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%。
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
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。
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。
The post 分析：2024年中国清洁能源创纪录增长遏制CO2上升 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
This summer has seen Europe suffer through a series of record-breaking heatwaves.
Amid widespread media coverage of the number of deaths and the influence of climate change, the UK’s Daily Telegraph reported on new research with the incorrect headline: “Heatwaves caused by fall in pollution.”
The article was shared on social media by Richard Tice – deputy leader of the hard-right, climate-sceptic Reform UK party – along with a number of prominent rightwing commentators.
Tice claimed that “net stupid zero is contributing to rising temperatures, not helping”, adding that “we have been gaslit and lied to”.
GB News followed up with its own article, incorrectly headlined: “Britain’s scorching heatwaves caused by falling pollution levels, researchers find.”
Scientists tell Carbon Brief that the framing of heatwaves being “caused” by declining air pollution is “wrong”.
While a drop in pollution has reduced the cooling impact it has had in the past, the scientists say, Europe’s summer heatwaves are primarily becoming more extreme “as a result of greenhouse-gas-induced warming”.
Another scientist adds that “any attempt” to link this research to net-zero policies is “simply wrong”.
Fast warming
The extensive reporting around Europe’s heatwaves in recent months has often mentioned that Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent.
The new study in question aims to unpack why Europe’s summer temperatures are rising more quickly than other regions of the northern hemisphere’s mid and high latitudes.
The research – published in Geophysical Research Letters – explores the role of air pollution and, specifically, how it affects circulation patterns in the atmosphere.
(The study focuses on long-term trends in European summers and does not include the very recent heatwaves.)
Human-caused emissions of aerosols – tiny, light‑scattering particles produced mainly by burning fossil fuels – have long acted to “mask” global warming. This is largely because they absorb or reflect incoming sunlight and influence the formation and brightness of clouds.
To understand how the climate of Europe – or any region – is changing, scientists need to take into account a whole range of factors, says Prof Bjørn Samset, a research professor at Norway’s Center for International Climate Research (CICERO), who was not involved in the work.
This includes “greenhouse gases, aerosols, land-use change, natural variability and how they all interact”, he says, adding:
“The effects of air pollution on circulation, which is the topic here, has long been difficult to pin down.”
As European countries improved their air quality through the second half of the 20th century, the cooling effect of aerosols has gradually been removed.
This can boost heatwaves in two ways – directly, by letting more sunlight reach the land surface and, indirectly, by influencing the jet stream.
Using hundreds of simulations from nine climate models, the new study finds that a decline in aerosols is resulting in more frequent “quasi-stationary Rossby waves”.
Rossby waves are huge meanders in the jet stream. Occasionally, they become slow-moving – or “quasi-stationary” – which allows weather systems to get stuck over one region, leading to prolonged heatwaves.
These circulation changes have contributed to Europe’s rapidly warming summers.
However, while Europe’s heatwaves are being influenced by declining aerosols, it is “wrong” to say they are being “caused” by them, says Prof Erich Fischer, a climate scientist at ETH Zurich.
Fischer, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief:
“Heatwaves are caused by high-pressure systems and are now much more frequent and intense because they are happening in a climate that is much warmer than 100 years ago as a result of greenhouse-gas-induced warming.
“The paper shows that the greenhouse-gas-induced summer warming had been temporarily masked by air-polluting aerosols. The full extent for European summers only becomes visible now as the air-polluting aerosols have declined.”
Samset adds:
“Air pollution never causes or removes global warming, it only temporarily moderates it.”
Study lead author Dr Pedro Roldán‐Gómez, an associate researcher at the Barcelona Supercomputer Centre, is quoted in the Daily Telegraph saying that “most” of the “excess warming” in Europe, beyond that of comparable regions in the northern hemisphere, can be linked to declining aerosols.
But, earlier in the article, the newspaper interprets this as, simply, “most of the extra heat experienced in Britain and Europe” is down to air pollution.
GB News uses a similar phrasing, reporting that “much of the additional warming across Britain and western Europe since the 1980s is linked to the sharp decline in airborne particles known as aerosols”.
This is “misleading”, says Fischer, while Roldan-Gomez tells Carbon Brief that this is a “tricky point”, which “could lead to wrong interpretations if not properly explained”. He adds:
“The contribution of greenhouse gases is, in any case, the most important factor.”
Cleaner air
The Daily Telegraph’s article was seized upon by Reform’s Richard Tice to claim that “cleaner air” was causing higher temperatures, rather than CO2.
This continued his position – refuted by long-established climate science – that CO2 does not drive global warming.
Tice also claimed in his post that net-zero policies are “contributing to rising temperatures”. Tice appears to be linking declining air pollution to a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
Samset points out that net-zero became a goal “decades later” than the cumulative efforts to reduce air pollution since the 1980s and that it is “simply wrong” to link it to the study.
“The scientific community will keep working to understand how greenhouse gas warming and air pollution interact,” he says, but “nothing we do will change the fact that the consequences of global warming are due to human-induced CO2 emissions”.
Fischer adds:
“Let us not forget that cleaning up air-polluting aerosols is highly desirable. According to the World Health Organisation, 7 million people still die prematurely every year due to air pollution.”
Clean air legislation
Finally, the Daily Telegraph article and the study itself both attribute Europe’s declining air pollution from the 1980s onwards to the Montreal Protocol.
This is a “glaring error”, Samset says, and it is “surprising that it wasn’t picked up” in the peer-review process for the study. He explains:
“The Montreal Protocol did not deal with air pollution. It dealt with ozone-depleting gases and has been an extremely successful multi-national effort against environmental damage. “
Clean air legislation was already in place in many European countries by the time the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987, says Samset.
In response, Roldán‐Gómez says that while the protocol did not target aerosols specifically, it “boosted the clean air policies”.
The post Factcheck: No, Europe’s heatwaves are not being ‘caused’ by declining air pollution appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Factcheck: No, Europe’s heatwaves are not being ‘caused’ by declining air pollution
Empowering women through greater access to finance could “strengthen” households’ resilience to “climate shocks”, according to a new study.
Published in Climate Risk Management, it analyses the impact of financial access on “women-headed households” in sub-Saharan Africa.
The study finds that where women had formal financial access – such as through owning a bank account – households were more able to withstand short-term shocks.
It adds that “climate shocks”, such as extreme weather events and the impacts of climate change, can cause economic crises, which destabilise communities and households.
However, the authors say that in order to protect households from long-term climate vulnerabilities – including “droughts, floods and sea-level rise” – financial access would need to be paired with wider efforts to tackle gender inequality.
They add that the findings could have important implications for policy in sub-Saharan Africa, where many countries and households are vulnerable to climate disasters.
Financial inclusion
The study highlights that entrenched gender disparities mean many women still have unequal access to financial services in sub-Saharan Africa
For example, women are still less likely to have their own bank accounts and instead are often dependent on male relatives for access to finance.
The number of women with access to an account in the region had risen to 52% as of 2024, according to data from World Bank Group.
However, as shown in the chart below, the gap between men and women has also increased, rising from just under 5 percentage points in 2011 to 12 in 2024.
Using survey data from Afrobarometer, the new study analyses 25,511 women-headed households across 37 sub-Saharan countries.
The authors use the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) framework to measure “financial inclusion”. This looks at factors such as having a bank account, owning a mobile phone and having internet access.
Francis Anaisie, a co-author on the study, tells Carbon Brief the researchers were motivated by the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). Anaisie, an economist at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, says the study specifically looked at SDGs five and 13, on gender equality and addressing climate issues. He adds:
“Financial inclusion is one of the key policy tools for empowering women or for empowerment. But as to whether this actually translates into better climate outcomes for women is not known or is limited; this study seeks to address that gap.”
The study finds households with higher levels of financial access for women had higher levels of women’s empowerment, when this is defined as the ability to make choices and have control over economic and social outcomes.
This was checked by cross-comparing financial access against different measures of women’s empowerment, such as financial security, voting rights and connection to communities.
In particular, the study found that “financially included” women had greater political and economic empowerment, such as financial security and voting rights. On some measures of social empowerment, however, the link was weaker – financial access alone was not enough to erase cultural and social barriers to gender equality.
Women and climate change
It has been well documented that women are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than men.
Environmental shocks affect women disproportionately due to a range of factors. These include income disparities, higher rates of displacement and unequal access to land.
Financial inequality and barriers to economic resources, such as needing internet access to make digital payments, play a key role in climate vulnerability, says Tracy Kajumba. She is director for the Least Developed Countries initiative for Effective Adaptation and Resilience (LIFE-AR) interim secretariat at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
Kajumba, who was not involved in the study, explains to Carbon Brief:
“Women are on the front line doing farming, planting, harvesting and these things that are all impacted [by climate change]. If they don’t have the income to invest either in drought-resistant crops or water-saving technologies, it becomes difficult for households to adapt.”
Calculating climate resilience
The new study measures the impact of financial inclusion on women’s empowerment and, in turn, on climate resilience.
It evaluates a household’s ability to withstand and recover from “shocks and stressors” by using a UN Food and Agriculture Organization metric for “resilience index measurement and analysis” (RIMA).
For example, questionnaires are used to gather information about households in certain areas. The data is then used, together with key indicators, to quantify a household’s resilience to food insecurity, climate variability and economic crisis, amongst other risks.
The 25,511 households surveyed across sub-Saharan Africa were found to be relatively resilient overall and had a high capacity to bounce back from climate shocks. However, they had much lower ability to adapt, in order to build protective capacity in advance of extreme events.
In addition, the study finds that women’s financial empowerment had a positive impact on a household’s ability to “absorb” a climate shock, suggesting that financial access is critical for responding to climate change.
Increased empowerment through financial access enables women to make decisions about planting crops, to access credit in emergencies and to buy or sell food at a better price, the study notes.
For example, it says increased financial access and women’s empowerment help households to deal with the immediate consequences of an extreme weather event, such as a drought. This could be through building community mutual-support networks and by enabling access to savings, to keep the household running.
Anaisie says the study shows women’s empowerment has a significant impact on climate resilience. He tells Carbon Brief:
“If we include women in the financial system, in the case of any climate issue they can save, they can be independent, they can rely on investment to absorb these shocks. This empowerment will help them to be more resilient to climate shocks…We can make progress because SDG goals are all about inclusiveness. It’s all about inclusive growth.”
However, the study notes that financial access does not necessarily create long-term change, which would make the household less vulnerable to extreme weather in the first place.
The authors suggest that lasting structural and cultural change is important for bringing about long-term resilience. They say that policies to address gender inequalities would help bring this about.
They say such policies could include gender-sensitive agricultural credit schemes, subsidised climate insurance for women farmers in drought-prone regions, joint land-titling programmes and quotas for women in local climate-adaptation committees.
Such policies would have helped women impacted by recent severe floods in Ghana to protect their savings, Anaisie explains. He tells Carbon Brief:
“Women are engaged in economic activities, especially informal activities. They have resources and money, but when the flood came in, many women lost that. If they had access to insurance, this flood wouldn’t have cost them that much.
“So, if the government comes out with financial initiatives, training, civic education and gender-focused initiatives, leadership training, women will be empowered and this will translate into their resilience with regards to climate change.”
Addressing climate vulnerability in sub-Saharan Africa
The study could have policy implications for sub-Saharan Africa, a region particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The region faces increasingly extreme weather, heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods, as well as food scarcity and threats to crops.
The study suggests that policies to address structural and cultural barriers to women’s financial autonomy could be a key way to build climate resilience across the region.
However, it recognises that even where financial access is expanded, gender norms and cultural constraints continue to shape women’s social empowerment. This, in turn, affects their ability to adapt to climate change in the long term.
Ultimately, addressing structural inequalities is needed to minimise climate vulnerability, says Kajumba. She adds that supporting adaptation with financial access can allow households to absorb shocks without falling into poverty – and to rebuild after climate impacts.
Kajumba says that supporting adaptation with women’s financial access can allow households to absorb shocks without falling into poverty – and to rebuild after climate impacts. She adds:
“When they are supported [with] microloans, savings and all that, you will see change in income, change in households, change in health and education for the children as well.”
However, Kajumba notes that structural inequalities still “amplify” women’s vulnerability to climate impacts and make it harder for them to exercise agency and leadership. She adds:
“The tools that are being used are not always favourable for women…When we look at women in leadership and participation, you cannot lead or you cannot participate unless you have some level of income.”
The post Access to finance ‘strengthens climate resilience’ among sub-Saharan women appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Access to finance ‘strengthens climate resilience’ among sub-Saharan women
As 2026 passes its halfway point, the world is watching one of the most rapidly intensifying El Niño events in the modern record take shape in the tropical Pacific.
The developing El Niño is boosting expectations for global temperatures, both this year and next.
El Niño is the warm phase of a recurring climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that releases heat from the ocean into the atmosphere, temporarily raising global temperatures and reshaping rainfall and extreme weather around the world.
Carbon Brief’s “state of the climate” report in April gave 2026 a 19% chance of setting a new global temperature record.
That chance now stands at 35% – a near-doubling in four months – with virtually all of the change driven by ever-stronger El Niño forecasts.
The key findings from the first half of 2026 include:
- The first six months of 2026 were the third-warmest start to a year on record – around 1.4C above pre-industrial levels – behind only 2024 and 2025.
- While the first few months of the year came in as the fourth or fifth warmest, both May and June were the second-warmest ever recorded as El Niño conditions took hold.
- El Niño conditions arrived in April and reached the threshold for a “strong” event by June, when the Niño3.4 index reached 1.6C. Of the 667 model runs Carbon Brief examined, 91% project a peak later this year that is above the strongest El Niño in history.
- The chance that 2026 beats 2024 as the warmest year on record has risen to 35%. Carbon Brief’s central estimate remains that 2026 will be the second-warmest year, at around 1.51C above pre-industrial levels.
- Whether 2026 sets a record will depend on the dataset: the odds range from around two-in-three in NASA and Berkeley Earth data to around two-in-10 in ERA5 and one-in-10 in the JRA-3Q reanalyses.
- June 2026 was western Europe’s hottest June on record, amid a heatwave that set hundreds of individual records. Nearly 9% of the world’s surface saw record June warmth.
- The developing El Niño will have its largest impact on 2027, which Carbon Brief projects to be around 1.7C above pre-industrial levels – this would comfortably set a new record for the warmest year.
- Arctic sea ice has spent 39 days of 2026 so far at, or below, record daily lows following its joint-lowest winter maximum in the satellite era.
Third-warmest start to a year
Carbon Brief analyses records from six different groups that report global surface temperatures: NASA GISTEMP, NOAA GlobalTemp, Hadley/UEA HadCRUT5, Berkeley Earth, Copernicus/ECMWF ERA5 and the JMA JRA-3Q reanalysis.
The first half of 2026 was the third warmest on record in every one of the six datasets, behind only 2024 and 2025. The figure below shows annual temperatures since 1970, along with the 2026 year-to-date average (January-June) for each group.
January 2026 was only the fourth- or fifth-warmest January on record, as lingering weak La Niña conditions suppressed temperatures. Since then, each month has climbed the rankings.
La Niña is the cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). It typically brings wetter conditions to Australia, Indonesia and equatorial South America and drier conditions to the southern US.
March was second-to-fourth warmest across datasets, April the third and both May and June were the second warmest ever recorded, behind only the corresponding months of 2024.
The chart below shows how June 2026 (thick red line) came in around 0.08C below the June record set in 2024 in the average of the six datasets.
Meanwhile, Copernicus reported that global sea surface temperatures over the ice-free oceans set a new June record.
A record-breaking El Niño
ENSO is the largest source of year-to-year variability in global temperatures.
The most common way to assess the strength of an El Niño or La Niña event is by looking at the sea surface temperature anomaly in the “Niño3.4” region of the tropical Pacific.
El Niño and its sister La Niña occur when temperatures in the tropical Pacific are more than 0.5C (El Niño) or less than 0.5C (La Niña) below normal, where normal is defined by removing the effects of long-term climate change.
The thresholds for defining the strength of an El Niño or La Niña are above/below 1C for “moderate” events, 1.5C for “strong” events and 2C for “very strong” (or “super”) events.
After two years dominated by La Niña conditions, the tropical Pacific flipped decisively in April when the Niño3.4 index crossed the 0.5C El Niño threshold. It subsequently reached 1C in May and hit 1.6C in June, marking one of the fastest onsets in the observational record.
In the first few weeks of July, the index shot above 2C, significantly outpacing the speed at which any prior El Niño events developed.
Forecast models expect even more to come.
An analysis by Carbon Brief of the median of 667 model runs from 14 different modelling groups suggests that sea surface temperatures in theNiño3.4 region could peak at 3.59C between July and December.
More than 91% of runs predict the strongest El Niño event in the modern record. The previous record was set during the event of 2015-16, when temperatures peaked around 2.75C.
This is shown in the chart below, which features a histogram of the likelihood of different possible 2026 El Niño peaks across all the models on the top. The forest plot beneath shows the best estimate and range of outcomes predicted by each individual model.
The median forecast in every one of the 14 models suggests a peak that exceeds the 2C “super” El Niño threshold, with most models peaking in November or December.
Some caution here is warranted, however. Raw model Niño3.4 anomalies are measured against a fixed climatology. Because the entire tropical ocean has warmed due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, the models tend to overstate event strength relative to the historical record.
A cleaner comparison uses the relative Niño3.4 index (RONI), which subtracts the average tropical ocean warming.
This relative measure suggests the median forecast peak for El Niño in the latter half of 2026 is 3.1C. The prior record stands at a lower 2.69C, set in 1982-83.
Nevertheless, 77% of model runs still show a new record event occurring. This is shown in the chart below.
In summary, on both indexes, the central expectation is now for the strongest El Niño in the observational record.
Model forecasts made in the spring and early summer have historically shown some bias toward overpredicting event strength. However, forecasts made after the spring are considerably more reliable.
Widespread record warmth and a massive European heatwave
The map below shows the temperature anomaly for the first half of 2026 in the ERA5 dataset, relative to a 1981-2010 baseline period.
It shows how the largest warm anomalies were found across the Arctic – particularly north of Scandinavia and Svalbard – as well as western Europe, the western US, northern Mexico, central Asia, western China, eastern Russia and the Antarctic Peninsula region.
The developing El Niño is clearly visible as a tongue of warm anomalies stretching along the equatorial eastern Pacific. Only a few regions – central Canada, Alaska and parts of the Southern Ocean – saw temperatures below the 1981-2010 average.
Where 2026 ranks against history is even more striking. The map below shows where the period of January-June 2026 ranked among all 87 years in the ERA5 record, which stretches from 1940 to 2026. Grid cells marked in red saw temperatures in the first half of the year that were in the top-five warmest years.
More than 30% of the global surface had a top-five warmest start to the year and 7.1% saw its warmest on record, including much of western Europe, the eastern equatorial Pacific and the seas around Japan.
Not a single grid cell had a top-five coolest start to the year. In June alone, 8.9% of the world’s surface saw record warmth for the month. This is illustrated in the map below, where grid cells marked in red saw temperatures that were in the top-five warmest years and grid cells in blue in the top-five coolest.
The standout regional temperature event was a heatwave that struck Europe in late June.
Western Europe had its hottest June on record, recording an average temperature of 3.05C above the 1991-2020 average and beating the record set only a year earlier, according to Copernicus. A heat dome over 22-30 June broke 10 all-time national heat records and around 400 long-record station records.
France set a new June national record of 44.3C, while the UK broke its June record on three consecutive days, reaching 37.3C. The humid heat drove a death toll estimated in the thousands.
A separate heat dome also brought record June temperatures to parts of North America in late June.
On track to be second warmest, but a real chance at first
Carbon Brief’s updated projection for 2026 as a whole combines the observed January-June temperatures with the latest El Niño forecast. It uses a statistical model trained on the historical relationship between the first half of the year, ENSO conditions and annual temperatures observed over 1950-2025, excluding major volcanic eruption years.
Carbon Brief estimates that 2026 will be around 1.51C above pre-industrial levels, with a 90% range of 1.45C to 1.57C, shown by the yellow dot in the chart below.
This is up from 1.47C in the projection set out in April – and is notably more certain now that half the year has passed.
This central estimate would make 2026 the second-warmest year on record, just below 2024 (1.52C) and ahead of 2023 (1.43C) and 2025 (1.41C).
Carbon Brief’s modelling puts the chance that 2026 beats 2024 as the warmest year on record at 35%, using the average of the six different surface temperature records assessed. It puts the chance that 2026 comes in above 1.5C at around 63%.
If it does, 2026 would be the second calendar year – after 2024 – where warming averaged above 1.5C, in a further sign that the world is rapidly approaching the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit.
A single year above 1.5C does not by itself constitute a breach of the goal, which refers to the longer term average temperature of the planet. This is defined as the midpoint of a 20-year period by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
These likelihood of a record have been climbing rapidly throughout 2026.
Global temperatures so far throughout the year have run well below the record-setting levels of 2024 – around 0.13C cooler over the first six months.
On their own, temperatures observed so far in 2026 would make a new annual record unlikely.
However, rerunning the projection using only the data available at the end of each month since March – including both the year-to-date observations and the El Niño forecast issued that month – shows a shifting picture.
Using March data, 2026 had just a 7% chance of setting a new record. That rose to 16% in April, 24% in May, 27% in June and 35% using the latest data in mid-July.
This is shown in the chart below.
Notably, this rise has little to do with observed temperatures. The year-to-date anomaly has actually drifted slightly down, from 1.41C after March to 1.39C after June.
Observed temperatures and fewer remaining months of the year contributed only around four percentage points of the 28-point rise in the likelihood; the remaining ~84% of the change comes from successive upward revisions to the El Niño forecast for late 2026.
However, whether 2026 ends up becoming the warmest year on record may end up depending on which dataset is used.
Running the same projection gives odds of a 2026 record of around two-in-three for Berkeley Earth (66%) and NASA GISTEMP (65%), but only 35% for HadCRUT5, 24% for NOAA and just 13% and 9% for the ERA5 and JRA-3Q reanalyses, respectively.
This is shown below.
The divergence between projections mostly reflects how exceptional each dataset’s 2024 was.
The reanalysis approaches recorded a particularly warm 2024, leaving 2026 more ground to make up. GISTEMP and Berkeley, on the other hand, project 2026 modestly above their 2024 values.
A repeat of the situation in 2015 where different groups disagreed on record rankings is a real possibility. Headlines in January 2027 may hinge on choices of dataset.
2027 likely to be the warmest year in human history
The biggest climate story of the developing super El Niño may not be 2026 at all.
Global temperatures typically lag in the tropical Pacific by around three months. So, an El Niño event peaking in November and December 2026 will have its largest warming influence on 2027.
We saw this same pattern occur in 1997-98, 2015-16 and 2023-24 – where the year in which the El Niño developed was warm, but the following year was record-smashing.
Carbon Brief has extended its projection into 2027 by using the historical relationship between year-over-year temperature changes and ENSO conditions in the preceding autumn.
This yields a best estimate for 2027 of around 1.71C above pre-industrial levels, with a 90% range of 1.49C to 1.93C. This is shown by a yellow square on the chart below.
That would give 2027 a 92% chance of setting a new global temperature record and a 94% chance of exceeding 1.5C.
Taking 2026 and 2027 together, there is a 93% chance that at least one of the two years sets a new record.
The 2027 estimate is more uncertain than the 2026 one. As with 2026, there are uncertainties in the projection due to unknowns around exactly how strong the El Niño peak proves to be and how quickly it decays.
However, even the low end of the 2027 range would put it among the warmest years on record and the central estimate of 1.71C would exceed 2024 by nearly 0.2C.
If these projections bear out, the 2020s will have delivered new global temperature records in 2023, 2024 and 2027 – and potentially 2026 too – with a number of individual years well above the 1.5C threshold.
The long-term warming trend, driven by human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, has increased from around 0.18C per decade in the early 2000s to around 0.27C per decade today. El Niño and La Niña play a big role in determining which years along that rising path stand out as records.
Arctic sea ice at record lows
Arctic sea ice has spent much of 2026 in record-low territory.
Following the joint-lowest winter maximum in the satellite record in mid-March, daily extent has set or tied record lows for the date on 39 days so far this year, including extended spells in mid-to-late March and in early-to-mid June.
The most recent record-low days were in early July.
The chart below shows how Arctic sea ice in 2026 (dark red line) has been below the historical range (shaded red).
It also shows how Antarctic sea ice (dark blue), meanwhile, has remained below the 1979-2010 range for almost all of 2026 to date.
As of mid-July, Arctic extent is a bit below the 1979-2010 historical range for the date, though it remains around 0.6m square kilometres (km2) larger than the record low for the date set during 2020’s exceptional summer melt season.
The trajectory over the coming two months will determine whether 2026 challenges 2012’s record September minimum. Early-summer conditions are a poor predictor of the September minimum, which depends heavily on summer weather.
Antarctic sea ice, meanwhile, is currently around 300,000km2 below the historical envelope, but has stayed well clear of the record lows set in 2023 and has not set any new daily records yet this year.
Q&A: Europe’s May and June heatwave deaths – and how they were counted
Guest post: France’s June heatwave caused more than 2,700 heat-related deaths
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Media reaction: How climate change intensified Europe’s record-breaking June heat
The post State of the climate: Rapidly developing El Niño raises chance of record-warm 2026 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
State of the climate: Rapidly developing El Niño raises chance of record-warm 2026
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