Paris Agreement’s target of limiting global temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, according to two new studies covered by the Press Association. In 2024, annual average temperatures reached 1.5C for the first time. However, the Paris goal is measured as a 20-year average – meaning breaching 1.5C in a single year does not yet show the target has been crossed, the publication noted.
BREACH IN REACH: The first of the two studies “looked at real-world observations of already reached warming levels…and showed that the first single years exceeding each threshold have consistently fallen with the first 20-year period which averaged the same level of warming”, said the newswire. The findings suggest the Paris goal could be crossed within 10 years – unless there are “stringent” emissions cuts, Agence France-Presse reported. This is in-line with recent estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Carbon Brief.
HEAT GOES ON: The second study explored what the run of temperatures above 1.5C from July 2023 to June 2024 could mean for the Paris Agreement, the Independent reported. It continued: “The study shows that having 12 consecutive months above 1.5C means there’s a 76% chance that we’ve already hit that long-term warming threshold under current climate policies. If this trend continues for 18 consecutive months, the research says, the breach of the Paris Agreement threshold will be virtually certain. January 2025 was the 19th month to cross that mark.”
Around the world- BP SWITCH: According to the Times, BP’s chief executive – under pressure from an activist investor – has pledged to “fundamentally reset” the company’s strategy, which is expected to involve a formal ditching of its target to cut oil and gas output and a further scaling back of its renewables projects.
- 35% RENEWABLE: Under Indonesia’s new electricity plan, the country aims to increase its renewable energy share from 12% to 35% in 2034 by expanding solar, battery, hydro and geothermal capacity, reported Reuters.
- ‘EXISTENTIAL THREAT’: A first-of-its kind German government report found that climate change poses an “existential threat” to the European Union due to its “destabilising and unequal” effects, reported Politico.
- COAL ON A HIGH: As covered by Carbon Brief, China’s construction of coal-fired power plants reached a new 10-year high in 2024, according to a report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and Global Energy Monitor.
- ‘100% SUSTAINABLE WOOD’: The UK government agreed a new deal for the Drax power plant – which burns wood pellets to generate electricity – halving its subsidies and requiring all wood to come from “100% sustainable” sources, the Guardian said. Carbon Brief’s Simon Evans had more details.
- INDIA DEALS: Reuters reported that Nigeria is seeking assistance from India with its energy transition plans. Meanwhile, BBC News reported on the US and India agreeing a new deal that will see more American oil and gas imported by Delhi.
The annual increase in second-hand EV sales in the UK from 2023 to 2024, with 188,382 cars changing hands in 2024, reported BusinessGreen.
Latest climate research- New research in npj Climate Action showed that the more pronounced local climate change effects become, the stronger the relationship between a person’s education level and their level of “climate concern”.
- A new study published in Nature Cities showed that people in more disadvantaged neighbourhoods are more exposed to floods, based on studying nearly 45,000 neighbourhoods in eight Latin American countries between 2000 and 2018.
- Carbon emissions from permafrost “may pose a considerable risk” to climate mitigation efforts, “even if net-zero and negative emissions are achieved”, according to a new study published in Science Advances.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured Nearly 95% of countries miss UN climate pledge deadlineNearly 95% of countries have missed a UN deadline to submit new climate pledges for 2035, Carbon Brief analysis shows. Just 13 of the 195 parties – highlighted on the map above – signed up to the Paris Agreement published their new emissions-cutting plans, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs), by the 10 February deadline. Countries missing the deadline represent 83% of global emissions and nearly 80% of the world’s economy, according to Carbon Brief analysis. The US submitted its NDC under the previous Biden administration and has now announced plans to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.
Spotlight From faint idea to ‘forest twice the size of London’This week, Carbon Brief takes you behind the scenes of its recent rapid analysis on UK airport expansion.
At the end of January, Carbon Brief published an analysis showing that a forest “twice the size of London” would be needed to offset the emissions from the UK government’s proposed airport expansion.
It was covered widely in the press, featured on an ITV current affairs show and was cited twice by MPs in UK parliament.
The analysis – by myself, Carbon Brief’s data scientist, and policy correspondent Josh Gabbatiss – came together in just a few days. Below, I explain how we undertook the rapid analysis.
Heathrow third runwayIn January, UK chancellor Rachel Reeves signalled that the UK government was planning to back a third runway at Heathrow airport, along with the expansion of two other London airports, Luton and Gatwick.
We decided to examine what the “climate cost” of such an expansion would be. The UK has so far done little to align its aviation sector with its net-zero target and this seemed like it could make that target even harder to reach.
The question was how should we go about this? Carbon Brief has previously published a guest post showing that airport expansion was not net-zero compatible and others had published more recent emissions analysis. What more could we add?
For a new angle, we wanted to focus on the extra emissions that would result specifically from the expansion of the three airports.
Calculating airport emissionsWe noted that Carbon Brief’s guest post had used estimates for the average emissions per passenger to calculate the extra emissions in the year 2050 from the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the UK’s official climate advisers.
But calculating the extra emissions for a single year more than two decades in the future did not feel sufficient because the expansions would be operational years before 2050 – and it is the cumulative that matters for global temperatures.
However, calculating cumulative emissions would require modelling based on airport expansion dates.
Assuming the expansions are fully operational by 2040 and using CCC modelling, I produced the first rough chart (below) using pandas, a data analysis tool designed for the Python coding language.
This showed that the expansion of Heathrow, Luton and Gatwick would produce an extra 81m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) by 2050 (in orange on the chart below).
Forest figuresAfter calculating the extra emissions from the UK’s planned airport expansion, we decided that we needed to come up with a way of contextualising the number for our readers.
This is a common issue for us at Carbon Brief – how to communicate the scale of emissions. The average person does not necessarily know how to interpret 81m tonnes.
It can help to compare it to something more grounded and visible. In this case, we decided to work out how many trees would be needed to absorb all the extra emissions.
First, I redid the analysis with more accurate information on airport-expansion timelines from the Aviation Environment Federation, an NGO focused on the climate impacts of flying, which updated the total to 92m tonnes.
For converting this to trees, I drew on the methods of a previous analysis to get the emissions absorbed per hectare of forest planted over its lifetime.
From this, and assuming that the new forest is planted in 2028, I could calculate the forest area that would need to be planted so that by 2050 it has offset the extra aviation emissions from 2028 to 2050.
Using this, we got a forest “twice the size of Greater London”.
For more context, I added the historical emissions from the aviation sector and separated out each airport’s contribution in the updated chart (below).
Visualising the headlineThe last step of the analysis was to present it in Carbon Brief style. I sent the data to our multimedia team and asked them to add two London-shaped forests to the chart.
Armed with the headline and caption text, the multimedia team turned the data into something visually captivating that could tell the story on its own.
If such work interests you, consider applying for our data-analyst vacancy. Deadline: 9am GMT 17 February
Watch, read, listenCLIMATE BOWL: Super Bowl viewers in Los Angeles were shown the first-ever climate advert from a nonprofit group, showing the progress of climate change through the timeline of a young girl.
BIG SIX WASHING: A DeSmog investigation outlined how the six largest communication companies present themselves as climate friendly while helping to promote fossil fuels.
‘TOTAL WIPEOUT’: A France24 video report highlighted how some lower altitude ski towns are adapting to their new snow-scarce reality in the face of climate change.
Coming up- 15-16 February: 38th African Union Summit: assembly of the heads of state, Addis Adaba, Ethiopia
- 17-19 February: UN Environment Programme UrbanShift Africa Forum, Nairobi, Kenya
- 17-21 February: 18th session of the Intersessional Working Group on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from ships, London
- World Resources Institute, programme lead, Latin America Clean Energy Coalition | Salary: Unknown. Location: Brazil, Mexico or Colombia
- Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, postdoctoral researcher AMOC | Salary: €4,630 per month. Location: Potsdam, Germany
- Action for the Climate Emergency, director of renewables, UK, | Salary: £80,000-£90,000. Location: Remote, UK
- InfluenceMap, analyst, climate change (India-focused), UK-based | Salary: £29,000. Location: London (hybrid)
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.
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Mapped: How extreme weather is destroying crops around the world
Extreme weather can harm food production in many different ways. Drought leaving rice fields cracked and dry. Heavy rainfall flooding orange groves. Tropical cyclones tearing down banana plants and coconut trees.
Carbon Brief has analysed global media coverage over the past two years to identify reporting on extreme weather events damaging crops.
Various impacts were recorded – ranging from floods ruining fields of corn in Tanzania, through to drought and heat destroying coffee in Vietnam and withering the “famed” Cambodian Kampot pepper.
Carbon Brief has used the events found within the media analysis to create the map below, which shows 100 cases of crops being destroyed by heat, drought, floods and other extremes in 2023-24.
The post Mapped: How extreme weather is destroying crops around the world appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Just 17% of world’s peatlands are protected, new study warns
There is a “mismatch” between the importance of peatlands and their current level of protection, a new study warns.
The paper, published in Conservation Letters, combines maps showing global peatlands, protected areas and human impact in the year 2020, to provide a snapshot of the current level of global peatland protection.
The authors stress that peatlands are crucial carbon stores, holding more carbon than all the world’s forest biomass combined.
However, they find that only 17% of peatlands fall within protected areas – a “substantially lower” proportion than other “high-value ecosystems”, such as mangroves, saltmarshes and tropical forests, they say.
The study finds that 22% of global peatlands are under “high human pressure”, with regions in Europe and the east coast of the US under particular threat.
Furthermore, one-third of the global peatlands in protected areas and Indigenous people’s lands still experience “medium to high human pressure”, the paper finds.
‘Disproportionate’ carbon storesDespite peatlands’ relatively small footprint – they cover only 3% of the Earth’s land surface – the ecosystems store a “disproportionate amount” of carbon.
Research has shown that there is more carbon contained in peatlands than in all of the world’s forests combined – around 600bn tonnes (GtC).
They also provide myriad other “ecosystem services”, such as regulating air temperatures, storing water and creating habitat for many species.
Peatlands are wetland ecosystems that form slowly over time. When plant matter in one of these habitats dies, the high water content of the soils prevents it from decomposing completely.
As a result, plant matter accumulates, building up as carbon-rich peat over time. Peatlands are found on every inhabited continent, primarily in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere and in the tropics.
The degradation and destruction of peatlands is a significant carbon source, contributing 2-4% of human-driven greenhouse gas emissions each year. Peatlands are often drained or degraded during use for agriculture, and about 16% of peatlands globally have been drained to date. In some places, peat is intentionally removed to be used as fuel or fertile soil.
Prof Chris Evans, a biogeochemist at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief:
“Peatland degradation is second only to tropical deforestation as a source of greenhouse gas emissions from land use, yet peatlands are often overlooked in conservation and climate policy.”
At the same time, climate change itself is putting peatlands at risk.
Increased temperatures are causing permafrost thaw, allowing the once-frozen peat to decompose and release CO2 into the atmosphere. Warmer temperatures also increase microbial activity, leading to faster rates of decomposition, while warmer, drier peatlands are more susceptible to fires.
Losing peatlands has “cascading effects on local water supplies, agriculture and fisheries, disproportionately affecting Indigenous and rural communities”, says Dr Michelle Kalamandeen, a geospatial coordinator at Unique Land Use GmbH, who was not involved in the study.
Protected areasThis study centres on an existing map of global peatland. The map divides the world into grid cells and, using a machine learning model trained on data collected on the ground, estimates the proportion of each cell that contains peatland at least 30cm deep.
The map identifies around 4m square kilometres (km2) of peatland globally. More than 60% of this is “boreal peatland” – found in the high-latitude northern regions, such as Canada, Russia and Scandinavia – and the rest is found in temperature or tropical regions, according to the study.
The authors then cross-reference the map with a database of global protected areas. The database encompasses both “strict” protection areas, such as national parks and nature reserves, as well as less strict land-management regimes where some human activity is permitted.
The database also shows Ramsar sites, a subset of protected areas designated to be of international importance under the Ramsar convention – also known as the “Convention on Wetlands”. (The convention seeks to promote “the wise use of all wetlands” in participating countries and encourage international co-operation with other countries.)
The authors find that only 17% of peatlands are located in protected areas. This is “substantially lower than other high-value ecosystems such as mangroves, 42% of which are within official protected areas globally, saltmarshes (50%) and tropical forests (38%)”, the study says.
Dr Kemen Austin is the director of science at the Wildlife Conservation Society‘s forests and climate change programme, and lead author of the new study. In a press release, she says that the study “reveals that these vital ecosystems don’t have anywhere near the level of protection they need”.
The authors also present case studies of individual countries. For example, they find that nearly 90% of peatland in the Republic of the Congo is protected. However, they warn that “most of this falls within a designated Ramsar site that has not yet been backed-up by strong government commitments”.
The study identifies a large body of literature showing that “Indigenous land rights and community-based management result in positive environmental outcomes, such as reduced deforestation and forest degradation”. The authors analyse data on Indigenous stewardship and find that one-quarter of global peatlands sit on land owned by Indigenous groups.
Human impactThe authors assess human pressures on peatland using the Human Impact Index (HII). This metric quantifies the “cumulative anthropogenic pressures” on a region, using a scale of 0-50 that incorporates factors such as accessibility, land use and population density.
The map below shows human pressure in areas that contain more than 5% peatland by area. Light pink shows “low-pressure” regions, medium pink shows “medium-pressure” regions and dark pink shows “high-pressure” regions.
The top map shows the whole planet, while the three inset maps below highlight chosen case studies in Peru, the Congo Basin and Indonesia.
Human pressure in areas which contain more than 5% peatlands, where light pink shows “low-pressure” values, mid pink shows “medium-pressure” and dark pink shows “high-pressure” regions. Source: Austin et al. (2025).The authors find that globally, 22% percent of peatlands are under high human pressure, 12% are under medium pressure and 61% are under low pressure. The remaining 5% are in areas without reported HII data.
The authors find that almost half of peatlands in temperate regions are facing high human pressure, adding that Europe and the US east coast are under particular stress. At the other end of the scale, they estimate that human pressure is low in Brazil, the lowlands of Peru, the Republic of the Congo and eastern Indonesia.
The study says that, as expected, human pressure is “somewhat higher” in unprotected peatlands than protected peatlands. However, it adds:
“Nearly one-third of global peatlands, and nearly half of temperate and tropical peatlands in protected areas and Indigenous people’s lands, still experience medium-to-high human pressure.”
The chart below shows the area of peatland in protected and unprotected boreal, temperate and tropical regions that is facing high (black) medium (grey) and low (light grey) human pressure.
Peatlands in protected and unprotected boreal, temperate and tropical regions that are facing high (black) medium (grey) and low (light grey) human pressure. Source: Austin et al. (2025).Kalamandeen tells Carbon Brief that the study “underscores a fundamental disconnect between conservation priorities and real-world climate needs”.
However, she notes that there are some limitations to the methodology. For example, she tells Carbon Brief that the underlying peatland map “performs well in data-rich regions”, but says that “its accuracy drops where ground-truth data is lacking, notably in Africa, South America and boreal regions”.
Furthermore, the map only recognises peatlands deeper than 30cm, meaning that “shallower, but still ecologically valuable peatlands, are ignored”.
She continues:
“This study is an excellent starting point, but if we are serious about peatland protection, countries need to invest in better mapping and monitoring technologies such as using Earth observations and improving ground surveys to help refine conservation strategies.”
Peatland conservationThe new research “quantifies an issue that was previously known: that peatlands are under-protected when compared to other critical ecosystem types”, Dr Julie Loisel, a palaeoecologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, tells Carbon Brief. Loisel, who was not involved in the study, adds:
“In the face of rapid environmental change, ensuring that peatlands can ‘do their job’ of storing CO2 into their soils for the next few thousands of years is very important and any policy or land management effort that is enabling this simple goal should be put forth and prioritised.”
The study notes that several international policy frameworks, such as the global stocktake process under the Paris Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, can be applied to further the protection of wetlands.
For example, the authors note that Peru’s nationally determined contribution includes strategies for improving peatland management, such as establishing new conservation areas and recognising Indigenous peoples’ knowledge about peatlands.
However, Peru is one of the few countries with plans for the preservation of peatlands, alongside the UK, according to the study. Austin adds:
“Based on the nationally determined contributions countries have submitted to date, the continued disturbance and damage to global peatlands is getting very little attention as a significant and avoidable source of greenhouse gas emissions.”
In addition to protection of intact peatlands, peatland restoration “will be necessary for managing peat fires and meeting climate targets nationally”, the study says. Restoration typically involves altering the wetland’s water flows to “rewet” drained peat. It can also encompass controls on pollution, protection from burning and grazing and regrowing plants.
Lango Bai in Odzala-Kokoua National Park, Republic of the Congo. Credit: Danita Delimont / Alamy Stock PhotoBut while restoration can slow the release of CO2 and promote some ecosystem services, it is not an adequate substitute for peatland protection. The study notes:
“Notably, once emitted to the atmosphere, the carbon lost from peatlands cannot be restored on timescales that matter for preventing dangerous climate change.”
Promoting Indigenous peoples’ land rights is one way to support the protection of peatlands, Loisel says. She tells Carbon Brief:
“Conservation efforts do not necessarily imply ‘protection from use’, but are rather meant to ensure their ‘proper use’, or ‘sustainable use’. Indigenous community uses of peatlands have been known to be sustainable.”
Kalamandeen tells Carbon Brief that, while legal protections are “crucial”, their impact “depends on enforcement, management capacity and local engagement”. Meanwhile, she says that “Indigenous and community-managed lands, even without formal protection, often demonstrate strong conservation outcomes”.
Dr Adam Todd Hastie is the leader of the carbon and wetlands group at Charles University, and was not involved in the study. He agrees, calling Indigenous stewardship “often the best and most simple solution” to protecting peatlands.
However, he adds that global-north countries “need to be thoughtful in our calls for less economically developed countries to protect their peatlands”. He tells Carbon Brief:
“If we want less economically developed countries to take a different path of protecting their peatlands – and peat carbon – and to forgo short-term economic benefits, such as revenue from plantations or mining, we (especially Europe and North America) must contribute in real terms to developing alternative sustainable solutions, both environmentally and economically.”
Mapped: How extreme weather is destroying crops around the world
Food and farming
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|Mapped: How ‘natural’ world heritage sites are threatened by climate extremes
Nature
|Cropped 29 January 2025: Trump takes office; UK nature ‘falling short’; Egg prices soar
Cropped
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China’s construction of new coal-power plants ‘reached 10-year high’ in 2024
A “resurgence” in construction of new coal-fired power plants in China is “undermining the country’s clean-energy progress”, says a new joint report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM).
The country began building 94.5 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-power capacity and resumed 3.3GW of suspended projects in 2024, the highest level of construction in the past 10 years, according to the two thinktanks.
The accelerated buildout, fuelled by investment from the coal-mining sector, “raises critical concerns” about China’s ability to transition away from the fossil fuel, the report warns.
Analysts expect China’s huge clean-energy capacity additions to slowly squeeze coal’s share of electricity generation, as China works towards its “dual-carbon” goals of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and reaching carbon neutrality by 2060.
As things stand, rapid coal-power expansion is posing a “challenge” to China’s high-level climate commitments, including on reducing coal use, CREA and GEM argue.
They point to a range of policies that could help China get back on track, including ending new coal plant approvals, as well as power market and grid reform.
Construction feverConstruction started on 94.5GW of new coal-fired power plants in 2024, according to the study. It says this is a sign of continued momentum in developing new coal projects, despite government pledges to “strictly” control the use of the fossil fuel. The report adds that 3.3GW of suspended projects also resumed construction in 2024.
Approvals for new coal construction rebounded in the second half of the year to 66.7GW, after permitting only 9GW in the first half.
Taken altogether, the report says this signals a substantial amount of new capacity will come online in the next few years, “solidifying” coal’s place as a major source of electricity.
As shown in the chart below, China’s new or resumed construction of coal-power plants declined steadily from 84.3GW in 2015 to 32.1GW in 2021. However, it has since risen from 2022, driven by a wave of new projects.
New and resumed construction of coal capacity in China between 2015-2024, gigawatts. Credit: GEM and CREA.From 2022 onwards, new and revived proposals to initiate coal-power projects also surged, reaching 146GW in 2022 and 117GW in 2023 – well above pre-pandemic levels.
However, the report notes, new proposals fell to 68.9GW in 2024, which could point to “potential cooling in project initiation”. In 2023, China accounted for 95% of the world’s new coal construction.
Meanwhile, retirement and mothballing of old coal plants remains “low”, the report says. This is particularly pronounced in recent years, with the amount of capacity being closed down each year dropping sharply from around 13GW in 2020 to 2.5GW in 2024.
All of this stands in “direct conflict” with Chinese president Xi Jinping’s pledge in 2021 to “strictly limit the increase in coal consumption” between 2021 and 2026, the report says, as well as China’s 2030 carbon-peaking action plan. It adds:
“The policy direction set in China’s updated climate targets for 2035 under the Paris Agreement and the upcoming 15th five-year plan [2026-2030] will be critical to determining the trajectory of China’s coal-power sector and with that, its emissions trajectory.”
This echoes recent analysis published by Carbon Brief.
Fuelled by industry interestsThe renewed coal drive is largely being pushed by the mining industry, according to the report, with coal-mining companies increasingly investing in coal-power projects.
More than three-quarters of all newly approved coal power projects were financed by “coal mining companies or energy groups with coal-mining operations”, the study says.
It suggests this may be partly driven by China’s “dual-carbon” goals, which have pushed those companies to diversify in order to “secure stable demand for their output through 2030 and beyond”.
These investments include integrated coal mine-to-power and “pithead” plants, as well as typical coal-fired power plants developed by energy groups with coal-mining operations.
The report notes that many regional coal and energy companies have “intensified” coal-power investments, “aligning their strategies to sustain coal’s dominance at the provincial level”.
It adds that major coal-producing provinces – such as Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi and Gansu – were also commissioning and building the most new coal power, as shown in the map below. However, China’s biggest coal-producing province, Shanxi, was not among the provinces with the most activity around new coal power in 2024.
By province, Chinese coal plants that have been commissioned, begun construction, permitted and retired in 2024. Credit: GEM and CREA. ‘Undermining’ the energy transitionThe rapid buildout of coal could combine with structural features of the power system that favour the coal industry, the report says, to limit renewables’ ability to become China’s main provider of electricity.
China installed record amounts of renewable energy capacity in 2024, bringing total solar and wind capacity up to 890GW and 520GW, respectively. Coal capacity in 2024 was 1,200GW.
The growing amount of low-carbon electricity in China’s mix was expected to cover new demand and reduce coal’s importance in the system, in a policy known as “establish [new systems] before breaking [old ones]” (先立后破).
However, the report notes, the flurry of new coal construction “makes it increasingly difficult to achieve” this. Instead, it says there is a risk that renewable energy will be treated as a supplementary power source “layered on top” of coal.
This is partly due to several policy structures that prioritise the use of coal power and protect the industry’s interests, it explains.
Most power grids lock in coal-power supply through mechanisms such as medium- to long-term contracts for purchasing power and long-term coal supply agreements, obligating provinces to use a certain amount of the fuel, even when other sources of electricity are more cost-effective.
Provincial governments are also moving away from requiring power purchase agreements (PPAs) to include a minimum share of solar and wind, the report says, resulting in “an uneven playing field where coal power remains insulated from risk while wind and solar developers face price fluctuations and uncertain demand”.
The development of new coal-power plants will “further limit grid space for renewables”, it adds, making it harder for solar and wind power generators to gain significant market share.
Coal’s predominance in the system may have also led to a substantial recent uptick in curtailment of renewable energy. According to calculations in the report, the final quarter of 2024 likely saw a curtailment rate of around 5.5%, rather than the officially reported 3.2%.
The report attributes this to “structural constraints”, rather than weather-driven availability of solar and wind resources.
Opportunity for change in 2025Forecasts by the coal industry signal that it expects the coal-power sector to continue growing, causing “increasingly unsustainable conflict” between China’s energy security and low-carbon policies, the report notes.
The report suggests strong policy direction in 2025 would be needed to counteract coal’s dominance in the energy system.
This could be achieved, firstly, by reducing the amount of coal in the energy system, such as by setting “ambitious and measurable” targets for reducing coal consumption, phasing down coal plants, utilisation of coal plants in operation and uptake of renewables.
Other potential levers could include ending new coal-power plant approvals and accelerating the retirement of older units.
Secondly, the report points to reform of the mechanisms that steer power providers towards coal – including reducing the amount of coal covered in long-term PPAs and coal supply agreements – and prioritising grid reform and the development of spot markets.
These steps, it argues, would “help implement China’s ambition to phase down coal, create space for renewables, and drive a cleaner, more efficient energy system”.
The Carbon Brief Interview: Prof Wang Can
China Policy
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China energy
|Q&A: What could a US-China trade war mean for the energy transition?
China Policy
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Cropped 12 February 2025: Trump chaos; COP16 leadership in question; How global trade harms forest species
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 Trump chaosTRUMP TARIFFS: US president Donald Trump’s escalating trade war with the rest of the world sent ripples through global food markets this month. Trump introduced a 10% tariff on goods imported from China, but delayed his planned 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico after reaching a deal for the two countries to increase border controls, the Associated Press reported. Reuters said that retaliatory tariffs from countries targeted by Trump could significantly harm the US agricultural sector. China, Canada and Mexico are the “top three markets” for US farm products and imported $94bn in agricultural goods from the nation in 2023, according to the newswire. CNN presented three charts illustrating how the tariff war could increase the prices of US groceries, from “fresh avocados to dairy products”.
AID CUTS: The Trump administration also unveiled dramatic reductions to the work of USAid, the country’s main international development arm, the New York Times reported, with leaked plans suggesting staff would be cut from 14,000 to just 294. The move has put around $500m of food aid at risk of spoilage after staff cuts and funding freezes have left the agency in “chaos”, the Guardian reported. Reuters said the dismantling of USAid “is crippling the intricate global system that aims to prevent and respond to famine”. Civil Eats reported that USAid typically purchases $2bn in rice, wheat, lentils and peas from US farmers each year, “prompting questions about how the agency’s shuttering might also impact rural America”. Bloomberg said the Department of Agriculture confirmed that the US will keep buying agricultural commodities to supply food aid in the world’s poorest countries.
NATURE AT RISK: The dismantling of USAid could also have large ramifications for global efforts to tackle nature loss, the Revelator reported, noting that the agency funds efforts to “reduce wildlife poaching and trafficking, tackle deforestation, assist environmental refugees, study animal populations in the wild and protect people in critical habitats”. The New York Times reported that the 150 scientists behind the first US national nature assessment, which was shut down by a Trump executive order, are hoping to find a way to release their findings without government backing. It comes after the assessment’s lead author, Dr Phil Leven, sent an email to his fellow authors saying “this work is too important to die”, according to the publication.
Natural heritage at riskECOSYSTEMS THREATENED: Three-quarters of the world’s “natural heritage sites” will face at least one “climate pressure” by the end of the century, under an “intermediate” scenario of climate change, according to new research covered by Carbon Brief. Natural heritage sites are those that are “recognised internationally as the most important ecosystems on Earth”, including sites such as the Galápagos Islands, Serengeti national park and the Great Barrier Reef, according to the article. The research also found that, under the highest emissions scenarios, nearly all such sites will experience extreme heat exposure, with many also facing the compounding impacts of drought or extreme rainfall, by 2100.
BIODIVERSITY LOSS: As part of their study, the authors assessed biodiversity loss inside natural heritage sites to date. They identified 14 natural heritage sites with “vulnerable” levels of biodiversity. These were mainly located in South America, mainland Africa, and on various coasts and islands, including Brazil’s Pantanal conservation complex, Mount Kenya’s national park and Australia’s Ningaloo Coast, according to the research. The researchers added that these vulnerable sites are likely to face the greatest climate risks as the planet warms. Elsewhere, the Guardian reported on efforts to save polar heritage sites on a Canadian Arctic island sinking into the Beaufort Sea.
Spotlight How global trade harms forest speciesThis week, Carbon Brief explores a new Nature study which examined how consumption in 24 countries leads to “outsourced” deforestation and biodiversity loss.
Deforestation linked to consumption in major economies, such as the US and China, is harming forest-dwelling animals, according to a new study.
The research found that consumption in many nations led to “outsourced losses of biodiversity” as a result of forest clearance abroad.
The impacts are “substantial, widely distributed and strongly structured by geography and trade linkages”, the study noted. The lead study author, Alex Wiebe, a graduate student at Princeton University, was “surprised” by the magnitude of the findings. He told Carbon Brief:
“The cumulative [biodiversity loss] impacts of the countries we examined were 15 times greater to species outside of their borders than within them. This suggests that the vast majority of a developed country’s impacts on global biodiversity happens outside of its borders.”
The researchers quantified the loss of area in which more than 7,500 forest-dwelling birds, mammals and reptiles lived around the world between 2001 and 2015.
They analysed a dataset attributing land deforested during the study period to the production of goods imported and consumed in 24 countries – including the US, China and UK.
Many of these countries are “effectively moving biodiversity losses overseas”, the study concluded, by “driving land-use change in other countries through their consumption of imported agricultural and forestry products”.
‘Disproportionate harm’ on far-flung speciesThe findings showed that the US contributed by far the most to international forest species’ range loss, followed by Japan and China.
Dr Janice Lee, an environmental scientist at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said the study “advances our understanding and quantification of how international trade affects global biodiversity.”
The “important work” adds to ongoing discussions around the impact of global trade on deforestation and biodiversity, Lee, who was not involved in the research, told Carbon Brief.
Many of the impacts occurred between neighbouring countries, but in some cases nations “inflicted disproportionate harm” on species thousands of miles away, the study said.
Almost half of all of the species range losses recorded far away from the examined countries were in Madagascar, possibly driven by deforestation for vanilla production, the researchers wrote.
Dr Erasmus zu Ermgassen, a scientist at Belgian university UCLouvain, said the study is “interesting”, but “perhaps a bit one-dimensional”.
Zu Ermgassen, who was not involved in the study, noted that biodiversity loss can be driven by “domestic economies and politics within the tropics” as well, rather than solely from consumption abroad. He added that species range impacts do not consider “other wildlife, habitats, nor the humans living in those landscapes”.
The study noted the “limited spatially explicit data on attributable deforestation” and the complications that would occur with broadening the research scope.
The impact countries have on biodiversity in other parts of the world is a topic that deserves more attention, Wiebe told Carbon Brief, noting:
“In the future, understanding how countries impact non-forest species, how the impacts of countries are changing over time, and which products are most closely tied with threats to wildlife in different parts of the world will all be important to investigate.”
News and viewsSUSANA QUITS: Colombian politician Susana Muhamad resigned as environment minister, leaving her position as president of the COP16 nature talks in question, El Espectador reported. COP16 will resume in Rome on 25 February after countries failed to find consensus on all negotiating issues in Colombia in 2024. In a public resignation letter, Muhamad appealed to her president, Gustavo Petro, for permission to stay on as head of the talks. In an interview with Colombian TV network Noticias Caracol, Muhamad confirmed it will be down to Petro to decide if she can remain in post.
FOOD CHAIN RISKS: An Arctic geoengineering project will end its operations after identifying environmental concerns and “potential risks” to the region’s food chain, Climate Home News reported. Climate and Indigenous campaigners “welcomed” the shutdown of the experimental project, which aimed to release small silica particles over the ocean to “in theory reflect sunlight from the surface and cool down melting ice”, the outlet said. Panganga Pungowiyi from the Indigenous Environmental Network, told Climate Home News: “Our concerns about the reckless use of harmful materials were dismissed, yet we knew that the health of our ecosystems and the wisdom of our people must not be overlooked.”
CLEARING WAY: Indonesia’s government is eyeing up 2.3m hectares of protected forest – “an area 30 times the size of New York City” – that could be converted to produce food and biofuel crops, according to Mongabay. This formed part of wider plans to convert 20m hectares of forest into “food and energy estates”, which the outlet said could lead to the “largest deforestation project in the country’s history”. The consideration to convert protected land “raised alarms among environmental groups and lawmakers”, the outlet said. The country’s forestry minister, Raja Juli Antoni, said that the plan does not target pristine rainforests, arguing that it could rehabilitate degraded protected forest areas, Mongabay added.
SHARK ATTACKS: The Times reported that a spate of deadly shark attacks in Australia have coincided with a warning from scientists that warming seas could be drawing the predators closer to popular swimming locations. Prof Culum Brown, a shark expert at Sydney’s Macquarie University, told the publication that the city “needed to prepare for more sharks in popular swimming areas as climate change raises sea temperatures and makes conditions more hospitable for the predators, especially bull sharks”. Australia’s NewsWire reported that a “long-term increase” in shark attacks occurring could be linked to both “an increasing number of people swimming in the ocean and climate change”.
MINING FOR GOLD: Permits for at least 79 “semi-industrial gold mining and exploration projects” were issued in the Sangha region of the Republic of Congo over the past four years – “despite the area being officially designated for a REDD+ project”, a Mongabay investigation found. REDD+ projects are “designed to reduce deforestation”, but “since mining contributes to deforestation, these two activities are fundamentally incompatible”, environmentalist Justin Landry Chekoua told the outlet. Mongabay further detailed the impact of mining in the Sangha region, in which forests have been uprooted and “streams that were once drinkable are now vast, muddy stretches of uninviting water”.
CATTLE CONSPIRACY: Scientists described misinformation about a methane-cutting cattle feed additive as a “wake-up call” to improve communication with farmers and the public, the Guardian reported. Last November, major food company Arla announced plans to pilot using Bovaer, a cattle feed additive, to “reduce the carbon footprint of its products”, the Guardian said. This “quickly became a social media storm about the health effects of the additive, with people videoing themselves throwing away products by the brand and pouring milk down their sinks in protest”, the newspaper said. The UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) said that “there are no safety concerns when Bovaer is used at the approved dose”. The FSA’s chief scientific adviser, Prof Robin May, told a press briefing this week: “The more communication and transparency the better.”
Watch, read, listenGROWING PAINS: An article in Grist explored how climate change is altering the types of crops grown across the world.
DARK DOLPHIN MAGIC: A short documentary by Mongabay investigated the illegal exploitation of endangered pink river dolphins in the Amazon, driven by a myth about their magical properties.
REVEALING REVOLUTION: Through photographs, Undark magazine showed the “downstream effects of India’s green revolution”.
SPOKEN WORD: The Third Pole Podcast from Dialogue Earth explored the impact of climate change on Indigenous languages in Pakistan’s remote mountain communities.
New science- Climate change could have a variable impact on cocoa yields in west and central Africa, a region responsible for much of the world’s production, according to new research in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. The study found that wetter conditions could drive yield increases in Nigeria and Cameroon, but decreases in the Ivory Coast and Ghana.
- The widespread deployment of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) to remove CO2 from the atmosphere would violate multiple “planetary boundaries”, according to a new study in Communications Earth and Environment. It noted that widespread BECCS use would have the largest impact on the boundary for land ecosystems.
- A new rice variety showed methane emission reductions of up to 70% in paddy field trials over a three-year period, according to a Molecular Plant study. The findings “offer great possibilities” to mitigate the climate impact of rice, the researchers claim.
- 23 February: Germany general election
- 24-28 February: 62nd session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change | Hangzhou, China
- 25-27 February: Resumed session of the UN biodiversity summit COP16 | Rome
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 29 January 2025: Trump takes office; UK nature ‘falling short’; Egg prices soar
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|Cropped 15 January 2025: LA up in flames; Illegal rewilding in Scotland; COP30 dredging cancelled
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|Cropped 18 December 2024: No UN deal for drought; Brazil beef investigations; New IPBES reports
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|Cropped 4 December 2024: Climate talks omit nature; Land COP underway; ‘Frankenchickens’
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| jQuery(document).ready(function() { jQuery('.block-related-articles-slider-block_f119db498a8b683deaaac2260f4f6b8d .mh').matchHeight({ byRow: false }); });The post Cropped 12 February 2025: Trump chaos; COP16 leadership in question; How global trade harms forest species appeared first on Carbon Brief.
分析：2024年中国清洁能源创纪录增长遏制CO2上升
中国清洁能源创纪录的增长使该国二氧化碳（CO2）排放量在2024年的后10个月里保持在低于上年同期的水平。
然而，Carbon Brief 基于官方和商业数据进行的新分析显示，2024年1月和2月，中国正处于疫情解封经济反弹的尾声阶段，加之能源需求异常高的增长，2024年全年CO2排放量未能下降。
尽管中国2024年的CO2排放量相比2023年增长了0.8%，但与截至2024年2月前的12个月期间相比，排放量有所减少。
该分析的其他主要调研结果包括：
- 2024年第四季度，中国的CO2排放量同比增长0.6%，原因外界对经济刺激措施的预期推动了工业用煤使用量和石油需求的上升。
- 此外，2024年最后一个季度风能和太阳能发电量低于预期水平，煤电则同比持平，这可能是因为煤电项目获得优先并网。
- 随着大型风能、太阳能和核电项目竞相试图在“十四五”规划期结束前完工，2025年清洁能源发电装机将加速增长。
- 2024年夏季以来，工业用电需求增长放缓，全年第四季度的能源总需求增速也有所下降。
- 这些因素预计将在2025年推动中国的燃煤发电量下降，这将对全球能源市场和排放产生重要影响。
- 然而，如果政府通过刺激政策推动工业需求增长，尤其是房地产市场复苏，可能会改变这一趋势。
最新分析表明，与以往类似，2025年的政策决策将对中国未来几年的排放轨迹产生重大影响，尤其是中国将在2025年同时制定《巴黎协定》下新的国家自主贡献承诺，以及该国的下一个五年规划。
2024年2月以来排放量趋稳中国在2023年3月正式结束疫情“清零”政策，导致能源需求从3月到2024年2月同比快速增长。
这使得中国在2024年第一季度的CO2排放量增长了3.8%。
.innerArt>ol { font-family: 'PT Serif'; font-size: 18px !important; }2024年3月至12月，排放量趋于稳定。这是由于清洁电力供应的增长满足了全部电力需求增长，与此同时，水泥和钢铁生产的排放量由于建筑材料需求的萎缩而下降。如下图所示。
2024年2月后，石油消费增长也趋于稳定。化工行业的煤炭使用量以及其他工业部门的煤炭和天然气使用量继续增长，抵消了建筑材料行业排放量的下降。
下图显示了2024年后10个月排放平稳期的各影响因素，在有数据情况下按燃料和行业分列。
非化石能源发电量增长在2023年首次创纪录后再创新高，较2023年增加了逾500TWh（太瓦时）。
这一增量超过了德国2023年全年的总发电量。其中，太阳能发电占清洁电力供应增长的一半。
第四季度排放量小幅上升 上微信关注《碳简报》在第四季度，尽管电力行业的排放量保持稳定，但电力以外的工业排放量出现增长。由于电力行业排放量的减少未能抵消这部分增长，因此总体排放量估计同比增加0.6%。
中国的CO2排放量在2024年第一季度上升，但自3月起开始下降。在第二季度下降了1%，第三季度趋于稳定。
这其中的主要因素是电力行业以外的石油和天然气需求反弹。下图中“所有行业”和“其他行业”下的长条显示了这一点。
国家统计局初步数据显示，2024年第四季度，天然气和石油需求分别同比增长10%和3%。
同时，成品油供应下降1.5%，因此石油需求的增长显然完全来自化工行业的原油消费。
此外，受2024年9月底出台的刺激政策影响，钢铁产量有所回升。在2024年1月至9月累计下降了4%后，10月至11月增长2%，12月增长12%。
然而，12月的增长主要是因为2023年12月钢铁产量曾骤降15%，这是为了遵守政府设定的当年钢铁产量上限而采取的紧急措施。因此，2024年12月的钢铁产量同比大幅增加，但仍低于2022年水平。
天然气消费量正在从2022年的消费量下降（因当年天然气价格飙升所致）中恢复，但今年的需求增长预计将放缓。
水泥产量在2024年最后一个季度同比下降6%，延续了自2020年开始的下降趋势。由于建筑活动减少，中国的水泥产量已从峰值下降近四分之一。
煤电与清洁能源的冲突如上图所示，2024年第四季度电力行业的排放量保持平稳，煤炭排放量略有下降，天然气排放量略有上升。然而，鉴于电力需求增速放缓至3.5%，排放量本应下降。
尽管10月至11月电力需求增长放缓，化石燃料发电量却继续增长。通过万德（Wind）金融终端获得的中国电力企业联合会的数据显示，这是由于风能和太阳能发电利用率都急剧下降。
利用率在不同月份有所波动是正常现象，尤其是风电利用率会因风力条件而变化，但这一时期太阳能发电利用率的降幅创下有记录以来的最大值。而无论是太阳能还是风能，此次利用率下降都无法用天气条件充分解释。
.cb-tweet{ width: 65%; box-shadow: 3px 3px 6px #d3d3d3; margin: auto; } .cb-tweet img{ border: solid 1.25px #333333; border-radius: 5px; } @media (max-width:650px){ .cb-tweet{ width:100%; } }如果利用率下降不是由天气原因造成的，那么另一个可能的原因是可再生能源弃电量的增加，即不能被完全并入电网的太阳能和风能电力增加。
然而，官方报告的弃电率仅小幅上升。
11月未报告的风能和太阳能弃电量明显增加，显示出中国电力市场可能会出现的问题，尤其是当对煤电的需求开始下降时。
政府一直在推动电力买家与煤电公司签订保证煤电销量的长期合同。这已经成为一种支撑盈利能力和新煤电产能投资的方式。
然而，这一政策似乎正与清洁能源增长以及减少排放的努力发生冲突。
当清洁能源发电量增长超出预期，或电力总需求增长低于预期时，签订了长期合同的电力买家可能会面临违约处罚，除非他们拒绝清洁能源电力供应，转而购买煤电。
当大量新增煤电装机容量进入市场时，这种冲突会更加突出。这些新机组往往设有内部生产目标，并且至少在某些情况下已提前签订购电协议，因此即使电网没有足够空间，它们也不愿减少出力。
值得注意的是，在2015年前后可再生能源弃电首次成为中国的主要问题，当时煤电需求正在下降。
统计分析还显示，当煤电产能利用率下降时，风能和太阳能利用率往往也会下降——这与预期情况相反。在一个运行良好的市场中，当清洁能源供应增加时，煤电的利用率应当下降。
有统计模型利用每日气象数据预测各省太阳能和风能利用率，但该模型未能预测到2024年10月和11月的利用率下降，这表明天气状况并非主因。
如果2025年电力需求增长放缓，且新增清洁能源装机容量如预期般创下新高（见下），煤电与清洁能源之间的矛盾可能会加剧。煤电需求可能会下降，即使煤炭行业预计仍会快速扩张。
解决这一冲突的唯一可能方式是放宽政府的长期购电合同目标，并接受煤电产能利用率下降。
2024年排放量是否达峰？我们在一年前的分析中曾预测，中国的碳排放量将在2024年3月由增转降，并持续减少，最终在2024年全年减少2%。
这一预测基于以下三个假设：
- 清洁能源新增装机持续增长；
- 水力发电量恢复至历史平均水平；
- 在2020年至2023年疫情及后疫情时期能源消费异常快增长后，能源消费增速将放缓。
从实际情况来看，清洁能源装机不仅保持增长，而且进一步加速，2024年新增风能和太阳能装机容量有望创下新纪录。水电发电量也有所恢复，但尚未完全恢复到历史平均水平。
下图显示，新增清洁能源装机规模（柱图）足以覆盖新冠疫情前的历史能源需求增长水平（灰色曲线）。
事实上，2024年清洁能源供应的增长远超2015年至2020年间任何一年的能源需求增长。然而，由于高度依赖高耗能产业拉动经济增长，2023年至2024年的能源需求增长高于历史水平，其增速明显快于疫情前的年份，即使在GDP增速放缓的情况依然如此。
具体而言，2024年中国的电力需求增长率为6.8%，而GDP增长率为5%。相比之下，去年的分析假设，在疫情结束及其直接影响消退后，电力需求增长率和GDP增长率将趋同。
这一差异足以推翻对2024年的排放量预测。由于能源需求增长远超预期，即使2024年清洁能源新增装机容量巨大，也只能使排放量保持稳定，而不能使其下降。
这意味着，尽管中国的CO2排放量自3月以来一直平稳，但全年仍可能略有增长，预计增幅约为0.8%，这主要由于1月至2月受疫情后经济反弹影响，排放量快速上升。
因此，根据当前估算，2023年并未成为中国碳达峰之年，因为排放量仍在上升。
从某种角度来看，尽管能源需求增长迅猛，排放量仍能保持稳定已是一项重大成就。但从另一个角度看，若要使全球气候目标仍然有可能实现，中国的排放量必须开始在绝对值上下降。
2025年清洁能源新增装机或将更大在2023年中国清洁能源装机容量（尤其是太阳能）大幅增长后，即使最乐观的预测也未能预料到2024年会进一步增长。
然而，2024年中国新增太阳能和风能发电装机容量分别同比增长28%和5%，分别有277GW（吉瓦）的太阳能和79GW的风能发电并网。
2025年清洁能源可能再创纪录，因为“十四五”规划（2021-2025年）即将收官，大型太阳能、风能和核电项目将加速完工。国企、地方政府和其他相关主体都在为实现各自设定的目标而努力。
根据TrendForce新能源研究中心的预测，2025年新增太阳能发电装机容量预计将与2024年相当，新增并网容量约265GW。
根据中金公司的预测，2025年新增风电装机将达110至120GW，或刷新纪录，其中海上风电预计将达到14至17GW，较2024年的7GW大幅增长。
在经过两年的低增长期后，中国的核电装机预计将显著增加，从目前的61GW增加到2025年底的65GW。
2024年底，中国新增了约3GW核电装机，其将从2025年开始为非化石能源供应做出贡献。此外，由于2023年和2024年获核准的核电项目数量创历史新高，目前中国共有55GW核电机组已获批或在建，意味着未来五年平均每年将有超过10GW的核电机组投产。
此外，根据全球能源监测（Global Energy Monitor）提供的2024年4月在建水电容量数据，减去去年已投产的容量，截至2024年底，中国仍有至少14GW的常规水电项目在建。
总体来看，2025年可能并入中国电网的新增太阳能、风电、水电和核电装机预计每年可提供超过600TWh的电力，高于2024年新增的500TWh清洁能源发电量。
然而，如上所述，如果新增清洁能源装机能顺利并网且不会出现大规模弃电问题，新增部分才能降低燃煤发电量和CO2排放量。
为了避免该情况发生，中国国家发改委于2025年1月初发布了一项新的电力系统行动计划，目标是在2025至2027年每年新增200GW以上的风能和太阳能消纳利用。
虽然这一目标低于近年来创纪录的新增清洁能源装机容量，但仍表明中央政府支持未来几年有类似的快速增长。
2024年12月，中国最高经济决策者呼吁在中国西部加快建设超大规模的清洁能源“基地”，并提出了创建“零碳工业园区”的新政策。由于工业园区排放的CO2占中国总排放量的30%，这一政策也将推动对清洁能源的进一步投资。
能源需求展望在未来，中国的排放量是保持稳定，还是达峰后开始下降，仍然取决于新增清洁能源装机与能源需求增长之间的竞赛。
关键问题在于，近期能源需求增长异常迅猛的趋势是否会持续下去，还是会放缓，从而进入一个能源需求增速低于GDP增速的时期。
此前，即2004年和2010年前后，都曾出现类似的能源需求快速增长期，但随后都经历了需求增长放缓的阶段。特别是在2015年前后，能源需求增长明显放缓，中国的排放量也在数年内趋于平稳。
从中国近期的能源需求数据来看，有迹象表明这一模式正在重演。
具体而言，电力需求在2023年和2024年工业大幅上升，但在2024年下半年明显放缓，如下图左上角所示。
服务业和居民用电量的反弹掩盖了这一现象。居民电力需求只是回归至疫情前的趋势线，而服务业电力需求仍低于该趋势线，这反映了疫情对经济结构的长期影响。
近期的能源需求激增，背后是侧重高耗能制造业的经济战略在推动。
由于中国的制造业扩张导致了供应过剩、工业产品价格下跌和利润下降，这一做法可能已达到其极限。
现在，中国政府的目标是通过刺激家庭消费（与制造业相比，家庭消费耗能更低）和“止跌企稳”房地产行业来加快经济增长。
然而，达成这一目标并非易事。2022年的经济工作会议也曾表示，疫情后的经济复苏应由消费主导，但这一愿景并未实现。
2024年的会议减少了对“高质量发展”的着墨，这一概念不鼓励由“低质量”的建设项目所驱动的增长。当局表示要“统筹好提升质量和做大总量的关系”，而2023年当局称“高质量发展”是“硬道理”。
中国能源和排放未来会怎样？在2024年创纪录的基础上，今年清洁能源的增加将进一步加快。与此同时，工业电力需求的增长自夏季以来已明显放缓。
这两种趋势表明，今年电力行业的排放量可能会下降。然而，政府的刺激措施可能会导致重工业再次出现快速增长，尤其是在建筑业反弹的情况下，这可能会抵消CO2排放量的下降。
如果建筑活动强劲复苏，可能会进一步推动排放增长。煤炭行业看涨，中国煤炭运销协会预计2025年煤炭消费将增长1%。
中国煤炭工业协会预计燃煤和燃气发电量将增长4.5%。该协会认为，扩大投资和稳定房地产市场的刺激政策将导致钢铁、水泥和其他主要耗煤行业的产量增加。
然而，即使政策制定者真的实施了建筑业刺激政策，一个关键问题是其效果有多大、速度有多快。
无论行业协会抱有怎样的希望，迄今为止政府的刺激措施尚未改变市场对钢铁需求下降的预期。
预计实施经济刺激政策的地方政府可能难以大幅增加支出，而且与以往的经济刺激周期相比，对新基础设施的需求要少得多。
如果政府能成功地将低耗能的家庭消费重振为增长来源，那么能源需求的增长就会恢复正常，清洁能源就可以轻松满足所有的增长需求。如果是这样，排放量将开始持续下降。
2025年之后，中国的能源和排放趋势将更加难以确定。例如，尽管最近出现了积极的信号，但今年之后新增清洁能源装机的速度更加不确定。
中国在《巴黎协定》下新的自主贡献承诺预计将在今年发布，其中包含2030年和2035年的目标。此外，涵盖2026至2030年的“十五五规划”将在今年编制，并在2026年初发布。因此，2025年做出的政策决定不仅会在今年，而且会在未来多年对中国的排放轨迹产生重大影响。
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Germany election 2025: What the manifestos say on energy and climate change
A federal election is taking place in Germany on 23 February, following the collapse of the coalition government at the end of last year.
Germans will vote to elect 630 members of the nation’s parliament.
Polling suggests there will be a political shift to the right, with the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the lead and far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) set to make significant gains.
A “traffic light” coalition of parties has ruled since 2021, led by the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), alongside the Green Party and the Free Democratic Party (FDP).
However, successive crises led to its breakup at the end of 2024, when the liberal, free market-oriented FDP split from the rest.
This prompted a vote of no confidence by the German parliament, which, in turn, triggered a snap election several months earlier than previously scheduled.
The coalition government has been plagued by ideological differences, particularly between the FDP and its two centre-left partners.
Climate policies were at the heart of many of the disputes.
The centre-left SPD and Greens have broadly favoured more public spending on climate issues, while the FDP is opposed to state intervention of any sort.
In the interactive grid below, Carbon Brief tracks the commitments made by each of the main parties in their election manifestos, across a range of issues related to climate and energy.
The parties covered are:
- Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU): The centre-right CDU and its regional Bavarian “sister party”, CSU, has been the dominant political force in modern Germany and is currently polling highest ahead of the election.
- Social Democratic Party (SPD): The centre-left SPD has led the ruling coalition in Germany since the last election in 2021 and has traditionally been the other dominant party in the nation’s politics.
- Green Party: The centre-left and environmentalist Greens have been part of the coalition government since 2021.
- Free Democratic Party (FDP): The FDP is an economically liberal party that prioritises free markets and privatisation. It was part of the coalition government, but its departure at the end of 2024 ultimately triggered the federal election.
- Left Party: In recent years, this left-wing, democratic-socialist party has lost much of its support base in the east of the country.
- Alternative for Germany (AfD): The far-right party has become a major force in the country’s politics over the past decade, particularly in eastern Germany.
- Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW): The party was only founded last year, as an offshoot of the Left Party, but it has rapidly risen in popularity with a left-wing economic message and a conservative approach to some social and cultural issues.
Each entry in the grid represents a direct quote from a manifesto document.
iframe.policy-grid{ width:100%; border:none; } let eventMethod = window.addEventListener ? "addEventListener" : "attachEvent"; let eventer = window[eventMethod]; let query = "#de-election-2025-policy-grid"; let policyFrame = document.querySelector(query); let messageEvent = eventMethod == "attachEvent" ? "onmessage" : "message"; eventer(messageEvent, function(e) { console.log('parent received message!: ',e); if(e.data && e.data.height && e.data.type=='resize'){ policyFrame.height = Number(e.data.height) + 5; } },false); Net-zero and climate framingClimate action has become a divisive topic in German politics.
This is evident in the major parties’ manifestos, which range from supporting more ambitious net-zero goals to outright climate scepticism.
Germany is currently aiming to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045, with interim targets including a 65% cut by 2030.
Government climate advisors on the Council of Experts on Climate Change have stated that the nation is on track to miss the 2030 target.
Despite starting out with ambitious aims, the coalition’s climate progress has faltered, with the FDP successfully pushing for weaker climate policies. Moreover, a major court ruling curtailed the government’s climate spending by enforcing Germany’s limit on debt.
Amid these wider tensions, Germany’s two traditionally dominant parties still want to retain the nation’s headline climate target. The CDU, which is leading the polls in the run-up to election day, commits to meeting the Paris Agreement goals in its manifesto, saying its sights are “firmly set” on net-zero by 2045.
The SPD, which is currently third in the polls and likely to end up in coalition with the CDU, also supports the 2045 net-zero target, as well as the interim goals.
However, the two parties differ substantially in their approach to meeting the 2045 target. The CDU prioritises carbon pricing and rejects the tougher policies to decarbonise heating and transport favoured by the SPD. (See: Heating dispute and Combustion engine phaseout.)
Meanwhile, the AfD manifesto repeatedly questions the “supposed scientific consensus” on “man-made climate change”. The party, which is currently second in the polls, “therefore rejects every policy and every tax that is related to alleged climate protection”.
Mainstream German parties across the spectrum have long agreed to a “firewall” against far-right groups, meaning they will not form coalitions with the AfD. However, the CDU recently sparked controversy when it backed an anti-immigration policy with the AfD.
The Green Party also supports the 2045 net-zero target in its manifesto, emphasising Germany’s status as the EU member state with the highest emissions. The Left Party goes further, calling for a 2040 net-zero goal.
As for the FDP, its manifesto argues for the 2045 net-zero goal to be pushed back to 2050, stating that this would align Germany with the EU target. Prior to exiting the coalition government last year, the party had demanded this policy change, claiming that it would be a way to boost the German economy.
(Germany already revised its net-zero target, bringing it forward by five years, following a supreme court ruling in 2021 that its 2050 goal was insufficient. Moreover, even with a later goal, Germany would still need to align with wider EU targets, meaning its climate policies may not change much due to its “effort sharing” obligations.)
Finally, the BSW is not specific about when the net-zero goal should be achieved, but pushes for a “departure from the wishful thinking of quickly achieving complete climate neutrality”.
It does not reject climate policies outright, stating that climate change should be “taken seriously”. However, it frames many climate policies as being “extremely expensive and often unrealistic”.
Heating disputeHome heating has become a major political issue in Germany. Along with transport, buildings make up one of the key German sectors that have repeatedly missed their decarbonisation goals, prompting the coalition government to take action.
Towards the end of 2023, the German parliament passed an amendment to the Building Energy Act, meaning that newly installed heating systems had to be powered by at least 65% renewable energy.
This covered heat pumps, “hydrogen-ready” gas boilers and other low-carbon systems. There are caveats to ensure the law is phased in gradually in different areas and types of homes, starting with new builds.
The amendment had been watered down compared to the coalition’s initial proposal, with allowances for people to keep gas boilers for longer. This followed relentless campaigning by the AfD and the right-leaning tabloid newspaper Bild, which dubbed the policy the “heizhammer” – or “heating hammer”.
There were also attacks from within the coalition, with the FDP criticising the law proposed by its partners in the Greens and SDP. Opponents framed the policy as an excessive burden on consumers.
These disputes are reflected in the election manifestos, with many parties outright rejecting the amended law. The CDU, FDP and AfD all say they would abolish it, as does the populist left BSW.
Meanwhile, the Green Party pledges to provide more government support for the installation of new heating systems by covering up to 70% of the price. The Left Party commits to covering 100% of the cost for low-income households.
(The current law covers 30% of the cost as a starting subsidy, with more available for low-income households and people who replace their boilers before 2028.)
Combustion engine phaseoutSeveral German political parties are pushing back against the EU-wide ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars, which is set to come into effect in 2035.
The CDU says the “ban on combustion engines must be reversed”, while the AfD says the “one-sided preference for electromobility must be stopped immediately”.
(EVs are “likely crucial” for tackling transport emissions, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC].)
The FDP and the BSW also argue that the 2035 phaseout date should be dropped, with less focus on the transition to electric cars. (This is in spite of Germany being the second-biggest manufacturer of electric cars in the world.)
These parties also favour getting rid of supposed “anti-car” policies. For example, they oppose speed limits on the German “autobahns” and support funding for alternative fuels, such as synthetic fuels.
The issue with ending the 2035 ban on new combustion-engine cars is that this policy is set at the EU level. Far-right and centre-right coalitions within the EU, including German parties, have been pushing hard to weaken the ban across the bloc.
However, the centre-left parties that may end up forming a coalition with the CDU, notably the SPD, stand by the 2035 phaseout date.
There is growing pressure on Germany’s car industry, linked to global competition and slow economic growth. Some German industry figures have stressed the need for consistent policy signals from the government, regarding the transition to electric vehicles.
Clean energy and fossil fuelsBroadly speaking, German parties on the left tend to be more supportive of renewables, while strongly opposing nuclear power. Those on the right are generally more open to nuclear and in some cases coal power.
Germany, which uses more coal than any other EU member state, has a coal power phaseout date of 2038. This is supported by the CDU and the FDP, but the Greens and the Left Party want a quicker phaseout by 2030.
(When the coalition government formed in 2021, the parties agreed to “ideally” move the coal phaseout date to 2030, but this has not happened formally. The SPD manifesto does not include any mention of coal power,)
Only the AfD advocates for the construction of new coal power plants, framing them as filling a gap until new nuclear plants are built.
Last year, Germany closed down its final nuclear reactors, bringing an end to a long-term plan to phase out the power source. However, nuclear power continues to be a politicised topic, with some arguing that its continued use is necessary to ensure the nation’s energy security.
Notably, the CDU suggests in its manifesto that it is open to reviving nuclear power in the future. It proposes an “expert review” around restarting closed plants and advocates for research on advanced nuclear technologies, such as small modular reactors.
Despite this wording, CDU leader Friedrich Merz has conceded that it is unlikely any old reactors will be restarted. This echoes views expressed by German utility companies and energy experts.
Both the CDU and the SPD support the expansion of renewables in their manifestos. The Greens include a specific target to achieve a net-zero electricity grid by 2035. By contrast, the AfD calls for an end to wind power expansion, in favour of other technologies.
Finally, both the far-right AfD and the BSW say the German government should repair the damaged Nord Stream pipelines in order to import what the BSW refers to as “cheap” gas from Russia. (The Baltic Sea pipelines were blown up in 2022 under mysterious circumstances.)
Germany has tried to wean itself off Russian gas since the country’s invasion of Ukraine, with considerable success. However, both the AfD and the BSW are more open to cooperating with Russia, and less supportive of Ukraine, than mainstream German parties.
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Guest post: How atmospheric rivers are bringing rain to West Antarctica
“Atmospheric rivers” are bringing rain to the frozen slopes of the West Antarctic ice sheet, hitting the ice shelves that play a major role in holding back rapidly retreating glaciers.
In a new study, my colleagues and I show how rain is occurring in sub-zero temperatures due to these “rivers in the sky” – long, narrow plumes of air which transport heat and moisture from the tropics to the mid-latitudes and poles.
Rain in Antarctica is significant, not only because it is a stark indicator of climate change, but because it remains an under-studied phenomenon which could impact ice shelves.
Ice shelves in Antarctica are important gatekeepers of sea level rise.
They act as a buffer for glaciers that flow off the vast ice sheet, slowing the rate at which ice is released into the ocean.
In the study, we explore the causes of rain falling on ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea embayment region, which stand in front of the critically important Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers.
Researchers have warned the collapse of ice shelves in this region could trigger the loss of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet over several centuries.
Rivers in the skyAtmospheric rivers are typically associated with bringing extreme rainfall to the mid-latitudes, but, in the frigid Antarctic, they can deliver metres of snow in just a few days.
In West Antarctica, atmospheric rivers deliver a disproportionate quantity of the year’s snowfall. Research shows they account for around 13% of annual snowfall totals, despite occurring on just a few days per year.
But what makes atmospheric rivers in Antarctica so interesting is that snow is only part of the story. In extreme cases, they can also bring rain.
To explore how extreme precipitation affects the Amundsen Sea embayment region, we focused on two events associated with atmospheric rivers in 2020. The summer case took place over a week in February and the winter case over six days in June.
We used three regional climate models to simulate the two extreme weather events around the Thwaites and Pine Island ice shelves, then compared the results with snowfall observations.
During both the winter and summer cases, we find that atmospheric rivers dumped tens of metres of snow over the course of a week or so.
Meanwhile, the quantities of rain driven by these events were not insignificant. We observed up to 30mm of rain on parts of the Thwaites ice shelf in summer and up to 9mm in winter.
A map of the Amundsen Sea embayment region in West Antarctica. Source: Produced by the British Antarctic Survey’s Mapping and Geographic Information Centre, 2025. A mountain to climbAntarctica’s cold climate and steep, icy topography make it unique. It also makes the region prone to rain in sub-zero temperatures.
The first reason for this is the foehn effect, which is when air forced over a mountain range warms as it descends on the downward slope.
Commonly observed across Antarctica, it is an important cause of melting over ice shelves on the Antarctic peninsula, the northernmost point of the continent.
When air passes over the mountainous terrain of the West Antarctic ice sheet during atmospheric river events, temperatures near the surface of the ice shelves can climb above the melting point of 0C.
This can accentuate the formation of rain and drizzle that stays liquid below 0C – also known as “supercooled drizzle”.
Another factor which leads to liquid drizzle, rather than snow, in sub-zero conditions is a lack of dust and dirt – particles which are usually needed to trigger the formation of ice crystals in clouds.
In the pristine Antarctic, these particles – which act as “ice nuclei” – are few and far between. That means that pure liquid water can exist even when temperatures are below 0C.
The origins of rain over ice shelvesIt is easy to assume that rain that reaches the surface in Antarctica is just snow that has melted after falling through a warm layer of air caused by the foehn effect. Indeed, this is what we initially supposed.
But our research shows that more rain reaches the surface of Antarctica when the air near the ground is within a few degrees of freezing.
At times when the foehn effect is strongest, there is often little or no rainfall, because it evaporates before it gets a chance to reach the surface.
However, we saw rain falling well above the warm layer of air near the surface, where temperatures were universally below 0C – and, in some cases, as low as -11C.
Rare rainRain in Antarctica is a rare occurrence. The region’s normally frigid temperatures mean that most precipitation over the continent falls as snow.
However, exactly how rare rain is in the region remains relatively unknown, because there are virtually zero measurements of rainfall in Antarctica.
There are a number of reasons for this – rain falls infrequently, and it is very difficult to measure in the hostile Antarctic environment.
Our results show that extreme events such as atmospheric rivers can bring rain. And it is likely that rain will become a more common occurrence in the future as temperatures rise and extreme weather events occur more frequently.
However, until rain starts being measured in Antarctica, scientists will have to rely entirely on models to predict rain, as we did in this research.
It is also not yet known exactly how rain could impact ice in Antarctica.
We do know that rain falling on snow darkens the surface, which can enhance melting, leading to greater ice losses. Meanwhile, rain that refreezes in the snowpack or trickles to the base of the ice can change the way that glaciers flow, impacting the resilience of ice shelves to fracture.
So, if we want to understand the future of the frozen continent, we need to start thinking about rain too. Because while rain may be rare now, it may not be for long.
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Analysis: 95% of countries miss UN deadline to submit 2035 climate pledges
Nearly 95% of countries have missed a UN deadline to submit new climate pledges for 2035, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Just 13 of the 195 parties signed up to the landmark Paris Agreement have published their new emissions-cutting plans, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs), by the 10 February deadline.
Countries missing the deadline represent 83% of global emissions and nearly 80% of the world’s economy, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
The COP30 summit in Brazil this November is being billed as a key moment for countries to increase their efforts towards achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.
In a 6 February speech, UN climate chief Simon Stiell said the “vast majority of countries have indicated that they [will] submit new plans this year” and “taking a bit more time to ensure these plans are first-rate makes sense”.
He added that countries need to submit their plans “at the latest…by September” in order to be included in the UN’s next global “synthesis” assessment of climate action ahead of COP30.
‘Quantum leap’Back in 2015, almost every nation on Earth adopted the Paris Agreement, a landmark climate deal aimed at keeping temperatures “well-below” 2C above pre-industrial levels, with an ambition of keeping them at 1.5C, by the end of the century.
As part of the agreement, countries committed to submitting new plans describing what they will do to cut emissions and adapt to climate change every five years. These are known as NDCs.
Countries also agreed to assess their progress towards meeting the Paris goals in a five-yearly “global stocktake” and then increase their efforts accordingly.
This “review and ratchet” step is key to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. This is because, when the agreement was adopted 10 years ago, it was clear that countries were far off track for meeting their goals.
They hoped this gap could be closed over time, based on future policy efforts and technologies. As such, the so-called “ratchet mechanism” requires each round of pledges to go further than the last and to represent countries’ “highest possible ambition”.
The first two rounds of NDCs took place in 2015 and 2020-21. The 10 February 2025 deadline for the third round of NDCs was confirmed as part of a “global stocktake” of climate action conducted in 2023. The deadline is nine months ahead of the start of COP30.
A section of the first “global stocktake”, agreed by countries at COP28 in Dubai, confirming that countries should submit their 2035 climate pledges in February 2025. Credit: UNFCCCAccording to the most recent UN emissions gap report, countries remain largely off track for meeting the Paris goals, with 2035 climate pledges needing to deliver a “quantum leap in ambition” to give the world a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C.
However, just 13 of the 195 parties to the Paris Agreement have met the UN deadline to publish 2035 climate pledges by 10 February.
Only two of the group of seven (G7) nations – the US and the UK – have come forward with new climate plans. However, the US submitted its NDC before the inauguration last month of Donald Trump, who has already begun the process of delivering his campaign promise to withdraw the nation from the Paris Agreement.
These countries, along with the other nations to meet the deadline – Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, New Zealand, Switzerland, Uruguay, Andorra, Ecuador and Saint Lucia, the Marshall Islands, Singapore and Zimbabwe – are visualised on the map below.
Countries meeting a UN deadline to submit 2035 climate pledges by 10 February. Credit: Tom Prater for Carbon BriefAnalysis by climate research group Climate Action Tracker has found that the new 2035 NDCs of Brazil, the UAE, the US and Switzerland are “not compatible” with a pathway for limiting global warming to 1.5C.
It also found that the UK’s new NDC is “1.5C compatible”, but noted that the nation would need to increase its spending on helping other countries tackle their emissions in order to do its “fair share” towards reaching the Paris goals.
The group has not yet analysed New Zealand’s NDC, but a climate expert within the country described it as “shockingly unambitious”.
Major polluters missingMany of the world’s largest emitters have cited technical issues, economic pressures and political uncertainty as reasons why they have not been able to meet the UN deadline.
EU officials said the bloc’s lengthy process for approving new legislation made it “basically impossible” to meet the deadline.
China has not confirmed when it will release its climate plan.
Unnamed Indian officials have said they are in “no hurry” to release the nation’s NDC and might submit it in the “second half of this year”, according to the Indian Express. They added that India’s NDC will “reflect the disappointment of the climate finance outcome at COP29 in Baku”, a “hint” that it is “unlikely to be a significant or ambitious upgrade of climate actions”.
Canada, Japan and Indonesia have all released draft versions of their 2035 climate plans, but have yet to submit them to the UN. Canada’s plan has faced criticism for setting an emissions pledge that is less ambitious than what its official climate advisors recommended.
Russia has not made any public comments about when it will release its new NDC. Its last major climate update came in 2021, when it pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2060.
Australia has indicated it will delay the release of its NDC until after the country’s election in May, “in part due to uncertainty about the ramifications of the US presidential election”, the Guardian reported.
At the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, a group including Canada, Chile, the EU, Georgia, Mexico, Norway and Switzerland pledged to release “1.5C-aligned” NDCs, but did not offer details on how this would be achieved or commit to meeting the February deadline.
History repeatsSeasoned COP watchers will note that it is the norm for the majority of countries to miss the deadline for their NDCs.
During the last round of pledges, only five countries met the February 2020 deadline, with most countries eventually publishing their pledges later in 2020 and 2021. (This was amid the Covid-19 pandemic.)
During a speech in Brazil on 6 February, UN climate chief Simon Stiell said the “vast majority of countries have indicated they will submit new plans this year” and that he believed “countries are taking this extremely seriously”, adding:
“So taking a bit more time to ensure these plans are first-rate makes sense, properly outlining how they will contribute to this effort and therefore what rewards they will reap. At the latest, though, the [UN climate change] secretariat team needs to have them on their desks by September to include them in the NDC synthesis report, which will come out before the COP.”
This article was updated to include countries that submitted 2035 climate pledges to the UN by the evening of 10 February.
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|Guest post: How climate change is causing ‘ecological grief’ for farmers in Ghana
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DeBriefed 7 February 2025: Hottest January on record; Trump tariffs; UN climate talks star in theatre thriller
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
NEW RECORD: Last month was the warmest January recorded on Earth, the Financial Times reported, based on data from the EU’s earth observation agency. This “surprise[ed] scientists who expected the cooling La Niña weather cycle in the tropical Pacific to slow almost two years of record-high temperatures”, the newspaper said. January 2025 was also the third-hottest month ever recorded.
2C ‘DEAD’?: The aim to limit global temperature rise to “well below” 2C is “dead”, said veteran climate scientist Prof James Hansen, after publishing an analysis on “underestimated” warming, the Guardian reported. The analysis focused on areas of “deep scientific uncertainty”, Carbon Brief science contributor Dr Zeke Hausfather told the newspaper, and, in his opinion, “represent[s] something closer to a worst-case opinion”.
NORTH POLE: A separate Guardian article noted that temperatures north of Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean soared more than 20C above average last Sunday. This put “actual temperatures close to ice’s melting point of 0C”, the newspaper said. Mika Rantanen, a scientist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, told the newspaper that it was “probably not the most extreme ever observed, but still at the upper edge of what can happen in the Arctic”.
Trump tariffs and funding cutsTRADE THREATS: US president Donald Trump sent ripples through global markets by adding a 10% tariff on goods imported from China, CNN reported. China retaliated with 10% tariffs on US “crude oil, agricultural machinery, large-displacement cars and pickup trucks”, plus 15% tariffs on coal and liquefied “natural” gas, Sky News said. Trump’s tariff threats against Mexico and Canada were paused for 30 days, the Associated Press noted.
CHANGES: Trump nominated Neil Jacobs, an ally previously “cited for misconduct”, as the new head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NPR reported. Elsewhere, 168 employees working on environmental justice programmes at the Environmental Protection Agency were placed on administrative leave, Reuters reported. Separately, the Guardian found that mentions of climate change were removed from the websites of “several major” US government departments.
FUNDING CUT FALLOUT: Hundreds of climate programmes funded by the US government “risk disappearing” after the Trump administration’s “attack” on the US aid agency, Climate Home News reported. USAID is a “major provider of grant-based finance for climate action in the global south”, the outlet noted. Amid the continued fallout from other federal funding cuts, Science reported: “Many scientists remain in limbo at thousands of academic institutions and nongovernmental agencies that rely on federal research grants.”
Around the world- LATE PLANS: Major polluters such as India and the EU are expected to miss the UN deadline to submit climate plans for 2035 by 10 February, the Financial Times reported. UN climate chief Simon Stiell said latecomers must submit plans “by September”.
- QUEENSLAND DOWNPOUR: Up to 1.5m of rain fell in Queensland, Australia last weekend in a deluge likely to have been exacerbated by climate change, the Sydney Morning Herald said. Scientists linked the rain to a “prolonged marine heatwave in the Coral Sea”, but noted that an official attribution study has not been carried out.
- UPHEAVAL: Indonesia’s special envoy for climate and energy said the Paris Agreement is “no longer relevant” for the country, Antara News said. Argentina is analysing the impact of withdrawing from Paris and other agreements after announcing it will follow Trump in exiting the World Health Organization, Ámbito said.
- OIL AND GAS: The Guardian reported on “growing internal backlash” against UK prime minister Keir Starmer’s potential plans to approve the controversial Rosebank oilfield. Starmer allegedly assured executives at energy company Equinor, Rosebank’s lead developer, of his support for the project, according to the Daily Telegraph.
- ROLLBACK: Equinor announced plans to halve renewable investment and increase oil and gas production by 10% over the next two years, BBC News said.
- COLLABORATION: An editorial in the Global Times, a major state-supporting newspaper in China, said that the nation and the EU should “strengthen cooperation” on climate change and “lead the rest of the world on a cooperative path of green development” in light of Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
The usual price for a night in an apartment in Belém, Brazil.
$15,266The currently offered “surreal” price for this November when the city will host COP30, the Associated Press reported.
Latest climate research- Rat numbers are on the rise in cities such as Washington DC, New York and Amsterdam due to climate change and other factors, according to a Science Advances study.
- Analysis in PLOS Climate found that some of the countries most vulnerable to climate change received disproportionately less adaptation-focused global government aid over a recent 10-year period.
- Strategies around energy demand could reduce emissions from buildings by 51-85% and transport by 37-91% by 2050, compared to a “current policies scenario”, research in Nature Energy 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“Natural” world heritage sites, such as the Galápagos Islands, Serengeti national park and the Great Barrier Reef, could be exposed to multiple climate extremes by the end of the century, a new study covered by Carbon Brief found. The maps show which sites will face climate impacts under low (top left), intermediate (top right), high (bottom left) and very high (bottom right) warming pathways. The dots are coloured red if the site will face climate impacts from heat, drought or extreme rainfall by the year 2100.
Spotlight Climate negotiations in the West EndThis week, Carbon Brief speaks to the writers of Kyoto, a new London play dramatising the signing of the first global agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions at COP3.
Carbon Brief readers are likely all-too familiar with the annual climate COP summits, where delegates from almost every country in the world negotiate on climate action.
In 1997, for the first time, developed nations agreed to set binding targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Now, a play in London’s West End delves into how this deal – the Kyoto Protocol – came about.
It was written by Joe Murphy and Joe Roberston, the playwrights behind The Jungle, a hit show set in a refugee camp in Calais, France.
Kyoto emerged from a desire to write about climate change in a “compelling way that would engage people”, Robertson told Carbon Brief:
“We had been talking a lot about the disagreeable nature of society at the moment and so we were looking for stories of agreement. The question of how to write about climate, and the search for a story of agreement, sort of fused together in finding and diving into the world of Kyoto and the protocol.”
Murphy said this kicked off two years of research and discussions with people involved in the Kyoto talks. He added:
“[We] spoke to incredible diplomats and delegates and scientists and lawyers and world leaders who, almost unanimously, were desperate to talk about this time and spoke with such emotion and pride.
“As artists trying to grapple with a subject that often despairs people, or disempowers people, or disengages people, we realised this was a route into the subject that could actually genuinely be dramatic, could genuinely have jeopardy.”
The Kyoto cast at the Soho Place theatre in January 2025. Source: Manuel Harlan.Kyoto – whose lead character is oil lobbyist Don Pearlman – is not short on drama as delegates fight about the placement of brackets and commas in the negotiating text to the bitter end. In one chaotic scene, translators go home after talks run too late, leaving negotiators in a mess of language.
The show also highlights how the real COP3 chair, Raúl Estrada-Oyuela from Argentina, “went out of his way to talk to everyone” in search of agreement, Robertson said:
“He understood that there are all sorts of influences on the conference floor…He would talk about the zone of agreement. With certain people, the zone of agreement was tiny, almost invisible…But you can expand out once you’ve established something that’s commonplace.”
The writers are working on two more COP plays – focused on Copenhagen in 2009 and Paris in 2015. Robertson said they are “really excited to think about how to represent those two very different conferences – each a stepping stone, it feels, to where we are today”.
Murphy added that they want to see more collaboration between science, activism, politics and arts to “tell these stories in really exciting ways”, saying:
“It’s thrilling and I think there’s so much more to do.”
Kyoto runs until 3 May 2025 at Soho Place in London.
Watch, read, listenSPOKEN WORD: The Third Pole Podcast from Dialogue Earth explored the impact of climate change on Indigenous languages in Pakistan’s remote mountain communities.
CRITICAL MINERALS: Issues around mining for cobalt – a mineral “essential to decarbonisation” – in the Democratic Republic of the Congo employ “new forms of old colonial practices”, researchers wrote in the Conversation.
CLEAN POWER: The head of the UK’s mission control for clean power, Chris Stark, discussed the UK’s energy and climate goals on the Bloomberg Zero podcast.
Coming up- 9 February: Ecuador general election
- 10 February: Deadline for countries to submit new nationally determined contributions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
- 14-16 February: Munich Security Conference, Germany
- The Guardian, environment desk work experience for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic applicants | Salary: Unknown. Location: London
- Climate Change Committee, senior executive officer analyst on land-use, agriculture and nature team | Salary: £45,308-£49,775. Location: London
- Human Rights Watch, senior researcher. Salary: $79,500-$85,000. Location: Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Climate & Community Institute, junior research fellowship | Salary: $50 per hour. Location: US, remote
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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Is Catherine King’s third Tullamarine runway approval valid? No, if climate impacts are included
by Mark Carter, first published at Pearls&Irritations
On 10 September 2024, federal aviation minister Catherine King gave Melbourne Airport the go-ahead to build a third runway.
Eighteen months earlier, on 10 February 2023, Melbourne Airport’s owner, Australia Pacific Airports Melbourne (APAM) submitted its draft Third Runway Major Development Plan to the Minister, for her approval.
The federal Airports Act specifies what APAM needed to include in its Plan, along with the procedure the Minister is required to follow in assessing the Plan.
Was the airport runway plan even valid?
Section 91 of the Airports Act (1)(h) (j) required APAM to set out its “assessment of the environmental impacts that might reasonably be expected to be associated with the development” together with “its plans for dealing with those impacts, including plans for ameliorating or preventing them.”
While APAM does the assessment, the impacts are not those preferred by the company but those that can be reasonably expected.
An increase in greenhouse gas emissions is one such environmental impact that might reasonably be expected to be associated with a third runway built to enable more flights to and from Melbourne Airport. Without the construction of the runway they wouldn’t be possible.
In fact APAM would appear to acknowledge such emissions. Their MDP states that “Consideration has also been given to ‘indirect’ and ‘off-site’ impacts, in order to ensure a holistic impact assessment of the whole environment, including: ‘Facilitated impacts’ — which result from further actions (including actions by third parties) which are made possible or facilitated by the project. Consideration shall be given to all adverse impacts that could reasonably be predicted to follow from the project, whether these impacts are within the control of M3R or not”.
But the MDP (Ch B11 Table B11.16) then contradicts this claim — to have considered adverse impacts outside its control — by going on to only report those greenhouse gases emitted during landing and take-off (LTO) of third runway enabled flights . These, coincidentally, are a tiny fraction of the ‘off-site’ ‘facilitated impacts’ from full flight emissions.
To justify the exclusion of full flight emissions APAM cites advice from the Airports Council International, “a non-profit association whose prime purpose is the advancement of airport interests” (Ch B11.4.2 p.99). Specifically ACI’s Guideline from 2009, suggests “emissions which an airport operator cannot influence to any reasonable extent” needn’t be counted when completing an airport GHG inventory.
Nonetheless, the Airports Act categorically requires an assessment of all reasonably expected environmental impacts, whether ‘on-site’ or ‘off-site’.
In summary, by failing to assess the environmental impacts of increased greenhouse gas flight emissions, APAM’s draft Major Development Plan was arguably not a valid Plan as defined by Section 91(1)(h) and (j) of the Airports Act.
Insofar as it was an invalid Plan, it was improper of APAM to make it available for public inspection and comment, as required by Section 92 (1) of the Airports Act.
Did the Minister even consider flight emissions impacts?
In deciding whether to approve the Plan, Section 94 of the Airports Act requires the Minister to “have regard to the … impact that carrying out the plan would be likely to have on the environment.” [Airports Act s.94(3)(c)].
APAM’s Plan failed to specify the impact of the significant growth in greenhouse gas emissions likely from the whole of the additional flights generated by the increased capacity of the airport. Nevertheless, did the Minister properly consider these impacts which could reasonably be expected?
Neither the Minister’s Statement of Reasons for Approval, nor the Conditions placed on Approval mention the increase in the emission of greenhouse gases over the lifetime of the development. As such, the Minister appears not to have had regard to them.
In summary, by failing to assess the environmental impacts of increased greenhouse gas flight emissions, as required of her under Section 94(3)(c), the Minister’s approval is arguably invalid.
Why did the minister not acknowledge full flight emissions?
In the face of its climate impacts, why would a Minister not account for full flight emissions in assessing approval of a third runway? Could it be that to do so might undermine the viability of the entire project?
APAM’s MDP reckons the third runway would risk suffering a “Major impact” if the emissions it enabled totalled “0.1% of Australia’s total annual GHG emissions excluding LULUCF”. It states that impact would include “Financial liability [including] capital costs due to implementation of GHG abatement technologies and/or offsetting under a decarbonisation strategy; or financial liability due to [any] future emissions trading scheme and/or carbon tax”. [And] “negative reputation and media attention globally, with follow-on effects including political implications [such that the] project is significantly delayed and/or cancelled.”
So, if the projected annual full flight emissions enabled by a third runway are totalled, are they actually anywhere near that 0.1% threshold?
Let’s do some calculations.
Melbourne Airport reported (p.10) their 2019 LTO emissions were 300,000 tonnes of CO2e. And their full flight (scope 3) emissions were 4,750,000 tonnes. That is, full flight emissions were around 16 times more than those during landing and takeoff.
In 2031 APAM projects additional LTO emissions enabled by a third runway, to be 50,000 tonnes CO2e, and 348,000 tonnes in 2046. Or 0.009% in 2031 and 0.06% in 2046 of Australia’s total annual GHG emissions excluding LULUCF. Assuming they remain roughly 16 times those of LTO, those percentages, for full flight emissions, will balloon to around 0.14% in 2031 and 0.96% in 2046 — exceeding APAM’s own risk of closure threshold.
By its proponent’s own assessment, the Third Runway is at risk of cancellation — if the Minister counted its full flight emissions.
Is the Minister constraining full flight emissions in other ways?
Aviation emissions are back to the pre-Covid annual growth rate of 4%. Yet the Net Zero unit in the Minister’s Department of Infrastructure has set no emissions reduction target for the domestic aviation sector. Not even one that aligns with either of the dangerously inadequate 43% national cut by 2030, or the “Net Zero 2050” goal.
In this deregulated context domestic flight emissions at a three-runway Melbourne Airport are estimated to grow 55% (on 2005 levels) by 2030, and by 83% when international flights are included. Cumulative full flight CO2e emissions from the additional flights enabled by a third runway are estimated to total 40 million tonnes by 2046.
Meanwhile the Safeguard Mechanism counts only emissions from domestic flights by Qantas and Virgin Australia, and requires annual ‘reductions’ of just 4.9%. These are not achieved through actual emissions cuts, but for both Qantas and Virgin Australia through the purchase of carbon credits and by speculatively subtracting the carbon drawn down in growing “Sustainable Aviation Fuel” (SAF) feedstock from the carbon emissions created when the SAF is burnt in flight,.
International flights — 60% of all Qantas flights — face no mandatory emissions cuts. The International Civil Aviation Organisation does “help” member nations develop “the capacity and resources to take action on climate change” through its State Action Plans initiative. But Australia’s 2022 State Action Plan includes no actual inflight emissions cuts. Rather it misleadingly projects “carbon neutral” aviation through the use of SAF.
As long as the level of full flight emissions enabled by an airport is hidden from the public, and in the absence of enforceable, mandated annual reductions across the aviation sector, both airports and aviation emissions will continue to expand.
Flight Free Australia investigated appealing the Minister’s approval on these very issues at the Administrative Review Tribunal. Only the potential six figure legal costs involved prevented us from doing so. Nevertheless, should a federal aviation minister ever prioritise climate safety over aviation growth, the grounds on which airport expansions could be halted are plain to see.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #5 2025
Revisiting the Last Ice Area projections from a high-resolution Global Earth System Model, Fol et al., Communications Earth & Environment:
The Last Ice Area—located to the north of Greenland and the northern Canadian Arctic Archipelago—is expected to persist as the central Arctic Ocean becomes seasonally ice-free within a few decades. Projections of the Last Ice Area, however, have come from relatively low resolution Global Climate Models that do not resolve sea ice export through the waterways of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and Nares Strait. Here we revisit Last Ice Area projections using high-resolution numerical simulations from the Community Earth System Model, which resolves these narrow waterways. Under a high-end forcing scenario, the sea ice of the Last Ice Area thins and becomes more mobile, resulting in a large export southward. Under this potentially worst-case scenario, sea ice of the Last Ice Area could disappear a little more than one decade after the central Arctic Ocean has reached seasonally ice-free conditions. This loss would have profound impacts on ice-obligate species.
Between inflated expectations and inherent distrust: How publics see the role of experts in governing climate intervention technologies, Fritz et al., Environmental Science & Policy:
Novel technologies for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and proposals around solar radiation modification, known also as solar geoengineering, display key features of complex problems. These climate intervention technologies are characterized by high uncertainties, value disputes, high stakes and urgency. Such features create wicked conundrums in climate governance. Addressing questions around more effective governance of these technologies necessitates reflections on how different kinds of expertise, normative judgments and democratic decision-making (should) interact. Based on a survey (N?=?22,222) and 44 focus groups (N?=?323) in 22 countries, we show (i) who publics see as an expert in the field of climate intervention technologies, (ii) what roles they envision for experts in governing climate intervention technologies and (iii) how trust and distrust in scientists unfolds in the context of these novel, partly controversial, technologies.
A scoping review on climate change education, Muccione et al., PLOS Climate:
The growing urgency of the climate crisis necessitates innovative educational approaches to equip people with the knowledge and skills to address climate challenges and be able to influence policy effectively. Education can be a central asset to promoting climate action, yet the importance of climate change education has been underexposed in large and influential assessment reports such as those from the IPCC. This study provides a comprehensive mapping of the literature on climate change education with a particular focus on the time period 2008-2023. By combining human coding and natural language processing (NLP) techniques, we examined a diverse corpus of over 6’000 publications from the peer reviewed literature. The findings highlight the pivotal role of climate education across various disciplines and its alignment with critical climate research themes such as adaptation, mitigation, disaster risk management, and sustainability. Our analysis reveals three predominant topics within the literature which are related to effective learning methodologies, sustainable development education, and the importance of education in adaptation and resilience. Additionally, we identified emerging themes emphasizing the role of youth as change agents, the necessity of transformative educational practices and the importance of energy literacy.
Power price stability and the insurance value of renewable technologies, Navia Simon & Diaz Anadon, Nature Energy:
To understand if renewables stabilize or destabilize electricity prices, we simulate European power markets as projected by the National Energy and Climate Plans for 2030 but replicating the historical variability in electricity demand, the prices of fossil fuels and weather. We propose a β-sensitivity metric, defined as the projected increase in the average annual price of electricity when the price of natural gas increases by 1 euro. We show that annual power prices spikes would be more moderate because the β-sensitivity would fall from 1.4 euros to 1 euro. Deployment of solar photovoltaic and wind technologies exceeding 30% of the 2030 target would lower it further, below 0.5 euros. Our framework shows that this stabilization of prices would produce social welfare gains, that is, we find an insurance value of renewables. Because market mechanisms do not internalize this value, we argue that it should be explicitly considered in energy policy decisions
The polarization of energy preferences – A study on social acceptance of wind and nuclear power in Sweden, Lindvall et al., Energy Policy:
Using Sweden as a study case, this article explores the polarized opinions to wind and nuclear energy, two low carbon energy options that have been shown to be politically controversial. In a wide-scale survey (N = 5200), general attitudes to wind and nuclear energy are captured, as well as to projects in the proximity of people's homes. The study demonstrates a deep polarization of energy preferences in Sweden, finding strong associations between worldviews, political orientation, environmental concern, and support for or resistance to wind and nuclear energy. The study concludes that support for both energy options is reduced when wind or nuclear power is constructed near people's home, but also suggests that the proximity effect is particularly strong for individuals with strong TAN (traditional, authoritarian, nationalistic) values and right leaning political ideology. The article argues that politically motivated reasoning might explain the polarization of attitudes, yet this effect seems to become less relevant when people are asked to judge potential energy infrastructure located close them.
Climate change and migration dynamics in Somalia: a time series analysis of environmental displacement, Mohamed et al., Frontiers in Climate:
Climate change is a significant driver of human migration, especially in vulnerable regions like Somalia. This study investigates the relationship between climate variables—average annual precipitation, temperature, and CO? emissions—and net migration in Somalia, using time series data from 1990 to 2020. Additionally, it examines the role of population growth as a factor influencing migration. Applying the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model, this research captures both short- and long-term dynamics, providing insights into how environmental and demographic factors impact migration in this climate-sensitive region. The results indicate that favorable rainfall conditions positively influence net migration, as improved agricultural productivity stabilizes livelihoods, reducing pressures to migrate. In contrast, increased CO? emissions, associated with environmental degradation, negatively impact migration by limiting financial capacity, creating a “trapped population” effect. Population growth also intensifies migration pressures by increasing competition for limited resources. Interestingly, temperature variations do not significantly influence migration, possibly due to adaptive strategies or resilience to temperature fluctuations in the region. These findings underscore the need for policies focused on enhancing agricultural resilience, restoring degraded environments, and creating economic opportunities to reduce migration pressures in Somalia. Investments in sustainable land use, climate adaptation, and population management strategies are essential to address the complex challenges of climate-induced migration.
Optimal life-cycle adaptation of coastal infrastructure under climate change, Bhattacharya et al., Nature Communications:
Climate change-related risk mitigation is typically addressed using cost-benefit analysis that evaluates mitigation strategies against a wide range of simulated scenarios and identifies a static policy to be implemented, without considering future observations. Due to the substantial uncertainties inherent in climate projections, this identified policy will likely be sub-optimal with respect to the actual climate trajectory that evolves in time. In this work, we thus formulate climate risk management as a dynamic decision-making problem based on Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) and Partially Observable MDPs (POMDPs), taking real-time data into account for evaluating the evolving conditions and related model uncertainties, in order to select the best possible life-cycle actions in time, with global optimality guarantees for the formulated optimization problem.
From this week's government/NGO section:Climate change and news audiences report 2024: Analysis of news use and attitudes in eight countries, Ejaz et al., Reuters Institute and Oxford University
The authors collected data from an online survey of people in eight countries: Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, Pakistan, the UK, and the USA. The data were collected in November 2024. The data collection is part of an ongoing project to explore public engagement with news and information about climate change, and how people perceive, experience, and respond to its escalating impacts. The authors found that on average across the eight countries, half (50%) see, read, or hear news or information about climate change every week – showing little change from 2022 (51%). Climate news and information consumption is highest in France (60%), with lower numbers in the USA (34%) where, against the backdrop of the presidential election, there was a 16 percentage point (pp) fall from 2023. The news media continues to be the primary way people access climate change information – ahead of documentaries, social media, and interpersonal communication – with television news (31%) and online news websites/apps (24%) as the most widely used media. Video is people’s preferred format, ahead of text.Ho'okele Mua II, a Wargame About Climate Change and Operational Risk in INDOPACOM, Rooney et al., Rand
The authors describe the development and execution of a climate change game for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM). The game was intended to support planning by allowing players to explore the extent of operational risk that climate change could impose on the joint force in the Indo-Pacific region in the 2040s.Good for your Pocket. How renewable energy helps Irish electricity consumers, Alec Granville-Willett and Mark Turner, Baringa
The development of wind and solar farms has reduced the cost burden on Irish consumers by €840 million between 2000 and 2023. This saving, equivalent to €165 per person, has been realized on the power bills of all consumers by the low cost of renewable electricity. Wind and solar farms have no fuel cost and undercut more expensive gas- and coal-fired generators, displacing them from the wholesale power market. 121 articles in 50 journals by 724 contributing authorsPhysical science of climate change, effects
Characteristics and potential drivers of extreme high-temperature event frequency in Eurasia, Xie et al., Dynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans 10.1016/j.dynatmoce.2025.101536
Impact of Climate Change on the Dynamics of the Southern Senegal Upwelling Center, Ndoye et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2024gl112582
Slowed Response of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation Not a Robust Signal of Collapse, Zimmerman et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2024gl112415
Observations of climate change, effects
A New Evaluation of Observed Changes in Diurnal Temperature Range, Xu et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2024gl113406
Arctic Sea Ice Melting Has Triggered Distinct Interdecadal Transitions since 2000, Wu et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-24-0163.1
Effects of Hot Versus Dry Vapor Pressure Deficit on Ecosystem Carbon and Water Fluxes, Johnston et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences Open Access 10.1029/2024jg008146
Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, effects
An Arctic sea ice concentration data record on a 6.25 km polar stereographic grid from 3 years of Landsat-8 imagery, Jung et al., Earth System Science Data Open Access 10.5194/essd-17-233-2025
Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects
Climate change dominates over urbanization in tropical cyclone rainfall patterns, Deng et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-025-02048-z
Extreme hydroclimates amplify the biophysical effects of advanced green-up in temperate China, Yu et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2025.110421
Future Changes in Winter-Time Extratropical Cyclones Over South Africa From CORDEX-CORE Simulations, Chinta et al., Earth's Future Open Access 10.1029/2024ef005289
Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection
A comparative study of the sensitivity of an ocean model outputs to atmospheric forcing: ERA-Interim vs. ERA5 for Adriatic Sea Ocean modelling, Babagolimatikolaei, Dynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans Open Access 10.1016/j.dynatmoce.2024.101525
A Comprehensive Evaluation of Biases in Convective Storm Parameters in CMIP6 Models over North America, Gopalakrishnan et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-24-0165.1
An improved and extended parameterization of the CO2 15 µm cooling in the middle and upper atmosphere (CO2&cool&fort-1.0), López-Puertas et al., Geoscientific Model Development Open Access 10.5194/gmd-17-4401-2024
Cloud radiative effect dominates variabilities of surface energy budget in the dark Arctic, Tao et al., Scientific Reports Open Access 10.1038/s41598-025-86322-2
Imputation of missing land carbon sequestration data in the AR6 Scenarios Database, Prütz et al., Earth System Science Data Open Access 10.5194/essd-17-221-2025
The very-high-resolution configuration of the EC-Earth global model for HighResMIP, Moreno-Chamarro et al., Geoscientific Model Development Open Access 10.5194/gmd-18-461-2025
Cryosphere & climate change
Present-day mass loss rates are a precursor for West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse, Akker et al., Open Access pdf 10.21203/rs.3.rs-3498111/v1
Revisiting the Last Ice Area projections from a high-resolution Global Earth System Model, Fol et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-025-02034-5
Sea level & climate change
From InSAR-Derived Subsidence to Relative Sea-Level Rise—A Call for Rigor, Minderhoud et al., Earth's Future Open Access 10.1029/2024ef005539
High- vs. low-rate of sea level change fluvial floods: Past analogues for future forecast, Santisteban et al., Global and Planetary Change 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2025.104723
Paleoclimate & paleogeochemistry
Pliocene Warmth and Patterns of Climate Change Inferred From Paleoclimate Data Assimilation, Tierney et al., AGU Advances Open Access 10.1029/2024av001356
Biology & climate change, related geochemistry
A pan-European citizen science study shows population size, climate and land use are related to biased morph ratios in the heterostylous plant Primula veris, Aavik et al., Journal of Ecology Open Access 10.1111/1365-2745.14477
Browning events in Arctic ecosystems: Diverse causes with common consequences, Phoenix et al., PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000570
Coral bleaching and mortality overestimated in projections based on Degree Heating Months, Mason et al., Nature Geoscience Open Access 10.1038/s41561-024-01635-7
Half a Century of Temperate Non-Forest Vegetation Changes: No Net Loss in Species Richness, but Considerable Shifts in Taxonomic and Functional Composition, Klinkovská et al., Global Change Biology Open Access 10.1111/gcb.70030
Impact of Holocene relative sea-level changes on patch reef-island development in the Spermonde Archipelago, South Sulawesi, Indonesia, Hynes et al., The Holocene 10.1177/09596836251313628
The Central Great Barrier Reef as a Net Source of Climatically Relevant Biogenic Volatile Organic Compounds, Deschaseaux et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans Open Access 10.1029/2024jc021192
The differential physiological responses to heat stress in the scleractinian coral Pocillopora damicornis are affected by its energy reserve, Yu et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2025.106966
The Interactive Role of Climatic Transfer Distance and Overstory Retention on Douglas-Fir Seedling Survival and Height Growth in Interior British Columbia, Harris et al., Global Change Biology Open Access 10.1111/gcb.70027
Variable impacts of land-based climate mitigation on habitat area for vertebrate diversity, Smith et al., Science 10.1126/science.adm9485
GHG sources & sinks, flux, related geochemistry
A principle-based framework to determine countries’ fair warming contributions to the Paris Agreement, Li et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-025-56397-6
Antarctic krill vertical migrations modulate seasonal carbon export, Smith et al., Science 10.1126/science.adq5564
Effect of marine anoxia on the conversion of macroalgal biomass to refractory dissolved organic carbon, Zhao et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2025.106956
Exploring uncertainty reduction in high-resolution methane emissions in Gippsland through in-situ data: A Bayesian inverse modeling and variational assimilation method, Aghdasi et al., Atmospheric Research Open Access 10.1016/j.atmosres.2025.107911
Fine-Scale Evaluation of Carbon Exchange Capacity in Terrestrial Ecosystems of China: Leveraging Flux Data From Meteorological Stations for Enhanced Database Representation, Zhang et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2024gl113422
How long does carbon stay in a near-pristine central Amazon forest? An empirical estimate with radiocarbon, Chanca et al., Biogeosciences Open Access 10.5194/bg-22-455-2025
Multifaceted Links Between Microbial Carbon Use Efficiency and Soil Organic Carbon Sequestration, Fang, Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70045
Representing high-latitude deep carbon in the pre-industrial state of the ORCHIDEE-MICT land surface model (r8704), Xi et al., Open Access 10.5194/gmd-2024-206
Satellite-derived ocean color data for monitoring pCO2 dynamics in the North Indian Ocean, Shaik et al., Dynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans 10.1016/j.dynatmoce.2025.101534
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
Spatial resolution for forest carbon maps, Duncanson et al., Science Open Access 10.1126/science.adt6811
Temperature seasonality regulates organic carbon burial in lake, Zhou et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-025-56399-4
CO2 capture, sequestration science & engineering
Equitable marine carbon dioxide removal: the legal basis for interstate benefit-sharing, Craik, Climate Policy Open Access 10.1080/14693062.2025.2451645
Synergies of storing hydrogen at the crest of CO2${rm CO}&{2}$ or other gas storage, Rhouma et al., Greenhouse Gases: Science and Technology Open Access pdf 10.1002/ghg.2278
Decarbonization
Assessing decarbonization strategies and industrial symbiosis in the chemical and waste-to-energy sector, Schnyder et al., Journal of Industrial Ecology 10.1111/jiec.13616
Biomass exclusion must be weighed against benefits of carbon supply in European energy system, Millinger et al., Nature Energy 10.1038/s41560-024-01685-6
Future Energy Technology for Nonroad Mobile Machines, Antila et al., Advanced Energy and Sustainability Research Open Access 10.1002/aesr.202400257
Life cycle comparison of industrial-scale lithium-ion battery recycling and mining supply chains, Machala et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-025-56063-x
Low-Cost, High-Efficiency Organic Solar Cells Based on Ecofriendly Processing Solvent, Qin et al., Advanced Energy and Sustainability Research Open Access 10.1002/aesr.202400268
Shining a light on disparities: A comparative analysis of residential photovoltaic adoption inequality in Australia and Brazil, Konzen et al., Energy Research & Social Science 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103870
Solar parking lot capacity: an abundant dual-use alternative to meet demand for the renewable energy transition, Markwith, Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability Open Access 10.1088/2634-4505/adaa9a
The closing longevity gap between battery electric vehicles and internal combustion vehicles in Great Britain, Nguyen-Tien et al., Nature Energy Open Access 10.1038/s41560-024-01698-1
“For all kinds of reasons, it hasn't happened”: A novel integrative perspective for analysing the barriers to biomass crops for bioenergy in the United Kingdom, Ingram et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2025.103936
Geoengineering climate
Assessing the impacts of simulated ocean alkalinity enhancement on viability and growth of nearshore species of phytoplankton, Oberlander et al., Biogeosciences Open Access 10.5194/bg-22-499-2025
Assessment framework to predict sensitivity of marine calcifiers to ocean alkalinity enhancement – identification of biological thresholds and importance of precautionary principle, Bednaršek et al., Biogeosciences Open Access 10.5194/bg-22-473-2025
Between inflated expectations and inherent distrust: How publics see the role of experts in governing climate intervention technologies, Fritz et al., Environmental Science & Policy Open Access 10.1016/j.envsci.2025.104005
Climate change communications & cognition
A scoping review on climate change education, Muccione et al., PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000356
Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change
Assessing vulnerability and climate risk to agriculture for developing resilient farming strategies in the Ganges Delta, Mandal et al., Climate Risk Management Open Access 10.1016/j.crm.2025.100690
Direct Measurement of Greenhouse Gas Emission Rates From Manure Management in Different Livestock Production Systems in Cameroon, Ngwabie et al., Greenhouse Gases: Science and Technology 10.1002/ghg.2326
Effects of close-to-nature forest management on carbon stocks in Pinus tabulaeformis plantations in northern China, Xu et al., Frontiers in Forests and Global Change Open Access 10.3389/ffgc.2024.1495771
Global Impact Assessment of Internal Climate Variability on Maize Yield Under Climate Change, Leng, Earth's Future Open Access 10.1029/2024ef004888
Good intentions, limited action: when do farmers’ intentions to adopt sustainable farming practices turn into actual behaviour?, Byfuglien et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology Open Access 10.1016/j.jenvp.2025.102522
Index-based livestock insurance schemes to manage climate risks in Ethiopia: determinants of farmer’s willingness to pay and lessons learned from Dasenech district, South Omo, Melketo et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2024.1476202
Modeling biochar effects on soil organic carbon on croplands in a microbial decomposition model (MIMICS-BC&v1.0), Han et al., Geoscientific Model Development Open Access 10.5194/gmd-17-4871-2024
National Horizon Scanning for Future Crops Under a Changing UK Climate, Redhead et al., Climate Resilience and Sustainability Open Access 10.1002/cli2.70007
Hydrology, hydrometeorology & climate change
A Multiscale Evaluation of the Wet 2022 in Eastern Australia, Reid et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-24-0224.1
Attribution and Risk Projections of Hydrological Drought Over Water-Scarce Central Asia, Wu et al., Earth's Future Open Access 10.1029/2024ef005243
Confronting uncertainty: The future of hydropower in the himalayan region amidst climate ambiguity, Devkota et al., Energy for Sustainable Development 10.1016/j.esd.2025.101657
Increasingly frequent and severe dry-to-wet abrupt alteration events are striking the Yangtze River Basin in China, Huang et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2025.107926
Multi-Model Assessment of Groundwater Recharge Across Europe Under Warming Climate, Kumar et al., Earth's Future Open Access 10.1029/2024ef005020
Obtaining refined Euro-Mediterranean rainfall projections through regional assessment of CMIP6 General Circulation Models, Ferreiro-Lera et al., Global and Planetary Change 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2025.104725
Physics-Based Hazard Assessment of Compound Flooding From Tropical and Extratropical Cyclones in a Warming Climate, Sarhadi et al., Earth's Future Open Access 10.1029/2024ef005078
Climate change economics
An assessment of the effectiveness of CCS technology incentive policies based on dynamic CGE model, Zhang et al., Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114468
Power price stability and the insurance value of renewable technologies, Navia Simon & Diaz Anadon, Nature Energy Open Access 10.1038/s41560-025-01704-0
Climate change mitigation public policy research
A finance scheme to help Germany's small private landlords sharply increase their buildings' energy performance: Tapping into the banking system, Galvin & März, Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2025.103929
A geostatistical approach to enhancing national forest biomass assessments with Earth Observation to aid climate policy needs, Hunka et al., Remote Sensing of Environment Open Access 10.1016/j.rse.2024.114557
An equilibrium model of the Chinese carbon trading market under the uncertainty of market demand: Application to thermal power industry, Ma et al., Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2025.114505
Assessing and optimizing the potential for climate change mitigation and carbon sequestration in urban residential green spaces: energizing sustainable cities, Liu et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1519297
Barriers and drivers of near-term climate change mitigation: a Canadian case study, Sauer et al., Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability Open Access 10.1088/2634-4505/adab17
Carbon risk and corporate bankruptcy pressure: evidence from a quasi-natural experiment based on the Paris agreement, Liu et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1537570
Climate change assemblies as spaces for the potential mitigation of climate policy misperceptions: A survey experiment, Suiter et al., Environmental Science & Policy Open Access 10.1016/j.envsci.2025.103995
Competition and climate policy in the steel transition: Comparing costs and subsidies in the US and the EU, Algers et al., Energy Policy Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2025.114507
Detecting energy injustices: Climbing the ladder of “hidden morality”, van Uffelen & ten Caat ten Caat, Energy Policy Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114465
Dynamic changes in water use patterns of coal power generation during China's energy transition, Zhang et al., Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114460
Electrifying company cars? The effects of incentives and tax benefits on electric vehicle sales in 31 European countries, Schub et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103914
Enabling Indigenous-centred decision-making for a just energy transition? Lessons from community consultation and consent in the circumpolar Arctic, Loginova et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2025.103928
Europe's environmental dichotomy: The impact of regulations, climate investments, and renewable energy on carbon mitigation in the EU-22, Khalique et al., Energy Policy Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2025.114498
Finding gaps in the national electric vehicle charging station coverage of the United States, Hanig et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-024-55696-8
Half of land use carbon emissions in Southeast Asia can be mitigated through peat swamp forest and mangrove conservation and restoration, Sasmito et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-025-55892-0
Local energy autarky: What it means and why it matters, Ibrahim et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2025.103920
Policy and pricing tools to incentivize distributed electric vehicle-to-grid charging control, Andersen & Powell Powell, Energy Policy Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2025.114496
Public participation in the development of electricity grid infrastructure: Early engagements and community forums, Boyle et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103878
Technology pathway to decarbonisation in the building sector based on a policy review of major economies, XIONG et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2025.01.006
The impact of carbon emission trading scheme policy on information asymmetry in the stock market: Evidence from China, Yuan et al., Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2025.114502
The polarization of energy preferences – A study on social acceptance of wind and nuclear power in Sweden, Lindvall et al., Energy Policy Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114492
The unfinished business of corporate greenhouse gas accounting and target-setting frameworks: incentivizing, enabling, and counting impact through a dual ledger, Ballentine, Carbon Management Open Access 10.1080/17583004.2025.2451866
Who is self-committed to climate action? Exploring decarbonisation actions and target gaps using carbon footprint calculator data in Japan, Koide et al., Energy Research & Social Science 10.1016/j.erss.2025.103930
‘Although it's my home, it's not my house’ – Exploring impacts of retrofits with social housing residents, Charles et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103869
Climate change adaptation & adaptation public policy research
A framework for addressing the interconnectedness of early warning to action and finance to strengthen multiscale institutional responses to climate shocks and disasters, Attoh & Amarnath, Climate Risk Management Open Access 10.1016/j.crm.2025.100689
Adaptation limits as sufficiency entitlements of justice, Wallimann-Helmer & Kräuchi, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability Open Access 10.1016/j.cosust.2024.101507
Climate change and migration dynamics in Somalia: a time series analysis of environmental displacement, Mohamed et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2024.1529420
Optimal life-cycle adaptation of coastal infrastructure under climate change, Bhattacharya et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-024-55679-9
“Sometimes, I just want to scream”: Institutional barriers limiting adaptive capacity and resilience to extreme events, Birchall et al., Global Environmental Change Open Access 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2025.102967
Climate change impacts on human health
Mapping the Research Landscape: A Comprehensive Bibliometric Review of Global Warming and Human Health, Zheng et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.8761
Thermal hazards in urban spaces: A review of climate-resilient planning and design to reduce the heat stress, Gupta et al., Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2025.102296
Climate change & geopolitics
Balancing supply security and decarbonization: Optimizing Germany’s LNG port infrastructure under the European Green Deal, Agrell et al., Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114484
States and nature: the effects of climate change on security, Sahu, International Affairs Open Access 10.1093/ia/iiac209
Climate change impacts on human culture
Spatiotemporal variability of the Universal Thermal Climate Index during heat waves using the UrbClim climate model: Implications for tourism destinations., Hidalgo-García et al., Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2024.102281
Other
Assessing the distributive equity of adaptation finance: a framework, Shawoo et al., Climate Policy Open Access 10.1080/14693062.2025.2456552
Climate justice or inequality lock-in? Analysis of U.S. incarceration in a changing climate, Li et al., Small Group Research Open Access 10.1177/1046496413498119
Confronting Climate Coloniality: Decolonizing Pathways for Climate Justice, Zebua, Environmental Communication 10.1080/17524032.2025.2457554
Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives
Bridging the gap between international climate goals and local realities, Nestor, PLOS Climate Open Access 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000575
Editorial: Impact of climate changes on groundwater resources, Minea et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1557374
Articles/Reports from Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations Addressing Aspects of Climate ChangeMarkets & Mandates – Policy Options for Scaling UK Carbon Storage to Reach Net Zero, Boot et al., Carbon Balance Initiative, Oxford Net Zero and the Carbon Capture and Storage Association
Drawing on insights from over 20 expert stakeholders across government, industry, academia, and civil society, the authors provide a comprehensive analysis of future policy scenarios. It responds directly to calls from government, including the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero and the Carbon Capture Use and Storage Council, to explore long-term carbon capture and storage (CCS) deployment mechanisms. The authors suggest that reliance on the UK Emissions Trading Scheme alone is unlikely to drive the necessary scale of CCS and greenhouse gas removals. A combined approach of market-based incentives and regulatory mandates has the potential to accelerate progress in establishing a self-sustaining market and achieving net-zero.MI Healthy Climate Plan, 2024 Report, Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy
The authors assess key accomplishments over the last year on the path to the state’s goal of 100% carbon neutrality by 2050 and provides insight into public engagement and sector-specific updates.Procuring with Purpose. Canada’s Opportunity to Shape the Carbon Removal Market, T. Bushman, Carbon Removal Canada
The author shows how the Canadian government can build a robust carbon removal sector in Canada including how carbon removal can help propel Canada’s net-zero ambitions, how joint public/private sector entities can speed up innovation and contribute to economic growth through carbon removal procurement, and how governments and companies can approach designing procurement programs.European Electricity Review 2025, Chris Rosslowe and Beatrice Petrovich, Ember
The EU’s electricity transition continued at pace in 2024, as solar overtook coal for the first time and gas declined for the fifth year in a row. The European Electricity Review analyses full-year electricity generation and demand data for 2024 in all EU-27 countries to understand the region’s progress in transitioning from fossil fuels to clean electricity.Learning Interrupted: Global snapshot of climate-related school disruptions in 2024, United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund
Climate shocks are disrupting children’s education, putting their learning and their futures at risk. The authors reveal that at least 242 million students in 85 countries or territories had their schooling disrupted by extreme climate events including heatwaves, tropical cyclones, storms, floods, and droughts in 2024, exacerbating an existing learning crisis. Globally, at least 242 million students – from pre-primary to upper secondary education – have experienced school disruptions due to climate events in 2024. At least 1 in 7 students had their schooling disrupted due to climate hazards in 2024. In 2024, 85 countries or territories saw their schools affected by climate-related hazards, with 23 countries experiencing multiple rounds of school closures.The Economic Impact of Renewable Energy and Energy Storage Investments Across Texas, Joshua Rhodes, IdeaSmiths
THe author assesses many aspects of utility-scale wind, solar, and energy storage investments in Texas, including local tax collections, landowner payments, and the local sentiment surrounding these projects. He found that renewables are a large, and growing, source of tax payments and revenue for landowners across Texas; residents and community leaders indicated that counties with renewable energy and storage projects tend to see them as good neighbors; and elected county leaders look favorably on renewable energy projects for the planning stability that comes with having confidence in consistent long-term revenue streams.January 2025 California Wildfires, Karen Clark and Company
The authors estimated that the insured loss from privately insured and FAIR plan policies to residential, commercial, and industrial properties, and autos from the Palisades and Eaton Fires will be close to $28 billion. The estimated losses include damage from the fires, as well as smoke, time-element losses for residents in evacuation zones whose homes were not damaged by the fire, guaranteed replacement cost coverage, and demand surge. These losses should be covered by typical insurance policies. California authorities have a strong incentive to stabilize the insurance market so there will likely be efforts in place to expedite the rebuilding process, control cost increases, and avoid saddling insurers with excess and uncovered losses. A primary area of uncertainty in the loss estimates is the proportion of homeowners and business owners in impacted areas who are insured.Equity and Just Transition Commitments in South Africa, Mbewe et al., SouthSouthNorth and Net Zero Tracker
The authors examine 50 of the largest public and private sector entities in South Africa, including national and regional governments, large cities, and major domestic-based and multinational companies. They analyze how these entities plan to integrate equity and just transition principles into climate mitigation strategies, including net zero targets.Ho'okele Mua II, a Wargame About Climate Change and Operational Risk in INDOPACOM, Rooney et al., Rand
The authors describe the development and execution of a climate change game for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM). The game was intended to support planning by allowing players to explore the extent of operational risk that climate change could impose on the joint force in the Indo-Pacific region in the 2040s.Climate change and news audiences report 2024: Analysis of news use and attitudes in eight countries, Ejaz et al., Reuters Institute and Oxford University
The authors collected data from an online survey of people in eight countries: Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, Pakistan, the UK, and the USA. The data were collected in November 2024. The data collection is part of an ongoing project to explore public engagement with news and information about climate change, and how people perceive, experience, and respond to its escalating impacts. The authors found that on average across the eight countries, half (50%) see, read, or hear news or information about climate change every week – showing little change from 2022 (51%). Climate news and information consumption is highest in France (60%), with lower numbers in the USA (34%) where, against the backdrop of the presidential election, there was a 16 percentage point (pp) fall from 2023. The news media continues to be the primary way people access climate change information – ahead of documentaries, social media, and interpersonal communication – with television news (31%) and online news websites/apps (24%) as the most widely used media. Video is people’s preferred format, ahead of text.A Systematic Evidence Review of the Impacts of Climate Change on the Health of Outdoor Workers in Urban Asia, Vu et al., National Centre for Social Research and NatCen Research
The authors conducted a systematic literature review of the health impacts of climate change on urban outdoor workers in Asia using findings from 18 previous studies. They examine climate-related health risks, vulnerabilities, coping strategies, and adaptation measures used by outdoor workers. They identify critical gaps in understanding the direct and indirect health effects of climate-related stressors including extreme heat, air pollution, and other weather-related hazards. They explore the vulnerabilities of outdoor workers and note areas for future research and policy intervention.Climate change increased the likelihood of wildfire disaster in highly exposed Los Angeles area, Barnes et al., World Weather Attribution
Starting on January 7 2025 two large wildfires (the Palisades and Eaton wildfires) erupted in Los Angeles, California. The fires spread extremely quickly over the following week and are among the most destructive of human property in southern California’s history. Combining models and observations, the authors found that human-induced warming from burning fossil fuels made the peak January Fire Weather Index (FWI) more intense, with an estimated 6% increase in intensity, and 35% more probable. The extreme FWI conditions that drove the LA fires are expected to occur on average once in 17 years.Good for your Pocket. How renewable energy helps Irish electricity consumers, Alec Granville-Willett and Mark Turner, Baringa
The development of wind and solar farms has reduced the cost burden on Irish consumers by €840 million between 2000 and 2023. This saving, equivalent to €165 per person, has been realized on the power bills of all consumers by the low cost of renewable electricity. Wind and solar farms have no fuel cost and undercut more expensive gas- and coal-fired generators, displacing them from the wholesale power market.Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition, Gabler et al., Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, International Fund for Agricultural Development, United Nations Children’s Fund, World Food Programme and Pan American Health Organization
Latin America and the Caribbean have seen a decline in hunger and food insecurity for two years, driven by social protection programs and post-COVID recovery. However, disparities persist, especially among women, rural populations, and vulnerable groups. The region is unlikely to meet most nutrition targets, and healthy diets remain expensive. Climate variability is increasing in the region, affecting food security across availability, access, utilization, and stability. This climate impact reduces agricultural productivity, disrupts food supply chains, and raises food prices. Vulnerable populations are most affected, with changing diets further exacerbating the situation. Climate change is worsening food security and the causes of malnutrition. Obtaining articles without journal subscriptionsWe know it's frustrating that many articles we cite here are not free to read. One-off paid access fees are generally astronomically priced, suitable for such as "On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light" but not as a gamble on unknowns. With a median world income of US$ 9,373, for most of us US$ 42 is significant money to wager on an article's relevance and importance.
- Here's an excellent collection of tips and techniques for obtaining articles, legally.
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Most articles appearing here are found via RSS feeds from journal publishers, filtered by search terms to produce raw output for assessment of relevance.
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The objective of New Research isn't to cast a tinge on scientific results, to color readers' impressions. Hence candidate articles are assessed via two metrics only:
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An explanation of how renewable energy saves you money
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler
Climate denial is dead. Renewable energy denial is here. As “alternative facts” become the norm, it’s worth looking at what actual facts tell us about how renewable energy sources like solar and wind are lowering the price of electricity.
As an example that’s close to home (for me), I’ll focus on the Texas electricity market, which is run by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, known as ERCOT.
How ERCOT sets the price of electricityAt all times, ERCOT must balance electricity supply and demand, while keeping costs as low as possible. Let’s walk through a simplified example of how they do this.
First, ERCOT forecasts tomorrow’s electricity demand based on factors like forecast weather, historical usage patterns, and expected industrial activity. Let’s imagine that ERCOT predicts a need for 100 megawatts (MW)1 of power tomorrow.
ERCOT then asks generators to make bids for how much power each one can produce and what it will cost. Let’s assume there are six different generators that bid into the market:
ERCOT sorts the bids by price, producing what’s known as the merit stack. ERCOT then moves down the merit stack, using generators that produce the required power (100 MW) at the lowest price.
This means generator C is out of luck — ERCOT will not be buying power from that generator.
So what is the resulting price of electricity? Rather than paying each plant a different price based on their bids, ERCOT employs what’s known as marginal pricing, in which all of the generators get paid the cost of generating the last unit of energy.
Generator B is the last generator on the stack — sometimes referred to as the marginal generator — so it produces the last unit of power. The price of that last unit is $55 per MW, so that’s what the wholesale price of electricity on this day will be. All of the generators get paid that amount regardless of how much it costs for them to produce the energy.
How renewables change the price of electricityNow let’s assume that someone builds a wind farm that, on a windy day, can produce 30 MW of power. Wind power has no fuel costs — once a wind turbine is built, the marginal cost of generating power is basically zero. Thus, wind farms can bid their power to ERCOT at extremely low prices, often around zero dollars per megawatt-hour.
Thus, on a windy day, the merit stack in our simple example now looks like this:
The addition of low-cost wind has pushed Generator B off the generator stack. The marginal generator is now Generator F, making the wholesale price of power $40 per MW.
Thus, wind power has reduced the cost of electricity.
I thought intermittent renewables needed backup powerThat’s not how the grid operates.
If wind generation drops the following day due to calm weather, then ERCOT will once again call on Generator B . This leads to higher prices — but importantly, these higher prices aren’t a penalty or a problem with wind power. Rather, they represent the cost of electricity generation from conventional power plants.
This is the price we would pay all the time if the wind farm had not been built.
Put differently, “the backup” for the wind power in this example is provided by Generator B, who was already in the market before we added wind and remains in the market after wind is added. The only impact of adding wind power to the grid is that Generator B, instead of running all the time, only runs when it’s not windy.
Because wind power is cheaper than generator B, this reduces the average cost of electricity.
As more and more renewable power is built, the expensive generators run for fewer and fewer hours until they’re no longer profitable and then they shut down. This is basically what’s happened to the U.S. coal fleet — they’ve been pushed out of the market by cheaper energy, mainly natural gas but also renewables, and consumers have benefited.
This discussion applies to grids that have significant fossil fuel generation in it, which is most grids. As grids become majority renewables, the economics and the behavior of the electricity market shift, as I explained here.
A better calculationAbove, I presented a simplified example of how renewables save money in the ERCOT market. A quantitative calculation was performed by Josh Rhodes from tu a few years ago that used actual ERCOT data from the wholesale market to estimate how much money was saved when renewable energy displaced expensive fossil fuel energy.
Here are some of the top line numbers:
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Renewables reduced wholesale electricity market prices on average between $1.17 per MWh (in 2012) and $20.60 per MWh (in 2022) by replacing expensive fossil fuel power plants.
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The widespread adoption of renewables reduced wholesale electricity costs by about $27.8 billion between 2010 and August 2022, saving consumers significantly from what they would have had to pay with a 100% fossil fuel grid.
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In the first eight months of 2022, renewables reduced ERCOT wholesale electricity market costs by about $7.4B (~$925M per month).
If you want to know more, read the report.
What about China? What about India?If you think renewable energy is expensive, let me ask you a question: What about China and India? As you can see, renewable energy production is exponentially increasing in these countries:
Data from Ember EnergyIn fact, China recently passed a new energy law that prioritizes the build out of renewables.
The law notably states that China will prioritise renewable energy development such as hydropower, wind energy, solar energy, biomass energy, geothermal energy, marine energy, and hydrogen energy, while encouraging a rational, clean, and efficient use of fossil fuels. It promotes a safe, reliable, orderly transition from fossil fuels to non-fossil alternatives, aiming to increase the proportion of non-fossil energy consumption. [source]
If it were true that renewable energy were more expensive than fossil fuels, why are other countries prioritizing it? The answer, of course, is that these countries recognize that wind and solar are actually the cheapest energy, saving the economy money and improving air quality and national security.
Here’s another plot of retail price vs. renewable energy fraction for U.S. States. If renewable energy raised costs, you would expect to see a correlation. You do not.
No evidence that renewables increase cost of electricity Why do people lie about the price of renewable energy?You cannot look at the pervasive dishonesty about the cost of renewables by itself. Instead, you have to see it as part of a bigger effort to rig the market in favor of fossil fuels. I even wrote an oped in the New York Times about it (gift link) and have previously posted on TCB about it.
This is why, for example, Trump declared an “energy emergency” but excluded renewable energy from the list of energy resources:
from the Executive Order declaring an energy emergency.This so-called energy emergency is not about energy at all but rather has a primary goal of entrenching fossil fuels in our economy. This is also the motivation for the executive order pausing wind power, and those targeting electric vehicles.
Make no mistake: fossil fuel interests will do whatever is necessary to keep us from transitioning to cheaper, cleaner renewable energy. Lying about the cost of renewables is just one of the tactics they’re using to achieve their goal. Don’t let them get away with it.
Update 1/27: I’ve gotten a bunch of questions about subsidies and the role they play in making renewable energy cheap. Certainly there are subsidies on both sides (yes, massive subsidies for fossil fuels, too). For renewables, people have looked at the role of subsidies in the price and it is quite minor. For example, see page 10 of this document.
1 This simple example is significantly lower than the actual electricity demand in Texas, which averages around 50 GW.The planet had 58 billion-dollar weather disasters in 2024, the second-highest on record
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters
The planet was besieged by 58 billion-dollar weather disasters in 2024, ranking second-highest behind only 2023, which had 73, said insurance broker Gallagher Re in its annual report issued 17. The total damage wrought by weather disasters in 2024 was $402 billion, 20% higher than the 10-year inflation-adjusted average. (Gallagher Re’s historical database extends back to 1990.) A separate report issued January 18 by insurance broker Aon put the total damage wrought by weather disasters in 2024 at $348 billion, with 53 billion-dollar weather disasters.
Increasing numbers of billion-dollar disasters primarily driven by increases in wealth and populationGallagher Re said that 2024 had the highest-ever number of insured billion-dollar weather disasters: 21, beating the record of 17 set in 2023 and 2020; over 40% of the insured damage was from severe thunderstorms. There has been a steep rise in the number of billion-dollar weather disasters in recent years, and most of this has been driven by increases in severe thunderstorm losses in the United States.
About 80-90% of the increase in damage resulted from factors other than climate change. This point was echoed by insurance broker Aon in a 2023 report, which found that over 80% of severe thunderstorm loss growth could be explained by factors unrelated to climate change. (Hail damage, in particular, is getting a boost from rapid growth in Texas and other Sun Belt states.) However, Gallagher Re warned that climate change amplification of weather events was leading to “weather whiplash,” with rapid shifts from one peril to another.
U.S. sees its second-highest number of billion-dollar weather disasters: 27As discussed in our January 10 post, the inflation-adjusted tally of U.S. billion-dollar weather disasters in 2024 was 27, falling just short of the record of 28 set in 2023. The total cost of 2024’s billion-dollar weather disasters, $182.7 billion, was the fourth-highest on record in the NOAA database. The billion-dollar disasters of 2024 included 17 severe storm events, five hurricanes, one wildfire, one drought, one flood, and two winter storms. The average number of billion-dollar disasters for a full year for the most recent five years (2020–2024) is 23. Using different accounting methods, Gallagher Re tallied 33 U.S. billion-dollar weather disasters for 2024.
Figure 1. The 27 billion-dollar U.S. weather disasters of 2024, according to NOAA.
Three top-20 costliest weather disasters in world history in 2024: Hurricane Helene, Hurricane Milton, and flooding in ChinaThe year’s most destructive weather event of 2024 was Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region September 26 as a Category 4 storm with 140 mph winds. As documented by Michael Lowry, at least 243 people lost their lives in Helene across seven states, making it the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Hurricane Katrina killed an estimated 1,392 people in 2005. Flood damage from the hurricane was catastrophic in western North Carolina, and the $79 billion price tag makes it the seventh-most expensive weather disaster in world history, adjusted for inflation.
The second costliest weather disaster of 2024 was another U.S. hurricane, Category 3 Milton, which made landfall near Sarasota, Florida, and cost $34 billion. Seventeen of the top 20 most expensive weather disasters in world history are U.S. events, with two of these occurring in 2024.
Figure 2. The top 20 most costly weather events globally, after adjusting for inflation. Three of the events occurred in 2024: Hurricane Helene ($79 billion in damage), Hurricane Milton ($34 billion), and seasonal floods in China ($31 billion). Data is from NOAA, EM-DAT, and Gallagher Re.
Researchers at the Imperial College of London separately determined that climate change increased Helene’s wind speeds at landfall by about 13 mph or 11%, and Milton’s by almost 11 mph or 10%. Using a previously published damage function and data on the exposed value of global assets, the researchers determined that 44% of the economic damages caused by Helene and 45% of those caused by Milton could be attributed to climate change. They added that the analysis “likely underestimates the true cost of the hurricanes because it does not capture long-lasting economic impacts such as lost productivity and worsened health outcomes.”
China suffered $31 billion in damages from summer flooding during 2024. This was Earth’s third-costliest weather disaster of 2024 and is tied with the summer 2021 floods as China’s second-costliest weather disaster on record. Their costliest weather disaster occurred in 1998 when river flooding killed 3,556 and caused $57 billion in damage. This disaster ranks as the costliest weather-related disaster in world history to occur outside of the U.S.
Fourth-most expensive typhoon on record: Yagi, $16.8 billion in damagesAfter peaking as a Category 5 super typhoon with 160 mph winds, Typhoon Yagi made a devastating landfall on China’s Hainan Island as a Category 4 storm with 150 mph winds on September 6, 2024, causing over $11 billion in damage in China. Yagi made a subsequent landfall on September 7 in Vietnam as a Category 4 storm with 130 mph winds, making it that nation’s strongest typhoon since modern records began in 1945. Yagi caused $3.3 billion in damage in Vietnam – the country’s costliest typhoon on record. Overall, Yagi’s $16.8 billion in damage made it the world’s fourth-costliest typhoon on record (using statistics from EM-DAT, inflation-adjusted to 2024 dollars). Here is their top-10 list of most expensive typhoons:
1) $25 billion, Doksuri, 2023 (China)
2) $22 billion, Mireille, 1991 (Japan)
3) $20 billion, Hagibis, 2019 (Japan)
4) $17 billion, Yagi, 2024 (China, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, India)
5) $15 billion, Jebi, 2018 (Japan)
5) $15 billion, Songda, 2004 (Japan)
7) $12 billion, Lekima, 2019 (China)
8) $11 billion, Faxai, 2019 (Japan)
9) $9 billion, Fitow, 2013 (China)
9) $9 billion, Flo, 1990 (Japan)
9) $9 billion, Bart, 1999 (Japan)
This list leaves out what was possibly the most destructive typhoon of all time, Typhoon Nina of 1975. Nina stalled out and dumped prodigious rains for two days in the Ru River drainage basin upstream of the Banqiao Dam, leading to the dam’s collapse and the loss of 171,000 lives, with an area 34 miles long and eight miles wide wiped out. The disaster was not disclosed by China until the mid-1990s. The list above also does not include the $12 billion flood disaster in southern Japan in July 2018, which was caused by the presence of a stationary seasonal frontal boundary enhanced by remnant moisture from Typhoon Prapiroon.
Figure 3. The deadliest heat waves in world history, as tabulated by Gallagher Re for 2024, Gallo et al. (2024) for the 2023 European heat wave and EM-DAT for the rest. Three of the top 20 deadliest heat waves occurred in 2024 (highlighted in yellow).
A record year for heat waves: three with at least 1,000 deathsEarth’s hottest year on record brought three heat waves that killed at least 1,000 people in 2024. The more than 9,000 deaths that occurred during the summer heat wave in Europe ranks as the year’s deadliest weather disaster and is the fifth-deadliest heat wave in world history. In addition, 1,301 heat wave deaths occurred in Saudi Arabia June 14-19 during the Hajj, when temperatures exceeding 50 degrees Celsius (122 °F) occurred. And the last group of more than 1,000 heat wave deaths occurred in the U.S.; most of these were in Maricopa County, Arizona (home of Phoenix), which reported 657 heat wave deaths. Aon lists another 2024 heat wave that occurred in Southeast Asia April 20-May 5, which killed 1,571 people; Gallagher Re lists only 111 deaths for that event.
Before 2024, there were only 18 heat waves in history documented by EM-DAT to have killed at least 1,000 people; 2024 would be the first year to have three entries on this list (assuming that the EM-DAT database, which has not yet updated its heat wave numbers for 2024, agrees with Gallagher Re’s numbers). Note, though, that heat wave deaths are often not fully quantified until several years after the event and are often drastically underreported.
For example, in 2022, Maricopa County, Arizona, which contains Phoenix, reported 425 heat-associated deaths. Yet EM-DAT lists only 136 heat wave deaths for the entire U.S. for that year, and NOAA lists just 383. Officials in Maricopa County and some other areas are now making more concerted efforts to account for all heat-related deaths; this will lead to more accurate totals going forward but will add to the challenge of apples-and-apples comparisons between recent and long-ago heat waves.
Figure 4. The deadliest wildfires in world history, as tabulated by Gallagher Re for 2024, Cal Fire for 2018, the State of Hawaii for 2023, and EM-DAT for the other years.
Earth’s fifth-deadliest wildfire on record: 137 killed in ChileEarth’s hottest year on record intensified multiple destructive and deadly wildfires in 2024. The deadliest was a horrific wildfire, fueled by near-record drought, extreme heat, and El Niño, which swept through the coastal city of coastal city of Viña del Mar, Chile, on February 2-3. The death toll of 137 makes this Earth’s fifth-deadliest wildfire since 1900, and the $1 billion price tag makes it Chile’s second billion-dollar weather disaster on record. (The other was a 2015 flood that cost $1.9 billion, adjusted for inflation.)
The World Weather Attribution group could not identify a climate change influence on the 2024 Chile wildfires. But according to a 2024 study, six out of seven of Chile’s most destructive fire seasons on record occurred since 2014, and the study authors stated, “the concurrence of El Niño and climate-fueled droughts and heat waves boost the local fire risk and have decisively contributed to the intense fire activity recently seen in central Chile.”
An increase in “hot droughts” worldwideMany parts of the world are experiencing a shift toward “hot droughts”: droughts associated with less precipitation than average combined with significantly above-average temperatures — a double whammy that greatly increases the risk of ecosystem impacts and destructive wildfires. This is the kind of drought that affected Chile during its catastrophic wildfires in both 2023 and 2024 and has increasingly been affecting California. A 2024 study published in the Journal of Arid Environments concluded, “Our findings support the idea that anthropogenic warming results in a changing drought climatology for arid and semiarid regions of southern California and that hot droughts will likely become the dominant drought type.”
Fortunately, global losses from drought were below average in 2024, according to Aon, which listed $18 billion in losses. This is well below the 2000-2023 average of $40 billion per year.
A concerning increase in deadly wildfires globallyFive of the top 10 deadliest wildfires globally since 1900 have occurred since 2018, according to statistics from EM-DAT. This worrisome trend results not only from climate change but also from an increase in the number of people moving into fire-vulnerable areas — the wildland-urban interface, often called the WUI. In addition, poor land management practices have contributed to extreme wildfire activity; for example, in Chile and Portugal, recent catastrophic fires burned through plantation forests densely packed with fire-vulnerable trees. In some regions, fire-prone invasive plants have been a problem, such as in the wildfire that consumed Lahaina, Hawai’i in 2023, killing 102 people. Finally, human-caused ignition sources have increased as more people and more infrastructure push into forested areas.
A new addition to the unprecedented number of very deadly African weather disasters since 2022Torrential rains during July, August, and September 2024 unleashed catastrophic floods in West and Central Africa, affecting over 4 million people in 14 countries: Benin, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Togo. According to the U.N. World Food Program, the floods exacerbated a regional hunger crisis that was already affecting 55 million people – four times more people than five years ago. EM-DAT lists 1,489 flood deaths for 2024 in those nations, primarily in Chad, Nigeria, and Niger. These floods affected the same area that experienced catastrophic flooding in 2022 that killed 876 people. However, this year there was also significant rain and flooding even further north, extending from the semiarid Sahel region into the Sahara Desert itself, as observed by NASA satellites. Some parts of Libya and Sudan received up to 5 times their normal annual rainfall.
Figure 5. Areas of North Africa that received notable rainfall in August and September 2024. (Image credit:NASA Global Precipitation Measurement)
According to an analysis by the World Weather Attribution group, human-caused climate change made the 2024 floods about twice as likely to occur and 10% more intense. For the 2022 floods, the group said human-caused climate change made the event about twice as likely to occur and 5% more intense.
Despite recent improved weather forecasting technology and increased disaster awareness and preparation efforts, the African continent has suffered an unprecedented number of deadly weather-related disasters over the past three years. The 2024 floods are the eighth weather-related disaster to kill at least 500 Africans since 2022, and an astonishing 27% of the continent’s 30 deadliest weather-related disasters since 1900 have occurred since 2022 (Fig. 6).
Figure 6. Deadliest weather-related disasters in Africa since 1900, according to the international disaster database EM-DAT (data for the 2022-23 drought in Somalia is from Warsame et al., 2023). During 2022-2024, eight of the top 30 deadliest disasters occurred (highlighted in red).
This ominous figure could well be a harbinger of the future, as higher vulnerability, a growing population, and more extreme weather events from climate change cause an increase in deadly disasters. For more detail, see our September 13, 2023, post on Storm Daniel, “The Libya floods: a climate and infrastructure catastrophe.”
Special weather whiplash of 2024 awards: Brazil and SpainBrazil: Not only did Brazil suffer its costliest weather disaster on record in 2024 — the $14.5 billion in damage from the Rio Grande do Sul floods — the nation also suffered $6 billion in losses from drought and had massive fires that burned an area the size of Italy — the largest area on record — in the Amazon.
Spain: In late October, torrential rains hit eastern Spain, triggering catastrophic flooding that killed 231 people and did $12 billion in damage, primarily in Valencia. The flood ranks Spain’s costliest weather disaster on record and is Europe’s 10th-costliest weather disaster in history. The 231 deaths also made it the 10th-deadliest flood in European history (and third-deadliest in Spanish history). Spain also suffered $3.2 billion in drought losses in 2024 and was one of the four nations most affected by Europe’s summer heat wave, which killed over 9,000 people.
Figure 7. Costliest weather-related disasters in Europe since 1980, according to the international disaster database EM-DAT. Data for the 2024 storm is from insurance broker Gallagher Re. The slow-moving upper low that caused the 2024 disaster is known as a DANA, or Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos (isolated depression at high levels).
One other nation suffered its costliest inflation-adjusted weather disaster in history during 2024: the United Arab Emirates, with $7 billion in damage from the Persian Gulf flash floods of April 2024. In addition, the French territory of Mayotte had its most expensive disaster on record in 2024, from catastrophic category 4 Cyclone Chido, which caused insured losses of $675 million, and total losses that could rival the nation’s GDP of $3 billion, according to Aon.
For comparison, seven nations had their most expensive weather-related natural disaster in history in 2023. Note that these tallies will be considerably different using Aon or Gallagher Re disaster figures, which can differ from EM-DAT’s by a factor of two. Gallagher Re’s database is generally superior to EM-DAT’s but is not publicly available.
SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #04
This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks!
Stories we promoted this week, by category:Climate Change Impacts
- Climate change is forcing us to rethink our sense of ‘home’ – and what it means to lose it by Talia Fell and Codie Condos Distratis , The Conversation, Jan 16, 2025
- Greenland`s lakes are getting uglier-and fast The transformation could be permanent. by Lauren Leffer, Popular Science, Jan 20, 2025
- The scariest thing about the LA fire by Simon Clark, Youtube, Jan 21, 2025
- This scientist studies climate change. Then the Los Angeles fire destroyed his home by Lauren Sommer, NPR Topics: Climate, Jan 23, 2025
- The planet had 58 billion-dollar weather disasters in 2024, the second-highest on record The world endured three of its top-20 costliest disasters on record in 2024, its fifth-deadliest wildfire, and a record three heat waves that caused more than 1,000 deaths. by Jeff Masters, Yale Climate Connections, Jan 24, 2025
Climate Policy and Politics
- Trump Targeted Scientists in His First Term. This Time, They’re Prepared. Agencies and unions have put in place new guardrails designed to limit political interference in government research. by Coral Davenport, New York Times, Jan 17, 2025
- Trump unravels US climate agenda as he promises to `drill, baby, drill` From declaring a “national energy emergency” to exiting the Paris Agreement, here is everything climate-related Trump did on Day 1. by Naveena Sadasivam, Grist, Jan 21, 2025
- Trump vows to `unleash` oil and gas drilling as he rolls back climate rules President declares energy emergency, reiterates Paris withdrawal plan and overturns emissions standards by Dharna Noor, The Guardian, Jan 21, 2025
- Sabin Center`s Online Tracking Tools Monitor Government Actions on Climate Change by Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, State of the Planet, Jan 22, 2025
- Explained: how Trump`s day one orders reveal a White House for big oil From LNG to drilling in Alaska, here’s everything you need to know about Trump’s energy and climate executive orders by Oliver Milman and Dharna Noor, The Guardian, Jan 22, 2025
- After Trump`s pullback, Bloomberg promises to fill US funding gap to UN climate body The announcement comes after Trump said the US should “immediately cease or revoke” any financial commitment made under the UNFCCC by Matteo Civillini, Climate Home News, Jan 23, 2025
- Let’s not panic by John Perona, Earthward, Jan 22, 2025
- Trump returns: Nine things to expect for the climate by Jack Marley , The Conversation, Jan 23, 2025
- Undaunted A champion for truth, science, and responsible stewardship by Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian, Jan 24, 2025
Climate Science and Research
- At this remote outpost, Australians are racing to find the world`s oldest ice and unlock the secrets it holds Bubbles of air trapped in ancient Antarctic ice, dating up to 2m years old, contain unknown information about Earth’s past climate by Donna Lu, The Guardian, Jan 19, 2025
- Skeptical Science New Research for Week #4 2025 A weekly survey of freshly published peer reviewed and government/NGO reports on human-caused climate change, and what we can do to fix this problem. by Doug Bostrom & Marc Kodack, Skeptical Science, Jan 23, 2025
International Climate Conferences and Agreements
- US to withdraw from Paris agreement, expand drilling by Issam Ahmed, Phys.org, Jan 20, 2025
- Brazil appoints veteran diplomat as Cop30 president for November summit Climate negotiator André Aranha Corrêa do Lago given top job, bypassing Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva by Fiona Harvey, The Guardian, Jan 21, 2025
- The Kyoto climate treaty is hailed on stage but reality tells a different story A gripping play in London’s West End tells how agreement of the first climate protocol in 1997 was a triumph, as scientists share new warnings about the scale of the crisis by Robin McKie, The Guardian, Jan 25, 2025
Public Misunderstandings about Climate Science
- Extreme weather failing to encourage political climate action, says activist Luisa Neubauer Fridays for Future organiser warns conspiracy theories are increasingly taking hold despite effects of global heating by Ajit Niranjan, The Guardian, Jan 24, 2025
Public Misunderstandings about Climate Solutions
- The 8 talking points fossil fuel companies use to obstruct climate action New research highlights companies’ “aligned and coordinated” use of Twitter to deny climate change and delay solutions. by Joseph Winters, Grist, Jan 21, 2025
- Sabin 33 #12 - Do solar panels work in cold or cloudy climates? by Sabin Law Team, Skeptical Science, Jan 21, 2025
Miscellaneous (Other)
- 2025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #03 A listing of 25 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, January 12, 2025 thru Sat, January 18, 2025. by Bärbel Winkler and Doug Bostrom, Skeptical Science, Jan 19, 2025
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #4 2025
Managing and mitigating future public health risks: Planetary boundaries, global catastrophic risk, and inclusive wealth, McLaughlin & Beck, Risk Analysis [perspective]:
There are two separate conceptualizations for assessing existential risks: Planetary Boundaries (PBs) and global catastrophic risks (GCRs). While these concepts are similar in principle, their underpinning literatures tend not to engage with each other. Research related to these concepts has tended to be siloed in terms of the study of specific threats and also in terms of how these are assumed to materialize; PBs attribute global catastrophes to slow-moving and potentially irreversible global changes, while GCRs focuses on cataclysmic short-term events. We argue that there is a need for a more unified approach to managing global long-term risks, which recognizes the complex and confounded nature of the interactions between PBs and GCRs. We highlight where the PB and GCR concepts overlap and outline these complexities using an example of public health, namely, pandemics and food insecurity. We also present an existing indicator that we argue can be used for monitoring and managing risk. We argue for greater emphasis on national and global ‘‘inclusive wealth’’ as a way to measure economic activity and thus to monitor and mitigate the unintended consequences of economic activity. In sum, we call for a holistic approach to stewardship aimed at preserving the integrity of natural capital in the face of a broad range of global risks and their respective regional or global manifestations.
El Niño and Sea Surface Temperature Pattern Effects Lead to Historically High Global Mean Surface Temperatures in 2023, Jiang et al., Geophysical Research Letters:
In 2023, the world experienced its highest ever global mean surface temperature (GMST). Our study underscores the pivotal significance of El Niño and sea surface temperature (SST) warming as the fundamental causes. Interannually, the increment of GMST in 2023 comprised two phases: first, gradual ocean warming associated with El Niño and the North Atlantic from January to August; second, a continued rise in land temperatures in the mid-to-high latitude regions from September onwards, influenced by SST patterns. Notably, the maturation of El Niño prolonged warming in North America through excitation of the Pacific-North American teleconnection. During the most recent 15 years, GMST has entered an accelerated warming period, primarily driven by rapid SST warming trends in the tropical Indian Ocean, tropical Atlantic, subtropical North Pacific, and North Atlantic. These decadal warming patterns, combined with El Niño, may further increase GMST, with 2023 as a particularly striking example.
Carbon emission and energy risk management in mega sporting events: challenges, strategies, and pathways, Su et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science
The study reveals that large-scale sporting events generate substantial carbon emissions and energy consumption in transportation, venue construction, and event operation. However, carbon emissions and energy usage can be significantly reduced by optimizing venue locations, promoting green transportation, and implementing energy-saving measures at all stages. This study not only provides empirical data and theoretical support for the management of carbon emissions and energy efficiency in sporting events but also proposes practical and feasible suggestions that are highly important for the sustainable development of future sporting events. The findings have reference value for policymakers and event organizers in planning and implementing energy-saving and low-carbon events, helping promote environmental governance and sustainable development in the sports sector.
Hydroclimatic extremes threaten groundwater quality and stability, Schroeter et al., Nature Communications
Heavy precipitation, drought, and other hydroclimatic extremes occur more frequently than in the past climate reference period (1961–1990). Given their strong effect on groundwater recharge dynamics, these phenomena increase the vulnerability of groundwater quantity and quality. Over the course of the past decade, we have documented changes in the composition of dissolved organic matter in groundwater. We show that fractions of ingressing surface-derived organic molecules increased significantly as groundwater levels declined, whereas concentrations of dissolved organic carbon remained constant. Molecular composition changeover was accelerated following 2018’s extreme summer drought. These findings demonstrate that hydroclimatic extremes promote rapid transport between surface ecosystems and groundwaters, thereby enabling xenobiotic substances to evade microbial processing, accrue in greater abundance in groundwater, and potentially compromise the safe nature of these potable water sources. Groundwater quality is far more vulnerable to the impact of recent climate anomalies than is currently recognized, and the molecular composition of dissolved organic matter can be used as a comprehensive indicator for groundwater quality deterioration.
Illusory implications: incidental exposure to ideas can induce beliefs, Mikell & Powell, Royal Society Open Science
Numerous psychological findings have shown that incidental exposure to ideas makes those ideas seem more true, a finding commonly referred to as the ‘illusory truth’ effect. Under many accounts of the illusory truth effect, initial exposure to a statement provides a metacognitive feeling of ‘fluency’ or familiarity that, upon subsequent exposure, leads people to infer that the statement is more likely to be true. However, genuine beliefs do not only affect truth judgements about individual statements, they also imply other beliefs and drive decision-making. Here, we consider whether exposure to ‘premise’ statements affects people’s truth ratings for novel ‘implied’ statements, a pattern of findings we call the ‘illusory implication’ effect. We argue these effects would constitute evidence for genuine belief change from incidental exposure and identify a handful of existing findings that offer preliminary support for this claim. Building upon these, we conduct three new preregistered experiments to further test this hypothesis, finding additional evidence that exposure to ‘premise’ statements affected participants’ truth ratings for novel ‘implied’ statements, including for considerably more distant implications than those previously explored. Our findings suggest that the effects of incidental exposure reach further than previously thought, with potentially consequential implications for concerns around mis- and dis-information.
Risking delay: the storylines of (bioenergy with) carbon capture and storage in Swedish parliamentary discourse, Almqvist-Ingersoll, Frontiers in Climate
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), along with Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), feature heavily in climate mitigation scenarios. Nevertheless, the technologies remain controversial within the broader mitigation discourse, in part for their potential to excuse delay in more ambitious emissions reductions in the short term. Sweden has included BECCS and CCS as proposed “supplementary measures” to enable the country to meet its ambitious target of achieving net negative emissions by 2045. Hajer’s Argumentative Approach to Discourse Analysis is applied to Swedish parliamentary speeches, motions, and written questions and answers, to uncover the storylines and attendant assumptions constituting Swedish policy deliberation regarding CCS and BECCS. This study finds that by problematizing climate change as an issue of emissions, actors position CCS and BECCS within a dominant neoliberal discourse and characterize them as tools to facilitate a green transition centering on industrial and economic competitiveness. This discourse lacks detail, and risks delay by oversimplifying the needs and requirements for CCS and BECCS deployment. Meanwhile, a CCS-critical discourse acknowledges the need for negative emissions but challenges storylines portraying the technology as inexpensive or easy to deploy rapidly. If pursued, this discourse could serve to sharpen the debate about the technologies and bring planning in line with aspirations, helping to avert risks of delay.
From this week's government/NGO section:Planetary Solvency–finding. Global risk management for human prosperity. our balance with nature, Trust et al, Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and University of Exeter
The risk of Planetary Insolvency looms unless we act decisively. Without immediate policy action to change course, catastrophic or extreme impacts are eminently plausible, which could threaten future prosperity. The global economy could face a 50% loss in GDP between 2070 and 2090 unless immediate policy action on risks posed by the climate crisis is taken. Populations are already impacted by food system shocks, water insecurity, heat stress, and infectious diseases. If unchecked, mass mortality, mass displacement, severe economic contraction, and conflict become more likely. The authors develop a framework for global risk management to address these risks and show how this approach can support future prosperity. They also show how a lack of realistic risk messaging to guide policy decisions has led to slower action than is needed. The authors propose a dashboard to provide decision-useful risk information to support policymakers to drive human activity within the finite bounds of the planet that we live on.State of the Clean Energy Boom, Clean Power
In less than two and a half years since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act more than 400,000 new clean energy jobs and over $422 billion in investments across 48 states and Puerto Rico have been announced. Most of the clean energy projects and jobs are located in congressional districts represented by Republicans – 405 clean energy projects and 216,322 jobs, respectively. Of the top 10 states for new clean energy jobs, half have Republican governors welcoming the local investments. The authors analyze public announcements from the private sector since the passage of the clean energy plan to demonstrate the breadth and scale of the growing clean energy economy being built across the country. It also provides a breakdown of the data by state, sector, and congressional district, as well as analyses covering projects, jobs, and investments in rural areas and disadvantaged communities across America and in districts represented by Republican members of the House of Representatives. 126 articles in 57 journals by 898 contributing authorsPhysical science of climate change, effects
Atlantic overturning inferred from air-sea heat fluxes indicates no decline since the 1960s, Terhaar et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-024-55297-5
Climate Change Drives Evolution of Thermohaline Staircases in the Arctic Ocean, Lundberg & Polyakov, Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 10.1029/2024jc021538
Delayed onset of ocean acidification in the Gulf of Maine, Stewart et al., Scientific Reports Open Access 10.1038/s41598-024-84537-3
Dominant inflation of the Arctic Ocean’s Beaufort Gyre in a warming climate, Wang et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-025-02028-3
Linking Radiative-Advective Equilibrium Regime Transition to Arctic Amplification, Liang et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2024gl113417
Transient Climate Sensitivity Shaped by Low Cloud Changes Remotely Driven by Southern Ocean Processes, Ford et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-24-0164.1
Observations of climate change, effects
El Niño and Sea Surface Temperature Pattern Effects Lead to Historically High Global Mean Surface Temperatures in 2023, Jiang et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2024gl113733
Global increase in the occurrence and impact of multiyear droughts, Chen et al., Science 10.1126/science.ado4245
Greening of Svalbard in the twentieth century driven by sea ice loss and glaciers retreat, Ingrosso et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-025-01994-y
Regional Hotspots of Change in Northern High Latitudes Informed by Observations From Space, Watts et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2023gl108081
Instrumentation & observational methods of climate change, effects
ESA CCI Soil Moisture GAPFILLED: An independent global gap-free satellite climate data record with uncertainty estimates, Preimesberger et al., Open Access 10.5194/essd-2024-610
What is climate change doing in Himalaya? Thirty years of the Pyramid Meteorological Network (Nepal), Salerno et al., Open Access 10.5194/essd-2024-591
Modeling, simulation & projection of climate change, effects
Changes in event soil moisture-temperature coupling can intensify very extreme heat beyond expectations, Maraun et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-025-56109-0
Modeling the impact of extreme weather events and future climate on the radiologically contaminated sites of Enewetak Atoll, Premathilake et al., Scientific Reports Open Access 10.1038/s41598-025-85849-8
More than three-fold increase in compound soil and air dryness across Europe by the end of 21st century, Shekhar et al., Open Access 10.21203/rs.3.rs-3143908/v2
Advancement of climate & climate effects modeling, simulation & projection
An improved and extended parameterization of the CO2 15 µm cooling in the middle and upper atmosphere (CO2&cool&fort-1.0), López-Puertas et al., Geoscientific Model Development Open Access 10.5194/gmd-17-4401-2024
Climate Model Downscaling in Central Asia: A Dynamical and a Neural Network Approach, Fallah et al., Geoscientific Model Development Open Access 10.5194/gmd-18-161-2025
Impact of host climate model on contrail cirrus effective radiative forcing estimates, Zhang et al., Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Open Access 10.5194/acp-25-473-2025
Understanding equilibrium climate sensitivity changes from CMIP5 to CMIP6: Feedback, AMOC, and precipitation responses, Wang et al., Atmospheric Research 10.1016/j.atmosres.2025.107917
Cryosphere & climate change
A transdisciplinary, comparative analysis reveals key risks from Arctic permafrost thaw, Gartler et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-024-01883-w
Increased vulnerability of Arctic potential ice roads under climate change, Dong et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-025-02011-y
Sea ice loss in association with Arctic cyclones, Blanchard?Wrigglesworth et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 10.1029/2024jc021127
The interaction between thermokarst lake drainage and ground subsidence accelerates permafrost degradation, YU et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2025.01.003
Paleoclimate & paleogeochemistry
Two Sites in East Asia Add to Spatiotemporal Heterogeneity of Wildfire Activity Across the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum, Chen et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2024gl113829
Biology & climate change, related geochemistry
A seasonal matrix population model for ixodid ticks with complex life histories and limited host availability, Vindenes & Mysterud, Ecology Open Access 10.1002/ecy.4511
Abrupt demographic change affects projected population size: Implications for an endangered species in a protected area, Strier & Ives, Ecology 10.1002/ecy.4487
Abrupt transformation of west Greenland lakes following compound climate extremes associated with atmospheric rivers, Saros et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access 10.1073/pnas.2413855122
Additive Effects of Multiple Global Change Factors on Plant Invasions Are Common, Shi et al., Ecology Letters 10.1111/ele.70057
An insect pheromone primes tolerance of herbivory in goldenrod plants, Yip et al., Ecology 10.1002/ecy.4486
Annual Chronology and Climate Signals in Swietenia macrophylla and Cedrela odorata (Meliaceae) in the Maya Lowlands, González?Méndez et al., Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology 10.1029/2024pa005036
Anthropogenic Disturbance and Climate Change Impacts on the Suitable Habitat of Sphenomorphus incognitus in China, Chen et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.70848
Cellular and genetic responses of Phaeodactylum tricornutum to seawater acidification and copper exposure, Chen et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2024.106928
Climate change and the cost-of-living squeeze in desert lizards, Wild et al., Science 10.1126/science.adq4372
Common Yew (Taxus baccata) as a climate archive: Reconstructing 200 years of temperature change in Georgia (Caucasus), Kvaratskhelia & Gavashelishvili, Dendrochronologia 10.1016/j.dendro.2024.126285
Continuous Abrupt Vegetation Shifts in the Global Terrestrial Ecosystem, Wei et al., Ecology Letters 10.1111/ele.70069
Controlled temperature contrasts of three native and one highly invasive annual plant species in California, Zuliani et al., PeerJ Open Access 10.7717/peerj.18794
Do wood-boring beetles influence the flammability of deadwood?, Zhang et al., Ecology Open Access 10.1002/ecy.4508
Dominant species stabilize pollination services through response diversity, but not cross-scale redundancy, Genung & Winfree, Ecology 10.1002/ecy.4481
Double Trouble for Native Species Under Climate Change: Habitat Loss and Increased Environmental Overlap With Non-Native Species, Jan et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70040
Drought resilience of three coniferous species from Belgian arboreta highlights them as promising alternatives for future forests in Western Europe, Dendoncker et al., Dendrochronologia 10.1016/j.dendro.2024.126282
Hygroelectric Energy Harvesting by Daily Humidity Cycles and its Thermodynamics, Komazaki et al., Advanced Energy and Sustainability Research Open Access 10.1002/aesr.202400342
Modeling and design of solar + storage-powered community resilience hubs across California, Murphy et al., Risk Analysis Open Access 10.1111/risa.14341
New development paths through green hydrogen?: An ex-ante assessment of structure and agency in Chile and Namibia, Scholvin & Kalvelage, Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103904
Energy transfer efficiency rather than productivity determines the strength of aquatic trophic cascades, Zhou et al., Ecology 10.1002/ecy.4482
Even protected seaweeds must face a warming ocean: Sea surface temperatures trigger tissue bleaching and breakdown in the unique giant Irish moss (Chondrus crispus), Gibbons et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2024.106907
Evolution and Viability of Asian Horseshoe Crabs Appear Tightly Linked to Geo-Climatic Dynamics in the Sunda Shelf, Tang et al., Conservation Letters Open Access 10.1111/conl.13074
Global Marine Ecosystem Response to a Strong AMOC Weakening Under Low and High Future Emission Scenarios, Boot et al., Earth's Future Open Access 10.1029/2024ef004741
Gross primary productivity is more sensitive to accelerated flash droughts, Jing et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-025-02013-w
High- and low-temperature stress responses of Porites lutea from the relatively high-latitude region of the South China Sea, Huang et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2024.106858
Impacts of Weather Anomalies and Climate on Plant Disease, Kirk et al., Ecology Letters 10.1111/ele.70062
Leaf Photosynthetic and Respiratory Thermal Acclimation in Terrestrial Plants in Response to Warming: A Global Synthesis, Wu et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70026
Lessons from wholesale market success for system service procurement design in high renewable electricity markets, Lynch & Bertsch, Nature Energy 10.1038/s41560-024-01699-0
Long-term increases in wing length occur independently of changes in climate and climate-driven shifts in body size, Dias et al., Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Open Access 10.1098/rspb.2024.2556
Long-term warming and acidification interaction drives plastic acclimation in the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia multiseries, Sun et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2024.106901
Mortality Patterns and Recovery Challenges in Millepora alcicornis after mass bleaching event on Northeast Brazilian Reefs, Vidal et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2024.106864
Multiple Elevation-Dependent Climate Signals From Quantitative Wood Anatomical Measurements of Rocky Mountain Bristlecone Pine, Edwards et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences 10.1029/2024jg008307
Performance of Acanthina monodon juveniles under long-term exposure to predicted climate change conditions, Paredes-Molina et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2024.106855
Recurrent marine heatwaves compromise the reproduction success and long-term viability of shallow populations of the Mediterranean gorgonian Eunicella singularis, Sarda et al., Marine Environmental Research Open Access 10.1016/j.marenvres.2024.106822
Southward Migration: How Climate Change Alters the Prey Dynamics of Spotted Seal in Western Pacific Ocean, Zhu et al., Diversity and Distributions Open Access 10.1111/ddi.13957
Statistical power and the detection of global change responses: The case of leaf production in old-growth forests, Wright & Calderón, Ecology 10.1002/ecy.4526
Sweating the small stuff: microclimatic exposure and species habitat associations inform climate vulnerability in a grassland songbird community, Bernath-Plaisted et al., Biology Letters Open Access 10.1098/rsbl.2024.0599
The Late Orchid Catches the Bee: Frost Damage and Pollination Success in the Face of Global Warming in a European Terrestrial Orchid, Schiestl et al., Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.70729
The trade-offs associated with the adaptions of marine microalgae to high CO2 and warming, Liang et al., Marine Environmental Research 10.1016/j.marenvres.2024.106853
Time since fire interacts with herbivore intake rates to control herbivore habitat occupancy, Donaldson et al., Ecology 10.1002/ecy.4473
Variations of polyphenols and carbohydrates of Emiliania huxleyi grown under simulated ocean acidification conditions, Rico et al., Open Access 10.5194/bg-2024-1
Warming-induced changes in seasonal priority effects drive shifts in community composition, Dawson?Glass et al., Ecology Open Access 10.1002/ecy.4504
GHG sources & sinks, flux, related geochemistry
Air temperature and precipitation constraining the modelled wetland methane emissions in a boreal region in northern Europe, Aalto et al., Biogeosciences Open Access 10.5194/bg-22-323-2025
Annual grass invasions and wildfire deplete ecosystem carbon storage by >50% to resistant base levels, Maxwell et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access pdf 10.1038/s43247-024-01795-9
Atmospheric CO2 column concentration over Iran: Emissions, GOSAT satellite observations, and WRF-GHG model simulations, Karbasi et al., Atmospheric Research Open Access 10.1016/j.atmosres.2024.107818
Bridging the gap in carbon cycle studies: Meteorological station-based carbon flux dataset as a complement to EC towers, Zhang et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2025.110397
Contrasting effects of water deficits and rewetting on greenhouse gas emissions in two grassland and forest ecosystems, Zou et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2025.110396
Enhanced CH4 emissions from global wildfires likely due to undetected small fires, Zhao et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-025-56218-w
Ensemble estimates of global wetland methane emissions over 2000–2020, Zhang et al., Biogeosciences Open Access 10.5194/bg-22-305-2025
GHG emissions intensity analysis. Case study: Bioethanol plant with cogeneration and partial CO2 recovery, Galván et al., Energy for Sustainable Development 10.1016/j.esd.2024.101598
Impact of the 1994–1997 temporary decrease in Northern Hemisphere stratospheric methane on the 1990s methane trend, Han et al., Global and Planetary Change 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2025.104697
Initial Stand Volume and Residual Live Trees Drive Deadwood Carbon Stocks in Fire and Harvest Disturbed Boreal Forests at North-Central Alberta, Osei & Nock, Ecology and Evolution Open Access 10.1002/ece3.70710
Microbial Carbon Use Efficiency and Growth Rates in Soil: Global Patterns and Drivers, Hu et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70036
Peat Depth and Carbon Storage of the Hudson Bay Lowlands, Canada, Li et al., Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2024gl110679
Predicting CO2 and CH4 fluxes and their seasonal variations in a subarctic wetland under two shared socioeconomic pathway climate scenarios, Zhao et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Open Access 10.1016/j.agrformet.2024.110359
Reconciliation of observation- and inventory- based methane emissions for eight large global emitters, Petrescu et al., Open Access 10.5194/essd-2023-516
Removal of dissolved organic carbon in the West Pacific hadal zones, Chu et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-025-55883-1
Seasonal CO2 amplitude in northern high latitudes, Liu et al., Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 10.1038/s43017-024-00600-7
Seasonal warming responses of the carbon dioxide sink from northern forests are sensitive to stand age, Liu et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-025-02008-7
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 presence of the Tibetan Plateau lowers atmospheric CO2 levels via the Atlantic-Pacific carbon seesaw, Du et al., Global and Planetary Change 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2024.104681
Unlocking Mechanisms for Soil Organic Matter Accumulation: Carbon Use Efficiency and Microbial Necromass as the Keys, Yang et al., Global Change Biology 10.1111/gcb.70033
Variations and drivers of CO2 fluxes at multiple temporal scales of subtropical agricultural systems in the Huaihe river Basin, Zhang et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2025.110394
Wildfires offset the increasing but spatially heterogeneous Arctic–boreal CO2 uptake, Virkkala et al., Nature Climate Change Open Access 10.1038/s41558-024-02234-5
CO2 capture, sequestration science & engineering
Bargaining powers in cooperative Carbon Dioxide Removal deployment, Jagu Schippers et al., Climate Policy 10.1080/14693062.2024.2445167
Carbon burial in sediments below seaweed farms matches that of Blue Carbon habitats, Duarte et al., Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-024-02238-1
Review and syntheses: Ocean alkalinity enhancement and carbon dioxide removal through marine enhanced rock weathering using olivine, Geerts et al., Biogeosciences Open Access 10.5194/bg-22-355-2025
Risking delay: the storylines of (bioenergy with) carbon capture and storage in Swedish parliamentary discourse, Almqvist-Ingersoll, Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2024.1514753
Decarbonization
Hygroelectric Energy Harvesting by Daily Humidity Cycles and its Thermodynamics, Komazaki et al., Advanced Energy and Sustainability Research Open Access 10.1002/aesr.202400342
Modeling and design of solar + storage-powered community resilience hubs across California, Murphy et al., Risk Analysis Open Access 10.1111/risa.14341
New development paths through green hydrogen?: An ex-ante assessment of structure and agency in Chile and Namibia, Scholvin & Kalvelage, Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103904
Predicting the effect of promoting ultra-low energy buildings in hot summer and warm winter regions on CO2 emission, Wang et al., Energy for Sustainable Development 10.1016/j.esd.2024.101646
Geoengineering climate
How to address solar geoengineering’s transparency problem, Talati et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Open Access 10.1073/pnas.2419587122
Permafrost Response in Northern High-Latitude Regions to 1.5°C Warming and Overshoot Scenarios Achieved via Solar Radiation Modification, Ji et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres Open Access 10.1029/2024jd041772
Aerosols
Changes in the Climate Effects of Major Anthropogenic Aerosols in East Asia Under Different Emission Reduction Scenarios in China, Gao et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 10.1029/2024jd042301
Climate change communications & cognition
Climate change and urban forests: generational differences in women’s perceptions and willingness to participate in conservation efforts, Maleknia et al., Frontiers in Forests and Global Change Open Access 10.3389/ffgc.2024.1450098
Feeling climate change: how emotions govern our responses to the climate emergency, Bowden, Environmental Politics Open Access 10.1080/09644016.2025.2454762
Illusory implications: incidental exposure to ideas can induce beliefs, Mikell & Powell, Royal Society Open Science Open Access 10.1098/rsos.240716
Intergenerational Ethics and Climate Change, Kerridge & Komesaroff Pottier , Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health Open Access pdf 10.1111/jpc.15922
Promoting Collective Climate Action and Identification with Environmentalists through Social Interaction and Visual Feedback in Virtual Reality, Plechatá et al., Journal of Environmental Psychology Open Access 10.1016/j.jenvp.2025.102526
Agronomy, animal husbundry, food production & climate change
A model-data fusion approach for quantifying the carbon budget in cotton agroecosystems across the United States, Qin et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Open Access 10.1016/j.agrformet.2025.110407
Change of dietary patterns on CO2 emissions under the African swine fever in South Korea, Eun, Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2024.1485355
Climate change impacts on cocoa production in the major producing countries of West and Central Africa by mid-century, Asante et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Open Access 10.1016/j.agrformet.2025.110393
Examining effects of climate information utilization by climate-vulnerability groups in the northern region of Ghana, Alhassan et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2024.1482044
From Dry to Temperate: How Climate Change Alters Growing Seasons?, Khodamorad Pour et al., International Journal of Climatology 10.1002/joc.8752
Impacts of climate-driven insect population change on sawtimber provisioning, carbon sequestration, and water retention: a case study of bark beetle outbreaks in the USA, Chen et al., Frontiers in Forests and Global Change Open Access 10.3389/ffgc.2024.1513721
Lower methane and nitrous oxide emissions from rice-aquaculture co-culture systems than from rice paddies in southeast China,, Fang et al., Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109540
Modeling biochar effects on soil organic carbon on croplands in a microbial decomposition model (MIMICS-BC&v1.0), Han et al., Geoscientific Model Development Open Access 10.5194/gmd-17-4871-2024
The impact of climate change on household dietary diversity score (HDDS) in Afghanistan, Yolchi & Wang, Climate Risk Management Open Access 10.1016/j.crm.2025.100687
Hydrology, hydrometeorology & climate change
A Quantitative Assessment of Vertical Wave Energy Flux and Global Wave Power Due To Upward Propagating Tides Based on TIMED Observations, Neogi & Oberheide, Geophysical Research Letters Open Access 10.1029/2024gl113527
Counteracting greenhouse gas and aerosol influences intensify global water seasonality over the past century, Zhao et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-025-02025-6
Emergent constraints on global soil moisture projections under climate change, Yao et al., Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-025-02024-7
Hydroclimatic extremes threaten groundwater quality and stability, Schroeter et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-025-55890-2
Impact of drought on cooling capacity and carbon sequestration in urban green area, Guidolotti et al., Urban Climate Open Access 10.1016/j.uclim.2024.102244
Increasing certainty in projected local extreme precipitation change, Li et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-025-56235-9
Climate change mitigation public policy research
Accounting socio-economic benefits of household biogas towards net zero energy transition in developing countries: A case study of Nepal, Ghimire et al., Energy for Sustainable Development 10.1016/j.esd.2024.101634
China’s carbon labeling legal system and green supply chain management from the perspective of sustainability: status quo, implementation problems and legislative recommendations, Qi & Yu, Carbon Management Open Access 10.1080/17583004.2025.2451859
Coping with decarbonisation: An inventory of strategies from resistance to transformation, Brisbois & Cantoni Cantoni, Global Environmental Change Open Access 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2025.102968
Digital finance, institutional quality, and carbon dioxide emissions in Africa, Konadu-Yiadom et al., Climate and Development 10.1080/17565529.2025.2452435
Empty promises for emissions targets, Tang & Zhang, Nature Climate Change 10.1038/s41558-024-02239-0
Energy and climate policy implications on the deployment of low-carbon ammonia technologies, Chyong et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-025-56006-6
Energy requirements for sustainable human development, Ranjan & Kanitkar Gamble Derbel Collins , Energy for Sustainable Development Open Access 10.1016/j.esd.2024.101648
Interactions between renewable energy tokens, oil shocks, and clean energy investments: Do COP26 policies matter?, Naifar, Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2025.114497
Limited accountability and awareness of corporate emissions target outcomes, Jiang et al., Nature Climate Change Open Access 10.1038/s41558-024-02236-3
Measuring implicit carbon prices of renewable energy incentives: Insights from China, Quan et al., Energy for Sustainable Development 10.1016/j.esd.2025.101656
Multi-level governance of low-carbon tourism in rural China: policy evolution, implementation pathways, and socio-ecological impacts, Guo & Li, Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access 10.3389/fenvs.2024.1482713
Need for speed: Co-creating scenarios for climate neutral energy systems in Austria in 2040, Schmidt et al., Energy Policy Open Access 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114493
Palm trees, energy security and green hydrogen futures: Tourists' views on Mallorca's low carbon transition, Brennan & van Rensburg, Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2025.103923
Study on the efficiency evolution of carbon emissions and factors affecting them in 143 countries worldwide, Dong et al., Urban Climate 10.1016/j.uclim.2024.102265
The actions for carbon neutrality in the social network of supply chains, Zhai et al., Carbon Management Open Access 10.1080/17583004.2025.2451851
The impact mechanism of political risk on foreign renewable energy investment in developing countries: The mediating role of vulnerability, Jiang et al., Energy Policy 10.1016/j.enpol.2024.114467
Toward energy democracy: Municipal energy actions in local renewable energy projects, Palm et al., Energy Research & Social Science Open Access 10.1016/j.erss.2025.103921
Watered down justice: Experiences of the offshore wind transition in Northeast coastal communities in the United States, Smythe et al., Energy Research & Social Science 10.1016/j.erss.2024.103919
Climate change adaptation & adaptation public policy research
Community-based monitoring: shoreline change in Southwest Alaska, Christian et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2024.1410329
Future climatic risks faced by the Beautiful China Initiative: A perspective for 2035 and 2050, Ma et al., Advances in Climate Change Research Open Access 10.1016/j.accre.2025.01.002
Lessons Learned from Evaluating the Climate Change Risk on a Company’s Supply Chain, Gu et al., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 10.1175/bams-d-23-0283.1
Off the grid: utilizing OpenStreetMap for early warning and early action in conflict settings in Sudan, Scholz et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2024.1439940
Senses of justice after managed retreat in New York city, Olivotto et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2024.1481919
Climate change impacts on human health
What it means to be resilient to heatwaves for vulnerable households in mass tourist destinations?, Yoon & Ribas Ribas Palom, Climate Risk Management Open Access 10.1016/j.crm.2025.100688
Climate change impacts on human culture
Carbon emission and energy risk management in mega sporting events: challenges, strategies, and pathways, Su et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science Open Access 10.3389/fenvs.2024.1513365
Other
Applying astronomical solutions and Milankovi? forcing in the Earth sciences, Zeebe & Kocken, Earth Open Access 10.1016/j.earscirev.2024.104959
Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives
Climate Change-Conscious Methodologies: Ethical Research in a Changing World, Berseth & Letourneau, WIREs Climate Change Open Access 10.1002/wcc.933
Climate déjà vu, Thorp, Science Open Access 10.1126/science.adw1532
Connecting climate science and society: reflections from early and mid-career researchers at the World Climate Research Programme Open Science Conference 2023, Díaz et al., Frontiers in Climate Open Access 10.3389/fclim.2024.1501216
Managing and mitigating future public health risks: Planetary boundaries, global catastrophic risk, and inclusive wealth, McLaughlin & Beck, Risk Analysis Open Access pdf 10.1111/risa.17703
Paleo-data is policy relevant: How do we better incorporate it in policy and decision making?, Allen et al., Global and Planetary Change Open Access 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2025.104707
Articles/Reports from Agencies and Non-Governmental Organizations Addressing Aspects of Climate ChangeLand of Opportunity: Potential for Renewable Energy on Federal Lands, Mai et al, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
The authors quantified the technical potential of utility photovoltaic (PV), land-based wind, and geothermal energy on federal lands in the contiguous United States. The authors also project that the renewable energy capacity to be developed on federal lands—and the associated total and direct land use—under multiple future scenarios. They found significant renewable energy potential on federal lands, with less than 5% of that land needed for development to meet future energy demands.Sustainability as a part of Boards of Education Governance, BCSTA Climate Action Working Group, he British Columbia School Trustees Association
The authors make a comprehensive call to action for school districts in British Columbia to prioritize climate change mitigation and adopt sustainable, impactful strategies. They urge school boards across the province to embrace climate action as a core part of their governance and into their strategic priorities, in alignment with the provincial CleanBC goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030.Distributed Energy, Utility Scale: 30 Proven Strategies to Increase VPP Enrollment, Hledik et al, e Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
After decades of low or declining growth in electricity demand, the U.S. now faces a significant near-term need for new generation capacity and transmission and distribution infrastructure. Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) can meet a large portion of the gap between electricity supply and growing demand, but only if deployed at an increased scale. The authors provide 30 proven strategies for scaling VPPs through increased enrollment based on in-depth interviews with utilities and VPP solutions providers that have achieved considerable scale or rapid growth in program deployment. The study includes specific actions for regulators, utilities, and VPP solutions providers to increase VPP enrollment and deliver important customer and utility benefits.Evaluating GHG Mitigation Potential from ESPC Projects, Baik et al, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The authors explore the impact of implemented energy savings performance contracts (ESPC) projects on the projected greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions in the U.S. buildings sector, and the associated projected annual cost savings and marginal abatement costs. It is important to investigate the role that energy retrofits can play in achieving GHG emission reduction targets given the use of ESPC by public agencies to reduce emissions from energy use in addition to the historical use of ESPCs to to achieve cost/energy savings and ancillary benefits, e.g., addressing deferred maintenance, aging infrastructure.Bridging the Gap on Data, Metrics, and Analyses for Grid Resilience to Weather Events: Information that utilities can provide regulators, state energy offices, and other stakeholders, Collins et al, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
A growing number of states require regulated utilities to file resilience plans to improve the electric grid’s ability to anticipate, withstand, adapt to and recover from increasingly severe weather events. This report aims to help state regulators identify and request data, metrics, and analyses from utilities and use it in decisions on utility resilience plans and investments.State of the Clean Energy Boom, Clean Power
In less than two and a half years since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act more than 400,000 new clean energy jobs and over $422 billion in investments across 48 states and Puerto Rico have been announced. Most of the clean energy projects and jobs are located in congressional districts represented by Republicans – 405 clean energy projects and 216,322 jobs, respectively. Of the top 10 states for new clean energy jobs, half have Republican governors welcoming the local investments. The authors analyze public announcements from the private sector since the passage of the clean energy plan to demonstrate the breadth and scale of the growing clean energy economy being built across the country. It also provides a breakdown of the data by state, sector, and congressional district, as well as analyses covering projects, jobs, and investments in rural areas and disadvantaged communities across America and in districts represented by Republican members of the House of Representatives.Energy Efficiency in the Southeast, Pohnan et al, The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy
The authors document current progress and trends at both utility and state levels, as well as identify policies and practices to drive continued energy efficiency in the Southeast.The Net-Zero manufacturing industry landscape across Member States, Directorate-General for Energy Energy Platform Task Force, European Commission
The authors' overarching objective was to assess the state of play and recent developments in key Net-Zero technology manufacturing industries in the EU Member States and support the European Commission’s work for the preparation of the European Semester, the Progress Report on Competitiveness of Clean Energy Technologies and more broadly, the implementation of the Net Zero Industry Act (NZIA).2024 U.S. Emissions and Energy System Baselines Projections from the 2024 Biennial Transparency Report, US. Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, and Department of Agriculture
According to the U.S. government’s most recent official projections, net U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are expected to decline 29-46% by 2030, 36-57% by 2035, and 34-64% by 2040, compared with 2005 levels. This represents roughly double the 2030 emissions reductions projected before the passage of major policies such as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). The authors provide a deep dive into these updated projections, including impacts of recent policies on emissions and shifts in energy use across the electricity, transportation, industrial, and buildings sectors between now and 2040. Projections incorporate policies enacted through May 2024, including BIL, IRA, and recently finalized standards for vehicles, power plants, oil and gas production, and appliances. Each of these policies and standards play a key role in achieving these projected emissions reductions.Global Risks Report 2025, Elsner et al, World Economic Forum
The 20th edition of the Global Risks Report 2025 reveals an increasingly fractured global landscape, where escalating geopolitical, environmental, societal, and technological challenges threaten stability and progress. This edition presents the findings of the Global Risks Perception Survey 2024-2025 (GRPS), which captures insights from over 900 experts worldwide. The authors analyze global risks through three timeframes to support decision-makers in balancing current crises and longer-term priorities.Planetary Solvency–finding. Global risk management for human prosperity. our balance with nature, Trust et al, Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and University of Exeter
The risk of Planetary Insolvency looms unless we act decisively. Without immediate policy action to change course, catastrophic or extreme impacts are eminently plausible, which could threaten future prosperity. The global economy could face a 50% loss in GDP between 2070 and 2090 unless immediate policy action on risks posed by the climate crisis is taken. Populations are already impacted by food system shocks, water insecurity, heat stress, and infectious diseases. If unchecked, mass mortality, mass displacement, severe economic contraction, and conflict become more likely. The authors develop a framework for global risk management to address these risks and show how this approach can support future prosperity. They also show how a lack of realistic risk messaging to guide policy decisions has led to slower action than is needed. The authors propose a dashboard to provide decision-useful risk information to support policymakers to drive human activity within the finite bounds of the planet that we live on.NOAA’s Arctic Vision and Strategy, Allen et al, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
The Arctic stands at a critical transition point, warming three times faster than the global average1 and triggering cascading effects that reach far beyond its boundaries. These changes challenge the Arctic’s delicate ecosystems and the communities that depend on them, while profoundly influencing weather patterns in mid-latitudes and climate systems worldwide. Arctic communities face unprecedented challenges – from coastal erosion and thawing permafrost threatening entire villages to changes in the health and migratory patterns of wildlife and fish that disrupt sustained access to food and cultural resources. To address current and emerging challenges in the Arctic, NOAA has developed a strategic framework organized around three pillars and seven priority goals needed to realize the vision of resilient and equitable ecosystems, communities, and economies.Integrating Livestock Climate Adaptation and Peacebuilding: The Climate Security Sensitivity Tool for Livestock Systems, Sarzana et al, CGIAR initiative on Livestock Climate Resilience
Climate change presents profound challenges for livestock-dependent communities, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected regions where environmental, social, and political pressures intersect. The Climate Security Sensitivity Tool for Livestock Systems (CSSTxLS) builds upon the Climate Security Sensitivity Tool (CSST) framework to provide a specialized approach for designing conflict-sensitive and peace-responsive climate adaptation interventions tailored to livestock systems. Using case studies from Turkana and Mandera counties in Kenya, the authors explore the interactions between conflict drivers – such as weak infrastructure, socio-economic vulnerabilities, and human hazards – and climate-peace mechanisms, including economic development, institutional strengthening, resource sustainability, trust-building, and resilience enhancement. It highlights the importance of local context and expert validation in designing effective interventions.National Risk Register 2025, Cabinet Office, Government of the United Kingdom
The National Risk Register (NRR) is the external version of the National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA), which is the government’s assessment of the most serious risks facing the UK. It provides the government’s updated assessment of the likelihood and potential impact of a broad range of risks that may directly affect the UK and its interests. The NRR is aimed at risk and resilience practitioners, including businesses and voluntary and community sector organizations.Voluntary Carbon Markets: A Critical Assessment, Meitner, Leonhard, Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Recht Berlin, Institute for International Political Economy
The looming climate crisis calls for the development of novel forms of response, but so far, climate change action does not meet its ambitions to tackle the issue. Voluntary Carbon Markets (VCMs) are one proposed solution to bridge the gap. However, VCMs are criticized for not providing real climate benefits and exacerbating inequality. The author critically assesses VCMs, focusing on their regulatory, ecological, and social dysfunctions through an ecological economics lens. He identifies key issues such as inadequate transparency, compromised environmental integrity due to issues of additionality, permanence, double counting, carbon leakage, rebound effects, and adverse social impacts. Obtaining articles without journal subscriptionsWe know it's frustrating that many articles we cite here are not free to read. One-off paid access fees are generally astronomically priced, suitable for such as "On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light" but not as a gamble on unknowns. With a median world income of US$ 9,373, for most of us US$ 42 is significant money to wager on an article's relevance and importance.
- Here's an excellent collection of tips and techniques for obtaining articles, legally.
- Unpaywall offers a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that automatically indicates when an article is freely accessible and provides immediate access without further trouble. Unpaywall is also unscammy, works well, is itself offered free to use. The organizers (a legitimate nonprofit) report about a 50% success rate
- The weekly New Research catch is checked against the Unpaywall database with accessible items being flagged. Especially for just-published articles this mechansim may fail. If you're interested in an article title and it is not listed here as "open access," be sure to check the link anyway.
Most articles appearing here are found via RSS feeds from journal publishers, filtered by search terms to produce raw output for assessment of relevance.
Relevant articles are then queried against the Unpaywall database, to identify open access articles and expose useful metadata for articles appearing in the database.
The objective of New Research isn't to cast a tinge on scientific results, to color readers' impressions. Hence candidate articles are assessed via two metrics only:
- Was an article deemed of sufficient merit by a team of journal editors and peer reviewers? The fact of journal RSS output assigns a "yes" to this automatically.
- Is an article relevant to the topic of anthropogenic climate change? Due to filter overlap with other publication topics of inquiry, of a typical week's 550 or so input articles about 1/4 of RSS output makes the cut.
A few journals offer public access to "preprint" versions of articles for which the review process is not yet complete. For some key journals this all the mention we'll see in RSS feeds, so we include such items in New Research. These are flagged as "preprint."
The section "Informed opinion, nudges & major initiatives" includes some items that are not scientific research per se but fall instead into the category of "perspectives," observations of implications of research findings, areas needing attention, etc.
SuggestionsPlease let us know if you're aware of an article you think may be of interest for Skeptical Science research news, or if we've missed something that may be important. Send your input to Skeptical Science via our contact form.
Journals coveredA list of journals we cover may be found here. We welcome pointers to omissions, new journals etc.
Previous editionThe previous edition of Skeptical Science New Research may be found here.
Climate Adam: Will 2025 be the Hottest Year Ever Recorded?
This video includes personal musings and 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).
2025 has only just begun, but already climate scientists are working hard to unpick what could be in store for us. As greenhouse gas emissions continue to drive more and more climate change, the overall trend is for more global warming. But other factors - like the El Niño oscillation moving towards La Niña - will also have a major impact. So how hot will 2025 be? And how will climate change affect us in the form of extreme weather disasters? Whether that's heatwaves, floods, droughts and wildfires - like the ones ravaging Los Angeles right now?
Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam
Moving away from high-end emissions scenarios
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink
I have a new paper out today in the journal Dialogues on Climate Change exploring both the range of end-of-century climate outcomes in the literature under current policies and the broader move away from high-end emissions scenarios. Current policies are defined broadly as policies in place today and a continuation of trends in technology costs, but no additional climate policy enacted for the remainder of the century.
The figure below shows the literature summary I put together (as of fall 2024), which includes estimates of current policy outcomes (in red), outcomes where countries meet their 2030 Paris Agreement nationally determined contributions (in orange), constrained estimates using socioeconomic factors (or other factors) to try and estimate most likely end-of-century trajectories including future policy (in grey), and net-zero commitments made by countries (in blue).
These suggest a median estimate of future warming under current policies of 2.7C in 2100 (with a 5th-95th percentile range of central estimates spanning 2.3C to 3C). Adding in emissions uncertainties and climate system uncertainties gives a much wider range of 1.9C at the low end to 3.7C at the high end. Current policies represent something of a moving target, which complicates the interpretation of a review of recent literature; those studies from 2021 may lag behind the policy and technology environment of 2024, for example.
The push to examine the range of outcomes consistent with current policy (and a rapidly growing literature on the topic) allows us to better constrain the upper bound of plausible scenarios today. In particular, the range of current policy scenarios in the literature largely preclude emissions pathways in high-end scenarios like RCP8.5 (Riahi et al., 2011), SSP3–7.0, or SSP5–8.5 (Riahi et al., 2017) in the absence of an active reversal of current policy and current technology trends.
I’ve included a more detailed excerpt of the article below, but I’d encourage folks to read the whole (open access) piece here, as its written to be accessible to a more general audience.
A move away from high-end emissions scenariosThis move away from high-end emissions scenarios in the literature reflects a broader recognition that the world is undergoing an energy transition away from a future of continuing fossil fuel expansion (IEA, 2023). Fifteen years ago many researchers argued that “business as usual” would likely lead to a world 4C or 5C above pre-industrial levels by 2100 (Sokolov et al., 2009). Today the world is in a very different place; growth in CO2 emissions slowed notably over the past decade (Friedlingstein et al., 2023), and emissions are projected to plateau in coming years under current policies and commitments (IEA, 2023). Global investments in clean energy topped $1.8 trillion in 2023, nearly double the level of global investments in fossil fuels (IEA, 2023).
High emissions scenarios assume a 21st century dominated by coal; however, global coal usage has been relatively flat since 2013, and is forecast to decline over the remainder of the century (IEA, 2023). There are also likely fundamental resource limits to the degree of coal expansion seen in RCP8.5 and SSP5–8.5 (Ritchie and Dowlatabadi, 2017), as well as overly optimistic assumptions of future economic growth (Burgess et al., 2023).
The reduced plausibility of high-end emissions scenarios has been widely recognized in recent years. The recent IPCC AR6 WG3 report (Riahi et al., 2022) noted that “high-end scenarios have become considerably less likely since AR5 but cannot be ruled out.” They also clarified that these do not represent current policy scenarios, but rather a world that actively reverses past progress, pointing out that “RCP8.5 and SSP5–8.5 do not represent a typical ‘business-as-usual’ projection but are only useful as high end, high-risk scenarios.”
The reassessment of probable emissions outcomes in recent years has sparked a debate about the extent to which this was driven by climate policy and technological development. There is a tendency to assume in hindsight that past high emissions scenarios were clearly unrealistic at the time. However, there was a commonly held view in the late 2000s and early 2010s that the world was heading to around 4C warming by 2100 under current policy scenarios (Sokolov et al., 2009). Research at the time criticized assumptions of “spontaneous” decarbonization in baseline emissions scenarios as “optimistic at best and unachievable at worst” (Pielke et al., 2008).
At the same time, it is clear that the highest end of emissions scenarios found in the literature (e.g., RCP8.5 and SSP5–8.5) were misinterpreted by much of the community as “business-as-usual” when they were never intended to reflect the median no-policy baseline scenario (Hausfather and Peters, 2020). For example, RCP8.5 was designed to reflect the 90th percentile of baseline scenarios in the literature (van Vuuren et al., 2011), with outcomes consistent with RCP6.0 deemed approximately equally likely in the absence of climate policy interventions. The median baseline scenario at the time resulted in closer to 7 W/m2 forcing (and ∼4C median warming) rather than the ∼4.5C warming found in RCP8.5 and 4.7C warming in SSP5–8.5. Prior to the 2015 Paris Agreement, more modest baseline warming estimates were published by both the IEA (3.5C) and Climate Action Tracker (3.6C) (CAT, 2023; IEA, 2023).
Ultimately, the degree to which the improvement in probable 21st century emissions outcomes was due to progress in driving down the costs of clean energy and climate policy interventions vs. implausible assumptions of high future emissions is to a large degree unknowable given its dependence on counterfactual assumptions. It is hard to rule out the possibility that the 21st century could have ended up dominated by coal—as seemed much more plausible from the vantage point of the mid-2000s—even if it is clearly quite unlikely today.
2025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #03
This week's roundup is again published soleley by category. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks!
Stories we promoted this week, by category:Climate Change Impacts
- Los Angeles burns: What you need to know This is terrible. This is climate change. by Andrew Dessler, The Climate Brink, Jan 13, 2025
- How Two Words from a 24-Year-Old Pasadena Climate Specialist Saved Hundreds of Lives Edgar McGregor’s timely Eaton Fire alert: ‘Get out!’ by Phil Hopkins, Local News Pasadena, Jan 11, 2025
- The Los Angeles fires won’t affect climate denial. They should. The disastrous California wildfires are another undeniable sign of the dangers of climate change. by Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post, Jan 12, 2025
- Will 2025 be the Hottest Year Ever Recorded? by Adam Levy, ClimateAdam on Youtube, Jan 13, 2025
- `Multi-year` droughts have become more frequent, drier and hotter over past 40 years Droughts spanning multiple years have become drier, hotter and more frequent over the past 40 years, according to new research. by Yanine Quiroz, Carbon Brief, Jan 16, 2025
- The media needs to show how the climate crisis is fueling the LA wildfires With few exceptions, the news has shied away from showing how the unfolding climate crisis plays a large role in the disaster by Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope, The Guardian, Jan 16, 2025
- Wildfires drive record leap in global level of climate-heating CO2 Data for 2024 shows humanity is moving yet deeper into a dangerous world of supercharged extreme weather by Damian Carrington, The Guardian, Jan 17, 2025
- Los Angeles Fires Were Fueled by Climate Change Many factors, such as strong Santa Ana winds and urban planning decisions, played into the recent destructive wildfires in the Los Angeles area. But the evidence is clear that climate change contributed by Andrea Thompson , Scientific American Content: Global, Jan 17, 2025
Climate education and communication
- Ignoring Climate Change Education Risks Students’ Future Climate change affects students and our future. Climate is intertwined with education, the economy, immigration, housing, health, and other policy areas. by Andres Hernandez, Jr., edtrust, Jan 10, 2025
Climate law and justice
- Supreme Court Clears a Path for Lawsuits Against Oil Companies to Proceed The high court declined to hear a challenge to a major case in which Honolulu is suing energy companies over climate change. by Karen Zraick, New York Times, Jan 13, 2025
Climate Policy and Politics
- The Observer view: With Hollywood ablaze, ditching carbon targets would be an act of recklessness | Observer editorial Legislation aimed at limiting the US’s role in global warming is likely to be an early target of Donald Trump by Observer editorial, The Guardian, Jan 11, 2025
- As the world burns, young Australians are feeling disbelief - and looking for answers | Anjali Sharma My generation feels trapped in a political system not built for us. Why wouldn’t we be disillusioned? by Anjali Sharma, The Guardian, Jan 13, 2025
- New Report Exposes Toyota`s Years-Long Effort to Fund Climate Deniers and Block Climate Action With its allies entering power in the White House and Congress, Toyota is poised to help dismantle climate policy that threatens its backward-looking business model by Newswire Editor, Common Dreams, Jan 14, 2025
Climate Science and Research
- Moving away from high-end emissions scenarios I have a new commentary in Dialogues on Climate Change exploring climate outcomes in current policy scenarios by Zeke Hausfather, The Climate Brink, Jan 15, 2025
- Skeptical Science New Research for Week #3 2025 Skeptical Science's weekly survey of newly published climate research, including both academic papers and government/NGO reports. by Doug Bostrom & Marc Kodack, Skeptical Science, Jan 16, 2025
- From Wildfires to Courtrooms: How Attribution Science Fuels Climate Justice by Vishal Yashoda Manve, State of the Planet, Jan 17, 2025
Public Misunderstandings about Climate Science
- Farage and Truss attend UK launch of US climate denial group British arm of Heartland, which has taken oil and Republican funding, to be led by ex-Ukip head Lois Perry by Helena Horton and Ben Quinn, The Guardian, Jan 15, 2025
- New Study Shows How Fossil Fuel Sectors Create a Climate Denial Echo Chamber on Social Media Research finds signs of “coordinated climate obstruction efforts” among oil, plastics, and agrichemical industries in social media messaging. by Sharon Kelly, DeSmog, Jan 15, 2025
- Study finds climate misinformation lurking in LinkedIn’s trusted environment Digital trust is a trojan horse. For years, LinkedIn has maintained its position as the most trusted digital platform globally. Yet this same trust may be its greatest vulnerability. When we feel safe, our defences drop. And misinformation thrives in these unguarded moments. by Ira Pragnya Senapati, Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Jan 14, 2025
- Climate misinformation is rife on social media – and poised to get worse by Jill Hopke, The COnversation, Jan 17, 2025
- Fact brief - Can CO2 be ignored because it`s just a trace gas? by Sue Bin Park, Skeptical Science, Jan 18, 2025
Public Misunderstandings about Climate Solutions
- Sabin 33 #11 - Is solar energy more expensive than energy from fossil fuels? by Sabin Center Team, Skeptical Science, Jan 14, 2025
Miscellaneous (Other)
- ‘Pollutocrat Day’: The richest 1% have already burnt through their annual carbon budget, Oxfam says Climate campaigners are calling for wealth taxes on the top 1 per cent to limit their pollution and pay for damages. by Lottie Limb, Euronews, Jan 10, 2025
- Nobody`s insurance rates are safe from climate change Even if you haven’t suffered direct damage, you’re paying for increasingly extreme weather. by Dana Nuccitelli, Yale Climate Connections, Jan 14, 2025
- 7 Climate Experts on What We Can Still Do to Fight Climate Change by Renée Cho, State of the Planet, Jan 15, 2025
Fact brief - Can CO2 be ignored because it’s just a trace gas?
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 from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.
Can CO2 be ignored because it’s just a trace gas?While carbon dioxide is a small part of the atmosphere, it has a large impact on climate as a greenhouse gas.
Nitrogen and oxygen make up around 99% of the atmosphere, but neither traps heat. Less than 0.05% of the atmosphere is made up of greenhouse gases, which do.
Without greenhouse gases, the Earth would be too cold to support most life, with average temperatures 2° F below zero (-18° C).
On the other hand, increasing greenhouse gas concentrations elevates temperatures. Human activities such as fossil fuel burning have raised CO2 concentrations from 280 parts per million in pre-industrial times to 424 parts per million in 2024. Over the same period, the planet has warmed 2° F (1.3° C) on average.
Climate scientists agree that emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are responsible for this observed rise in temperature despite their relatively low concentration in the atmosphere.
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
NASA Carbon Dioxide
MIT Climate Portal How do greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere?
Columbia Climate School You Asked: If CO2 Is Only 0.04% of the Atmosphere, How Does it Drive Global Warming?
NASA Steamy Relationships: How Atmospheric Water Vapor Amplifies Earth’s Greenhouse Effect
EIA Energy and the environment explained
Carbon Brief State of the climate: 2024 sets a new record as the first year above 1.5C
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.
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