As countries come under growing pressure to tackle planet-heating methane emissions from the fossil fuel sector, oil and gas producers in COP host nations Brazil and Azerbaijan are struggling to prevent large leaks of methane, data shared with Climate Home News shows.
Satellite observations detected “super-emitting” methane plumes in the two countries this year that were visible from space and linked to state oil companies in both cases. Brazil presided over this year’s COP30 climate talks, while COP29 was in Azerbaijan.
Methane is a greenhouse gas that traps about 80 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide but has a shorter life span. If global warming is to stay below 1.5C, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that methane emissions from fossil fuels would need to fall by 75% by 2030.
At COP26 in 2021, a group of more than 100 countries announced their intention to cut methane emissions across all sectors by 30% from 2020 levels by the end of this decade. But a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) assessment shows they are instead set to rise 5% by 2030.
At COP30 this November, Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva said that reducing methane emissions “gives us an opportunity to keep the planet’s average temperature [rise] within 1.5C, decreasing the frequency, intensity and impact of extreme weather events and protecting lives”.
And last year, Rovshan Najaf, president of Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR, promised that the firm would achieve near-zero methane emissions in its oil and gas production by 2035.
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However, the latest data available from Azerbaijan’s SOCAR shows that the company’s methane emissions more than tripled from 2023 to 2024, when the country hosted COP29. SOCAR identified about 200,000 tonnes of methane emissions from its business activities in 2024.
Brazilian state-oil company Petrobras, meanwhile, did manage to reduce its methane emissions by more than half between 2015 and 2022, but they have since stayed stagnant, at about a million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emitted per year, the company’s annual sustainability data shows.
“Reducing methane has significant impacts on a country’s ability to meet its climate commitments,” said Tengi George-Ikoli, a methane expert with the National Resource Governance Institute (NRGI).
“Countries like Brazil and Azerbaijan, who have hosted COPs, should be seen to commit to those efforts more so than others,” she emphasised.
In 2025, UNEP’s International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) alerted countries globally – including Brazil and Azerbaijan – to around 2,200 instances linking their oil and gas production to super-emitting events.
Both Brazil and Azerbaijan have focal points that receive these IMEO alerts. But a recent report shows that 90% of the notifications did not even receive a response, and neither Brazil nor Azerbaijan are listed in the 25 successful cases that managed to reduce emissions thanks to this system.
Big plumes in Azerbaijan’s southern oil & gas hub
In Azerbaijan, persistent large-scale methane emissions have been detected over its southern coast – a hub for its oil and gas industry – during the past two years, according to satellite data from online monitoring platform Carbon Mapper.
When satellites passed over the region in mid-2024, as Azerbaijan prepared to host the COP29 climate summit, they spotted a handful of massive methane plumes, each releasing between 2,000 and 4,000 kilogrammes of methane per hour, dozens of times above the threshold for a “super-emitting” event.
According to Carbon Mapper’s data, methane emissions from the same locations still persisted a year later at comparable or even higher levels.
It is impossible to pinpoint precisely the source of those emissions without ground-level monitoring. But satellite data suggests that methane was released both from pipelines – which may be leaking – and compressor stations, which are facilities that help keep fossil gas flowing by boosting its pressure.
Throughout this year, large methane plumes have been observed by satellites emanating from a facility run by SOCAR in one of the world’s oldest oil fields, located just a few miles from Baku’s swanky waterfront boulevard.
In its 2025 sustainability report, SOCAR said it had expanded its methane emissions monitoring by using “leak detection AI tools”, drones and satellite technologies that “enabled more targeted, data-driven responses and supported the development of effective mitigation measures across operational sites”.
State oil firm in COP30 host nation linked to leaks
In Brazil, state-oil company Petrobras has been linked to three methane “super-emitting events” detected by satellites this year, which raises questions about emissions from its offshore oil and gas production facilities.
Three large methane plumes were detected in the Santos basin off the coast of Rio de Janeiro – which holds several of Brazil’s largest oil and gas fields – by Carbon Mapper on April 23.
Further analysis by environmental nonprofit SkyTruth, which specialises in satellite observations, revealed the plumes came from vessels in the Tupi field, which is majority-owned by Petrobras. Two of the vessels are operated by Dutch company SBM and the other by Petrobras.
The plumes in the Santos basin were large enough to be considered “super-emitting” methane events, on a scale similar to leaks in the same category detected in other parts of the world.
The US Environmental Protection Agency defines these as events with a rate of emissions of 100 kg of methane per hour. Two of the plumes detected in Brazil were above 300 and one was above 700 kg of methane per hour.
The events in Brazil are “particularly stunning” and could point to a more persistent issue, SkyTruth’s CEO John Amos told Climate Home, because the three plumes were detected during just one observation by a satellite orbiting the area.
“For one attempt to produce three positive plumes suggests that this could be a systematic problem offshore,” he said.
Petrobras says mitigation measures in place
Asked about these cases, Petrobras told Climate Home in a statement that the company is committed to reducing methane emissions as part of its decarbonisation strategy. It added that, because the plumes were detected by a single satellite observation, “the ability to draw broader conclusions about the consistency and magnitude of emissions over time is limited”.
The company also highlighted that its assets in the Santos basin perform “within the industry’s first quartile” for emissions per barrel of oil and noted that “initiatives such as recovering flare gas and performing leak detection and repair campaigns have helped to mitigate methane emissions”.
Petrobras also said that “during the period in question, operational conditions were under normal circumstances”.
Amos argued that if the sector considers such super-emitter plumes of methane – observable from space – “to be a consequence of ‘normal operating conditions’, then the offshore methane problem may be far worse than we anticipated”.
Just days before COP30, Petrobras executives co-chaired an offshore oil and gas conference in Rio de Janeiro. The discussions, the organisers wrote in a welcome letter, would focus on “traditional oil and gas technologies while highlighting the innovations essential for a more sustainable future” and would be “strategically positioned amid the ongoing energy transition”.
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As global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise, with the United Nations admitting in November that an overshoot of the 1.5C warming limit is now inevitable, action on methane garnered growing attention at COP30.
New initiatives were launched at the climate summit in Belém to tackle methane emissions from the production of fossil fuels, which accounts for about a third of global emissions from this “super pollutant”, with other key sources being agriculture and waste management.
The UK launched a declaration to “drastically reduce” methane from the fossil fuel sector, which was endorsed by 11 countries including major oil and gas producers Canada, Norway and Kazakhstan. The actions it supports include more transparent monitoring, eliminating routine flaring and venting, and tracking progress towards near-zero methane emissions per unit of production.
The UK and Brazil also launched a three-year $25-million funding package to help developing countries tackle methane, among other “super pollutant” gases, which will benefit a first cohort of mostly fossil fuel-producing countries – among them Brazil, Kazakhstan, Mexico and Nigeria.
At last year’s COP29, the European Union championed an initiative that encouraged fossil fuel-producing countries to create roadmaps towards abating methane emissions from coal, oil and gas, including timelines, investment needs and the amount of emissions to be abated.
But, as a growing clutch of voluntary initiatives has failed to produce results at the scale and speed needed to rein in global warming in the short term, pressure is rising for a more accountable and comprehensive approach to the problem.
At COP30, Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley renewed her call for a legally binding methane pact to “pull the methane emergency brake” and “buy us some time”, starting with actions in the oil and gas industry.
NRGI’s George-Ikoli said the oil and gas sector could lead on cutting methane emissions because measures like zero flaring and venting, and eliminating leaks could bring in revenues for companies by enabling them to use or sell currently wasted gas.
Mottley wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian this month that the next step would be to convene heads of state from willing nations to develop “a roadmap in 2026 for binding measures for the oil and gas industry”. Negotiations could start by 2027, with a deal adopted “as soon as possible thereafter”, she proposed.
The post Recent COP hosts Brazil and Azerbaijan linked to “super-emitting” methane plumes appeared first on Climate Home News.
Recent COP hosts Brazil and Azerbaijan linked to “super-emitting” methane plumes
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The first three months of 2026 have been the fourth warmest on record, with each successive month surpassing historical averages by a greater margin.
While weak La Niña conditions pushed down temperatures at the start of the year, scientists expect the development of a strong – and potentially “super” – El Niño event by early autumn.
El Niño and La Niña are the warm and cool phases of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a recurring climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that shapes global weather patterns.
Based on temperature datasets from five different research groups, Carbon Brief predicts that 2026 is likely to be the second-warmest year on record.
The year is virtually certain to be one of the four warmest on record and, currently, has a 19% chance of surpassing 2024 as the warmest year on record.
However, the development of a strong El Niño event later this year would substantially increase the chance that 2027 will be the warmest year on record.
In addition to near-record warmth, the start of 2026 has seen record-low sea ice cover in the Arctic, with the year tying with 2025 for the lowest winter peak in the satellite record.
Fourth-warmest start to the year
In this latest quarterly state of the climate assessment, Carbon Brief analyses records from five different research groups that report global surface temperature records: NASA, NOAA, Met Office Hadley Centre/UEA, Berkeley Earth and Copernicus/ECMWF.
The figure below shows the annual temperatures from each of these groups since 1970, along with the average over the first three months of 2026.
(It is worth noting that warming in the first three months may not be representative of the year as a whole, as temperatures relative to pre-industrial levels tend to be larger in the northern hemispheric winter months of December, January and February.)
Carbon Brief provides a best estimate of global temperatures by averaging the different records using a common 1981-2010 baseline period and then adding in the average warming since the pre-industrial period (1850-1900) across the datasets – NOAA, Hadley and Berkeley – that extend back to 1850. (This follows the approach taken by the World Meteorological Organization in its state of the climate reports.)
The figure below shows how global temperature so far in 2026 (black line) compares to each month in different years since 1940 (lines coloured by the decade in which they occurred).
The first three months of 2026 have been relatively warm, coming in in the top-five warmest on record across all the different scientific groups that report on global surface temperatures. This is despite the presence of weak La Niña conditions in the tropical Pacific at the start of the year, which typically suppress global temperatures.
January 2026 was the fourth- or fifth-warmest January on record across all the groups, February was the fourth- to sixth-warmest and March was between the second and fourth warmest.
| Dataset | January | February | March |
|---|---|---|---|
| HadCRUT5 | 5th | 6th | Yet To Report |
| NOAA | 5th | 5th | 2nd |
| GISTEMP | 5th | 4th | 4th |
| Berkeley Earth | 4th | 4th | 4th |
| Copernicus ERA5 | 5th | 5th | 4th |
Global temperature anomalies have been steadily increasing since their low point in January, as La Niña conditions have faded.
When combined, the first three months of the year in 2026 were the fourth-warmest in the historical record, below only 2024, 2025 and 2016.
A potential ‘super’ El Niño
There is reason to expect that global temperatures will continue to increase over the remainder of the year, as a strong – or even “super” – El Niño event is expected to develop later in the year.
Since the start of April, 13 different modelling groups have published estimates of future El Niño strength through at least September. These, in turn, contain 637 different model runs, as each model is run multiple times to better characterise the range of potential El Niño development.
There are a number of different ways to assess the strength of an El Niño or La Niña event.
The most common is the temperature anomaly in the “Niño3.4” region of the tropical Pacific. In addition, these temperatures have the human warming signal removed from changes over time in that part of the Pacific.
There are other approaches to assessing the strength of El Niño, including the newly released relative Oceanic Niño Index (RONI), which may be more accurate. However, RONI data is not readily available from all models today.
The figure below shows a distribution of Niño3.4 temperature anomalies across all of the runs of all of the models (top panel), as well as the range of runs across each of the individual models (bottom panel). Sustained sea surface temperatures in excess of 0.5C indicate an El Niño event, temperatures above 1.5C represent a strong El Niño event and above 2C is often referred to as a “super” El Niño event.
The latest climate models give a central (median) estimate of 2.2C warming by September – a scenario which would put the world firmly in “super” El Niño territory.
Warming would likely strengthen after September, as El Niño conditions generally peak between November and January.
However, there is still a wide spread among models, with some, such as CanESM5 and DWD, only showing a weak-to-moderate El Niño.
Historically, it has been hard to accurately forecast the development of El Niño during early spring, so it will be a few more months before scientists can be confident that a strong or super El Niño will develop.
Exceptional regional warmth
There were many regions of the planet that saw exceptional warmth in the first quarter of 2026. This includes much of the western US, western China and eastern Russia.
The figure below shows the temperature anomaly in the ERA5 dataset, relative to a more recent 1981-2010 baseline period. (ERA5 does not provide gridded data back to the pre-industrial era.)
In addition to temperature anomalies, it is useful to look at where new records have been set. The figure below shows each grid cell that saw one of the top-five warmest first-quarter periods on record, as well as the top-five coolest.
During the first quarter of 2026, 5.2% of the globe saw record warm temperatures, while virtually no place on earth had record cool temperatures. In addition, 24.3% of the globe was in the top-five warmest on record, whereas only 0.1% was in the bottom-five coolest on record.
On track to be second-warmest year on record
Carbon Brief estimates that the global average temperature in 2026 will be between 1.37C and 1.58C, with a best estimate 1.47C. This puts 2026 on track to likely be the second warmest year on record, though it could potentially be as high as the warmest or as low as the fourth warmest.
This is based on the relationship between the first three months and the annual temperatures for every year since 1970. The estimate also accounts for El Niño and La Niña conditions seen in the first three months of 2026, as well as how El Niño conditions are projected to develop across the rest of the year.
The analysis includes a wide range of possible outcomes in 2026, given that temperatures from only the first quarter of the year are available so far.
The chart below shows the expected range of 2026 temperatures using the Carbon Brief average of groups – including a best-estimate (red) and year-to-date value (yellow). Temperatures are shown with respect to the pre-industrial baseline period (1850-1900).
Carbon Brief’s projection suggests that 2026 is virtually certain to be one of the top-four warmest years, with a best-estimate – a 62% chance – that it ends up between 2024 and 2023 as the second-warmest year on record.
However, there remains a 19% chance that 2026 will be the warmest year on record – beating the prior record set in 2024. There is also a 19% chance that it will end up as the third- or fourth-warmest year.
The chances of a record-breaking year depends on the strength of El Niño, as well as how rapidly global temperatures warm up as El Niño develops.
There is also a roughly 30% chance that 2026 will be the second year that exceeds 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
While the development of a strong or “super” El Niño will give a boost to 2026 temperatures in the latter part of the year, its largest effects will likely be felt in 2027.
Historically, the year where El Niño develops has been warmer than usual, but the year that follows the phenomenon’s winter peak – for example, in 1998, 2016 and 2024 – is record-setting.
This is because there is an approximately three-month lag between the peak of El Niño conditions in the tropical Pacific and the maximum global surface temperature response. If a super El Niño develops this year, it is likely that 2027 will set a new record.
Record-low winter Arctic sea ice
Earlier this year, Arctic sea ice saw the joint-smallest winter peak in a satellite record going back almost half a century.
Sea ice extent peaked for 2026 at 14.29m square kilometres (km2) on 15 March, marking a “statistical tie” with a record low recorded the year before, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).
The figure below shows both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extent in 2026 (solid red and blue lines), the historical range in the record between 1979 and 2010 (shaded areas) and the record lows (dotted black line).
(Unlike global temperature records, which only report monthly averages, sea ice data is collected and updated on a daily basis, allowing sea ice extent to be viewed up to the present.)
Arctic sea ice set new record daily low values during periods of January, March and early April. Antarctic sea ice did not set any new records so far in 2026, but remains on the low end of the historical (1979-2010) range.
The post State of the climate: Strong El Niño puts 2026 on track for second-warmest year appeared first on Carbon Brief.
State of the climate: Strong El Niño puts 2026 on track for second-warmest year
Climate Change
Solar surge kept fossil electricity flat in 2025 as China and India made ‘historic’ shift
A record surge in clean power met all global electricity demand growth in 2025, preventing any increase in fossil fuel generation, according to energy think tank Ember.
Solar led the expansion, recording its fastest growth rate in eight years and meeting around 75% of new electricity demand alone.
Together with wind, hydropower and other low-carbon sources, the solar surge drove clean generation to rise by 887 TWh, slightly exceeding demand growth of 849 TWh and pushing fossil generation down by 0.2%, Ember said in a report published on Tuesday.
Much of this shift was driven by China and India, where rapid clean energy expansion outpaced electricity demand growth, leading to declines in fossil generation in both countries for the first time this century.
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“We have firmly entered the era of clean growth,” said Aditya Lolla, Ember’s managing director.
“Clean energy is now scaling fast enough to absorb rising global electricity demand, keeping fossil generation flat before its inevitable decline,” Lolla added.
China and India lead the way
A key driver of the global shift was a “historic” reversal in China and India, the largest contributors to fossil power growth over the past two decades, Ember said.
For the first time this century, electricity generation from fossil fuels fell in both countries in the same year, tipping the global balance.
In China, fossil generation dropped by 0.9%, its first decline since 2015, as rapid additions of solar and wind outpaced rising demand. In India, fossil generation fell by 3.3%, driven by record increases in solar and wind, strong hydro production and relatively slower demand growth.
This shift helped push renewables to around 34% of global electricity generation in 2025, overtaking coal for the first time in the modern era.
“China’s rapid expansion of solar and wind is meeting rising electricity demand at home while influencing the global electricity transition,” said Xunpeng Shi, president of the International Society for Energy Transition Studies.
“As the world’s largest builder of clean power, China’s progress is showing how growing demand can increasingly be met with clean electricity rather than fossil fuels,” Shi added.
Solar leading global energy supply growth
Reinforcing Ember’s findings, new analysis from the International Energy Agency (IEA) showed on Monday that solar has become the single largest driver of global energy supply growth, beyond the electricity sector.
In its latest Global Energy Review, the IEA found that solar PV accounted for more than a quarter of the increase in global energy demand in 2025, making it the first time any modern renewable source has taken the top spot.
The agency also reported that solar recorded the largest annual increase ever seen for any electricity generation technology.
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Ember’s Lolla said clean energy is “redefining the foundation of energy security in a volatile world,” adding that “it is already helping countries reduce exposure to fossil fuel imports and costs while meeting rising electricity demand”.
‘Antidote to fossil fuel cost chaos‘
As the war in the Middle East disrupts global oil and gas supplies, the head of UN Climate Change, Simon Stiell, said the current crisis underscores the risks of fossil fuel dependence and the need for more secure, domestic energy sources.
“Wars don’t disrupt the supply of sunlight for solar power, and wind power does not depend on vulnerable shipping straits,” Stiell said.
Speaking at the opening of the Green Transformation Week conference in South Korea, Stiell encouraged countries to accelerate the transition to clean energy to regain control of their economies and national security.
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“War has once again revealed the soaring costs of fossil fuel dependency,” he said, warning that volatile energy markets are “holding economies around the world in a chokehold.”
“Clean energy is the antidote to fossil fuel cost chaos, because it is cheaper, safer and faster-to-market,” he added.
The post Solar surge kept fossil electricity flat in 2025 as China and India made ‘historic’ shift appeared first on Climate Home News.
Solar surge kept fossil electricity flat in 2025 as China and India made ‘historic’ shift
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