In an extraordinary year for the Earth’s climate – which is now virtually certain to be hottest on record – global warming has combined with the El Niño weather phenomenon and other factors to cause “crazy” weather across the globe, including in Africa.
The continent has faced a run of deadly and, in many cases, unprecedented extreme weather events this year.
By far the most lethal was Libya’s “medicane”-fuelled floods, which killed more than 11,300 people in September.
But while Libya’s floods made global headlines, many other deadly extreme events in Africa failed to make international news.
Carbon Brief has combined disaster data, humanitarian reports and local news stories to create a more complete picture of the scale of extreme weather impacts in Africa in 2023 to date.
The investigation shows that at least 15,700 people have so far been killed in extreme weather disasters in Africa in 2023. A further 34 million people have been affected by extremes.
It also shows that:
- More than 3,000 people were killed in flash floods in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda in May. Scientists were unable to assess the role of climate change in the disaster because of a lack of functioning weather stations recording data in the region.
- At least 860 people were killed in floods and mudslides in February during Tropical Cyclone Freddy, the longest lasting cyclone on record affecting Madagascar, Mozambique, Mauritius, Malawi, Réunion and Zimbabwe.
- More than 29 million people continue to face unrelenting drought conditions across Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti, Mauritania and Niger.
- Southern African countries have sweltered in a months-long winter heatwave, leaving many facing summer-like conditions for a continuous year.
Carbon Brief also spoke to scientists about how these events could be linked to climate change and other factors, including high vulnerability and a lack of preparedness – and why so many of Africa’s extreme weather events go unrecorded and unreported.
In addition, Carbon Brief analysis shows that Africa has the lowest density of weather stations out of any continent – making it difficult to know the extent to which extreme weather is happening and how it might be shifting because of climate change. A climate scientist from Kenya describes this as “extremely worrying”.
She adds that the toll of extreme weather on Africa’s people in 2023 is a stark reminder of why the developed world must take responsibility for the “loss and damage” caused by climate change.
- Extremes mapped
- Floods
- Cyclones
- Heatwaves
- Wildfires
- Drought and famine
- Why do African extremes go unreported?
Extremes mapped
Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents in the world to climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Seven of the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate disasters are in Africa, according to an analysis from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the World Resources Institute (WRI).
According to this analysis, the countries most vulnerable to climate disasters are those that have low “climate readiness” – measured by examining the threats that climate change poses to a country and that country’s ability to protect its citizens – and high levels of “fragility” – the likelihood that a country will experience societal collapse in the event of a disaster.
The threats posed by climate change are rising with greenhouse gas emissions, of which Africa is responsible for just 2-3%.
In 2023, every part of the continent was affected by extreme weather disasters, ranging from catastrophic flooding in Libya to intense heat in Malawi.
To study these events, Carbon Brief has combined UN humanitarian reports and local news stories with data from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT), which was launched in 1988 by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) in Belgium.
The map below shows extreme weather disasters affecting Africa in 2023 to date, according to the EM-DAT database and further analysis by Carbon Brief. On the map, the size of the circles correspond to the number of people affected by the event, while a colour key indicates the event type.
For an extreme event to be featured on the EM-DAT database, it must fulfil one of the following criteria:
- 10 or more people killed.
- 100 or more people affected.
- The declaration of a state of emergency.
- A call for international assistance.
(It is worth noting that the EM-DAT is the largest disaster database available, but is still not exhaustive, particularly for African nations.)
Carbon Brief’s analysis of EM-DAT data, humanitarian reports and local news reports shows that at least 15,700 people have been killed in extreme weather disasters in Africa in 2023 to date.
This is a major jump from the 4,000 people killed by extreme weather disasters in 2022 – but it is worth noting the vast majority of deaths (11,300) occurred during Libya’s record floods.
The analysis also shows that at least 34 million people were affected by extreme weather disasters in 2023. This compares to 19 million people in 2022.
Overall, weather events in Africa this year fit into a global picture of record and, in some cases, uncharted extremes, climate scientists tell Carbon Brief.
The reasons why 2023 has seen such extreme heat and unusual weather events are still being debated by scientists. However, known contributors include the 1.3C of temperature rise already caused by humans and El Niño, a natural phenomenon that tends to drive up global temperatures and affect weather in many parts of the world, including Africa.
Dr Izidine Pinto, a climate scientist from Mozambique currently working at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, tells Carbon Brief:
“This year is very unusual worldwide. In Africa, almost every month, there were record monthly temperatures. And we know that El Niño is associated with below average rainfall in many parts of Africa, especially in southern Africa.”
Some of the weather events in Africa this year have left scientists scratching their heads, adds Dr Joyce Kimutai, a climate scientist from Kenya currently working at the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London. She tells Carbon Brief:
“Climate change is really disrupting the climate system. To me, I think it’s challenging, it’s difficult and it’s also dangerous in a way because as climate scientists we don’t know exactly what’s happening. Every time we think we’ve understood the system, things keep changing. So we would think that we can inform the public about the risks that they can anticipate and how they need to prepare, but then the system is also playing games with us.”
Kimutai adds that the toll of extreme weather events on African lives in 2023 is a stark example of “loss and damage” – a term to describe how climate change is already harming people, especially the world’s most vulnerable. She says:
“We are not on track to limiting warming to 1.5C. That means we will continue to experience these extreme events and that is going to cause more damage to communities. At the same time, people in these countries will have to continually dig deeper into their pockets to deal with these recurring events. What that means is the loss and damages that we know will continue to grow.”
Loss and damage is expected to be a major talking point at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai starting in late November, after a historic fund for such damages was agreed at COP27 in Egypt.
Floods
Floods affected every corner of the African continent in 2023.
Carbon Brief analysis shows at least 23 flood disasters occurred, with countries affected including Angola, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Guinea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Mauritania, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
By far the most deadly were Libya’s floods. In September, a highly unusual cyclone called Storm Daniel dropped a torrent of rainfall over the coast of Libya.
The water quickly overwhelmed two old and damaged dams in the coastal city of Derna, resulting in tsunami-like waves that swept people and houses out to sea. The disaster killed more than 11,300 people.
A rapid analysis released in the storm’s wake found the extreme rainfall was made up to 50 times more likely and 50% more intense by climate change.
Storm Daniel was a “medicane”, the name given to a storm originating in the Mediterranean Sea that has the physical features of a hurricane.
Scientists told Carbon Brief that medicanes are currently rare, but there is evidence that they are becoming more intense because of climate change.
One reason for this is when sea surface temperatures are extremely high, it allows storms to gather up more “fuel” as they travel over the ocean – making them stronger when they eventually make landfall.
We have a #medicane in the making. Storm #Daniel in the Mediterranean now has tropical characteristics heading south and will make landfall tonight near Benghazi, Libya. The dark shades of purple are winds 50 mph+ pic.twitter.com/3J3ZTnCEDU
— Jeff Berardelli (@WeatherProf) September 9, 2023
As well as climate change, the disaster in Libya was worsened by other factors, such as the age of the dams that became overwhelmed with water and an incoherent system for warning the public of the dangers posed by the storms, experts told Carbon Brief.
Another deadly flood to strike Africa in 2023 took place in May, when severe flooding around Lake Kivu devastated communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda.
According to Carbon Brief analysis, these flash floods killed 2,970 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 131 people in Rwanda.
Many families living in the region had escaped conflict and were living in temporary accommodation, leaving them extremely vulnerable.
Kimutai led a team of scientists who tried to understand how climate change influenced the likelihood and severity of these floods.
However, the researchers were unable to carry out their analysis because they were not able to find reliable rainfall data from weather stations in the region, she explains:
“From the DRC side, we couldn’t find any observational data to use. There have been issues with conflict for a long time and when a country’s at war, almost everything is dysfunctional. What you find with instability is that government employees are not likely to be able to constantly man weather stations and ensure their day-to-day running.”
She adds that the researchers also tried to use satellite information in the place of weather station data. However, data obtained from different satellites did not match up, making it impossible to tell exactly how much rainfall fell during the deadly flash floods.
More on the impact of low weather station coverage in Africa is included in: Why do African extremes go ‘unreported’?
Cyclones
Southern Africa was on the receiving end of a record-breaking – and highly unusual – storm this year called Tropical Cyclone Freddy.
Tropical Cyclone Freddy began as a disturbance near Australia in February and crossed the entire Indian Ocean to make landfall on Madagascar.
The storm then crossed the Mozambican channel to hit Mozambique and surrounding countries. It then returned to the Mozambican channel for several days, before striking Mozambique for a second time. It then proceeded inland towards Malawi.
Overall, the storm persisted for 34 days – making it the longest-lasting tropical cyclone on record. (This record is awaiting verification from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).)
It also covered a distance exceeding 8,000km. Pinto, who is originally from Mozambique, tells Carbon Brief:
“It made landfall in Mozambique twice, which is very unusual for a tropical cyclone in my living experience. I have never seen a tropical cyclone make landfall and then go back to the ocean before returning again. And this one travelled northwards, which is also unusual because tropical cyclones usually travel from north to south.”
The remarkable path of Tropical Cyclone Freddy is outlined in the diagram below, which was produced by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
(The diagram also uses blue shading to show what areas experienced the most flooding and bubbles indicating where the most people were affected.)
According to Carbon Brief analysis, at least 860 people were killed in floods and landslides associated with the storm across Madagascar, Mozambique, Mauritius, Malawi, Réunion and Zimbabwe.
The storm also destroyed 408,000 houses and 6,600 square kilometres (km2) of cropland across Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar, according to OCHA. Floodwaters from the storm also assisted several outbreaks of the deadly waterborne disease cholera (indicated with hazard signs on the diagram above).
There has been no analysis into the role of climate change in intensifying Tropical Cyclone Freddy.
However, according to Pinto – who, along with Kimutai, works to analyse the role of climate change in Africa’s extremes with the World Weather Attribution group of scientists – it can be assumed that warming did have an impact on the storm. He explains:
“We did not do a study because previously we’ve done two studies on Tropical Cyclone Batsirai and storm Ana [which affected southern Africa in 2022], and we found that climate change played a role in the amount of rainfall caused by these two tropical cyclones. If we analysed Tropical Cyclone Freddy we would probably find the same answer.”
He adds that the latest findings from the world’s authority on climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), show that eastern southern Africa is likely to see an increase in average tropical cyclone wind speeds and rainfall, as well as a higher proportion of category 4 and 5 (the most severe) storms, as climate change worsens.
“From the scientific literature, it is clear that climate change played a role,” he says.
Heatwaves
Many parts of Africa faced extreme heat this year.
The north of the continent saw record temperatures during an extreme summer heatwave that affected each of Earth’s seven continents in July.
During this heatwave, Algeria hit 48C, while Morocco faced 47.5C heat.
Adrar in Algeria also experienced Africa’s hottest night on record in July, when night-time temperatures did not fall below 39.6C.
Al Jazeera reported that the extreme temperatures particularly affected migrant workers in Tunisia, who typically sleep rough in tents in the nation’s capital, Tunis.
All Africa reported that 47C heat had a “profound impact” on humans and livestock in Niger.
An analysis by the World Weather Attribution team found that the heat observed across the northern hemisphere in July would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change.
The south of the continent, meanwhile, endured prolonged high temperatures in what were meant to be the winter months.
In August, the Washington Post reported that Southern Africa was in “the midst of a major heatwave” delivering temperatures close to 40C to Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Mozambique.
In October, the Guardian reported that Malawi was experiencing temperatures 20C above the seasonal average. (Malawi’s cool season typically runs from May to October.)
The prolonged winter heat meant that many southern African countries effectively faced a 12-month long summer, Kimutai says:
“We witnessed for the first time a winter heatwave in southern Africa. People say it didn’t get cold at all this time. It was just like one long back-to-back summer.”
Despite these record events, the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) did not register any heatwave disasters in Africa this year (see map above). More explanation of why Africa’s heatwaves often go untracked is included in: Why do African extremes go ‘unreported’?
Wildfires
The extreme heat in northern Africa this year fuelled deadly wildfires.
Reuters reported that wildfires swept across Algeria in July, requiring a response from 8,000 firefighters. The flames killed 34 people, including 10 soldiers.
The newswire added that blazes also ripped across Tunisia, forcing hundreds of households to flee.
Drought and famine
Numerous African countries continued to be gripped by severe drought this year. Many of these droughts have spanned several years.
According to Carbon Brief analysis, more than 29 million people faced unrelenting drought conditions across countries including Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mauritania, Niger and Somalia in 2023.
According to a report from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in July, drought in the Horn of Africa has left more than 23 million people facing food insecurity and more than five million children facing acute malnutrition.
The report says:
“The drought affected livestock body conditions and decimated herds, which, in turn, curbed livestock production. Successive below-average harvests, coupled with high production and transport costs, reduced local agricultural produce. All this led to food price spikes that still persist, which reduced household purchasing power and access to nutrient-rich foods.”
An analysis released by the World Weather Attribution service in April found that persistent drought in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia “would not have [happened] at all” without human-caused climate change.
A “conservative estimate” from the scientists said that the drought conditions seen in the Horn of Africa over 2020-22 were made at least 100 times more likely by climate change.
In July, the WFP said the impacts of drought conditions in this period are “likely to persist for a long time” despite some improvements in rains in recent months.
Reacting to the analysis in April, Mohamed Adow, director of the Power Shift Africa thinktank in Kenya, said the findings reinforce why climate change is “the world’s biggest and gravest injustice issue”. He told Carbon Brief:
“As someone from East Africa it’s painful to see the impact of climate change wreaking so much suffering on people that have done nothing to cause this.”
Why do African extremes go unreported?
African activists, scientists and policymakers have warned for years that African extreme weather events often go “unreported” when compared to those in North America and Europe.
Understanding the extent to which African extreme weather events are unreported is complicated.
One way to do this is to consider all the ways that extreme weather events are recorded and reported.
Primarily, extreme heat, rainfall and wind speeds – the ingredients of most extreme weather events – are monitored by weather stations.
Carbon Brief’s analysis of WMO weather stations reveals that Africa has the lowest density of operational stations out of any continent.
Pinto tells Carbon Brief that a lack of weather stations in Africa has limited the tracking of extreme weather events for decades:
“The low density of weather stations is something that limits research and also monitoring of extreme events.”
Without adequate data from weather stations, scientists are not only struggling to track when extreme weather events happen, but they are also left without the historical records needed to understand how events have shifted over time because of climate change, he says.
Kimutai – who was prevented from assessing the role of climate change in deadly floods in the DRC this year by a lack of weather station data – tells Carbon Brief that the lack of weather station data from Africa is “extremely worrying”:
“The reason why I’m extremely worried is because we’ve seen the planet continuing to warm with increasing magnitudes of extreme events – this means the continent is likely to be battered more by these extremes. Without observations, we have a minimal understanding of the climate system so we can’t anticipate how the risks are changing. This means that we can’t adequately prepare.”
As well as having the lowest density of meteorological weather stations, the African continent also has by far the fewest radar weather stations. These kind of stations are needed to warn people about upcoming rainfall, Pinto says:
“If you have a radar, you can see rain coming into the region – and then you can tell people that rain is coming and you can plan. In many parts of Africa, that’s not available because radars are very expensive.”
Even when weather data is recorded, there are other ways that extreme weather disasters can be missed.
In Africa, the most potent example of this occurs with heatwaves.
Human-caused climate change has led to an increase in the intensity and frequency of heatwaves in every region of the world, according to the IPCC.
However, according to the EM-DAT database (see map above), there were no recorded heatwave disasters anywhere in Africa this year. (In fact, EM-DAT lists no more than two heatwaves in sub-Saharan Africa since the beginning of the 20th century.)
This is despite the fact that many parts of Africa did experience record-breaking heat in 2023 (see: Heatwaves). So, why did these events go unrecorded in the EM-DAT database?
The reason is that, for EM-DAT to record a “disaster”, it requires there to be some record of an impact on people.
In Africa, the impacts of extreme heat on people are not routinely recorded as they are in other continents. For example, there are few reliable records of how heatwaves drive up hospital admissions or lead to cropland being destroyed in Africa, Pinto says:
“Some people call heatwaves the ‘silent killer’ because we can’t see the impacts. It is easy to see flooding and people drowning and to record their deaths. But when it’s a heatwave and we don’t see the impact with our eyes, it’s difficult to record.
“So, if a heatwave happens in, say, October and kills 10 people. We don’t know what caused the death of those people. Probably, it was the increase in temperature, which caused them to go to the hospital and suffer heart failures or strokes, but the people responsible for recording the deaths do not make the association with high temperatures.”
Even when observational data and the impacts on people are recorded for an extreme weather event in Africa, there is a good chance that people living outside of the region or country affected will never hear about it.
This is because there is generally less media reporting on African extreme weather events when compared to events in North America or Europe. (Libya’s deadly floods in September were a noticeable exception to this.)
Understanding the reasons behind this are extremely complex.
One survey of 38 African editors by the nonprofit Africa No Filter in 2021 found that shrinking newsrooms and lack of funds prevented deeper reporting and the positioning of correspondents across multiple countries.
Western media has been criticised by young climate activists for giving more priority to extreme weather events in the global north than in Africa.
The post Analysis: Africa’s extreme weather has killed at least 15,000 people in 2023 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Africa’s extreme weather has killed at least 15,000 people in 2023
A major change in the way that China measures its core climate goal has effectively halved the growth in the country’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over the past five years.
The revised measure of “carbon intensity”, the amount of CO2 per unit of economic output, implies that China’s emissions have only gone up by 7% from 2020-2025.
This is just half of the 14% rise indicated by previous official statistics.
On paper, the revision creates a gap of 700m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) per year, equivalent to the total emissions of Germany or South Korea.
While China has never officially defined how it measures carbon intensity, it has now made what appears to be a retrospective change, with the effect of making targets easier to meet.
The shift means that China officially came close to meeting its carbon-intensity target for 2020-2025, whereas official statistics had previously pointed towards falling well short.
The new definition of carbon intensity has not been made public, but plausible approaches to calculating the metric do not seem to be sufficient to explain the Germany-sized gap.
The apparent gaps or inconsistencies in China’s new carbon accounting also mean that China could meet its international climate pledges for 2030, even if its emissions go up, whereas the previous measure would have required them to fall.
This article explains how the metric appears to have shifted, what changes might potentially explain the revision and what the revised measure implies for China’s climate goals.
Measuring carbon intensity
Reducing carbon intensity – CO2 emissions per unit of GDP – has been China’s key climate commitment since the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009.
At that time, the country pledged to cut its carbon intensity to 48% below 2005 levels by 2020. This was followed up by a 2030 target of a 60-65% reduction, announced in 2014, which was then upgraded to more than 65% in 2021.
Since carbon intensity was made a key progress indicator in China’s 14th five-year plan for 2021-25, the country has reported reductions in carbon intensity every year in its statistical communique, issued at the end of February.
Neither China’s international climate pledges (its nationally determined contributions, NDCs) nor other official documents have ever set out a definition of carbon intensity, despite it being a cornerstone of the country’s climate commitments.
However, until this year, it was possible to closely reproduce the reported numbers, based on a straightforward interpretation of what carbon intensity means.
But the types of emissions that are included in the carbon-intensity metric have now changed.
Previously, it was possible to reproduce the reported carbon-intensity data by combining official GDP data with estimates of emissions from the use of fossil fuels. The latter could be estimated based on the officially reported consumption of coal, oil and gas, multiplied by China’s official emissions factors for the CO2 per unit of energy from each fuel.
The previous carbon-intensity measure apparently included emissions from the use of fossil fuels to generate energy, as well as their use as chemical feedstocks, so-called “non-energy uses”. However, it did not include non-fossil fuel CO2 emissions from industrial processes, such as the production of cement, as shown by the “old scope” in the figure below left.
Based on the annually reported progress against this old scope, China’s carbon intensity had fallen by a total of 12.4% from 2020-2025.
This was well short of the 18% target set for these years under the 14th five-year plan.
In September 2025, Huang Runqiu, head of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, acknowledged this gap, saying that meeting China’s carbon-intensity targets had become “more challenging” due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and trade tensions.
Yet the 15th five-year plan, published in March 2026, reported that China had cut its carbon intensity by 17.7% over the same period – just shy of the 18% target.
As such, it is clear that there has been a major shift in the way that China measures its carbon intensity, specifically in terms of which types of emissions are included.
Moreover, the revised numbers imply that – rather than missing it by a large margin – China officially came close to meeting its carbon-intensity target for the 14th five-year plan.
A footnote in China’s latest statistical communique offers a brief description of carbon intensity as relating to the CO2 emissions from “energy activities and industrial production”.
This indicates that the carbon-intensity calculation now includes industrial process emissions and excludes non-energy uses of fossil fuels, shown by the “new scope” in the figure above.
In comments sought by Carbon Brief, Ryna Cui, associate research professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, who was not involved in the analysis, agrees that the changes to the carbon-intensity methodology are “unclear”. However, she notes that “limited data” makes it challenging to fully verify the nature and impact of the changes.
The revision mirrors a recent change made to the way that China measures its “energy intensity”, the energy use per unit of economic output. In 2024, energy intensity was changed to exclude non-energy use of fossil fuels and energy use from non-fossil fuels.
This exclusion also created a major incentive for expanding the chemical industry and the non-energy use of fossil fuels.
As for the change in carbon-intensity metric, this follows the highly energy-intensive pattern of economic growth during and after the Covid-19 pandemic and China’s “zero-Covid” policy.
Germany-sized gap
The shift in the way that China is measuring its carbon intensity has implications for estimates of the country’s emissions, which are only reported officially some years later.
Changes in carbon intensity and GDP are reported far more quickly – and can be used to estimate changes in China’s CO2 emissions.
China’s total emissions from energy and industrial processes were 11.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) in 2020. Based on the originally reported changes in carbon intensity and GDP, its fossil-fuel CO2 emissions had grown 14% by 2024, an increase of 1,430m tonnes (MtCO2).
In contrast, the newly reported carbon-intensity figures imply that China’s CO2 emissions only grew by 7% between 2020 and 2025, up just 690MtCO2, as shown by the figure below.
The gap between these figures amounts to 730m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2), equivalent to the annual emissions of Germany or South Korea.
On paper, therefore, the change in the carbon-intensity metric effectively halves the rate of growth in China’s CO2 emissions over the past five years.
Decoding the new carbon-intensity methodology
The change in the carbon-intensity metric could have other significant implications, explored below, making it important to understand how it is being calculated.
Yet, while there are some indications of what the new approach entails, these changes do not seem to account for the magnitude of the revision.
The new scope includes industrial-process emissions. One of the largest sources of these emissions, the cement industry, has been contracting due to a slowdown in real estate and infrastructure construction.
This reduction in emissions is one reason why China’s carbon intensity has improved more quickly under the new scope than under the old one.
In addition, the new scope excludes non-energy use of fossil fuels – largely relating to the chemicals industry – where there has been rapid growth over the past five years.
This is another factor in carbon intensity improving faster under the new scope.
Indeed, China’s chemicals industry drove more than half of the growth in its total fossil-fuel use in the past five years, including 40% of coal use and all of oil use. As a result, non-energy use reached 13% of the total consumption of fossil fuels in 2025, up from 7% in 2020, after growing at an average annual rate of 13%.
The figure below illustrates the impact of these changes in scope. It shows the change in China’s emissions from 2020-2025 due to the use of fossil fuels for energy, its industrial-process emissions and non-energy use of fossil fuels.
The first few rows show changes based on the consumption of fossil fuels overall, amounting to a combined 1,430MtCO2 rise in emissions.
This compares with the 690MtCO2 rise implied by the new carbon-intensity metric, leaving that Germany-sized 730MtcO2 gap in emissions. The new scope explains some of this gap.
In terms of industrial processes, the 30% fall in cement production could account for a 300MtCO2 fall in China’s CO2 emissions. In addition, the amount of carbon stored in products, such as plastics, asphalt and rubber, could account for an estimated 100MtCO2 fall in emissions.
On the other hand, emissions from the incineration of plastics increased by an estimated 40% and from metals industry processes by 10%, with aluminium production having expanded by 21%. Together, these would have increased emissions by an estimated 60MtCO2.
In total, the changes in emissions from fossil-fuel use, industrial processes, carbon retained in products and waste incineration add up to a combined 1,070MtCO2 rise from 2020-2025, shown in the penultimate row of the figure below.
Again, this revised total – based on the change in scope of the carbon-intensity metric – goes some way to explaining the Germany-sized gap in China’s CO2 emissions.
However, the new carbon-intensity figures imply that China’s CO2 emissions only increased by 690MtCO2, as shown in the final row of the figure below. This leaves a residual gap of around 380MtCO2, which does not appear to be accounted for by the data available.
One way to make the numbers add up would be to assume that the amount of carbon embedded in chemical-industry products has increased by the equivalent of 500MtCO2.
However, the reported output of major chemical-industry products cannot account for this level of embedded carbon. The figure below shows that the increase in output of major chemical products only explains around a 110MtCO2 increase in retained carbon.
Much of the increase in the production of plastics was cancelled out by a contraction in the use of bitumen for asphalt, due to lower road-building activity.
Furthermore, the 14th five-year plan for 2021-25 had a target of raising the share of waste incineration to 65% of urban residential waste treatment capacity, up from 45% in 2020.
So, while plastics production did go up, resulting in increased amounts of retained carbon, a larger share of this retained carbon was being incinerated, meaning its carbon would quickly be released back into the atmosphere.
One reason why carbon retained in products has grown more slowly than the amount of fossil fuels used in chemicals production is that the fastest growth has been in the coal-based chemicals industry.
Coal-based processes have a much lower conversion efficiency than oil- and gas-based production, with process emissions that are typically multiple times as high.
For example, these emissions are 10 times as high for the production of olefins – a key plastics feedstock – from coal as compared with oil or gas. The process is reported to require 3.75 tonnes of standard coal per tonne of product. This implies that only 30% of the carbon in the coal is retained in the product, with the other 70% being emitted in the process.
There are also chemical processes that use fossil fuels as a feedstock, but where the end product does not contain carbon. One example is ammonia, a key building block for fertiliser, where production grew by 52% from 2020 to 2025.
Neither the change in scope of the carbon-intensity calculation, nor the change in the amount of carbon retained in products, is sufficient to explain the size of the revision in the newly reported numbers. There must be another explanation.
There are two options. Either the new scope broadly aligns with what is outlined above, but also excludes a subset of the CO2 emissions. Or the scope does not exclude any of the CO2, but there are gaps in the monitoring of some energy or industrial-process emissions.
Either explanation would mean that China is not accounting for some of its CO2 emissions. It would also mean that the improvement in carbon intensity for 2020-2025 is over-reported.
China’s latest officially reported emissions inventories reinforce the second of the two options above, namely, that there are gaps in emissions reporting from the chemical industry.
From 2018 to 2021, the latest year for which China has reported on its emissions, the CO2 output of chemical-industry processes only increased by 13%. Over the same period, non-energy use of fossil fuels increased by 29%, according to data reported to the International Energy Agency by the Chinese government.
One factor in these apparent gaps could be that China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) is required to publish data on carbon intensity very quickly, since it is a key indicator in the country’s five-year plans.
On the other hand, detailed greenhouse gas emissions inventories and energy statistics are only published years later, by the environment ministry and NBS, respectively.
What the change means for China’s targets
The change in the definition of carbon intensity has the effect of weakening China’s climate targets and introducing more uncertainty into tracking progress.
On the basis of China’s new numbers, it will require less effort to hit the 2030 target for a 65% reduction in carbon intensity on 2005 levels, as per China’s Paris pledge.
This target can now be met even if CO2 emissions go up between 2025 and 2030, whereas the previous metric would have required a reduction.
It will also require less effort to hit the 17% target in the 15th five-year plan.
The apparent gaps in the CO2 emissions numbers for 2025 could affect the delivery of China’s other key climate pledges, such as the commitment to peak CO2 emissions before 2030. They could also allow the chemical industry’s CO2 emissions to continue climbing rapidly, while still officially meeting the 2030 goals for CO2 intensity.
Moreover, the apparent gaps or inconsistencies in China’s new carbon accounting also mean that China would be able to officially meet its target to peak its CO2 emissions by 2030, even if its overall CO2 emissions do not actually reach a peak.
The apparent gaps could also affect the delivery of China’s newer target to cut its greenhouse gas emissions to 7-10% below peak levels by 2035 and beyond.
Nevertheless, researchers and analysts can still monitor progress by calculating China’s CO2 emissions independently.
China’s reporting on fossil-fuel consumption, the output of plastics and other carbon-containing products, as well as manufacturing of commodities with substantial process emissions, provides a basis for tracking emissions under the new scope.
While under the UN’s climate framework China is free to use any definition it wants to meet its own nationally determined climate pledges, retrospective changes to methodology or inconsistent accounting could erode the value of the country’s commitments.
Moreover, it will, ultimately, have to close any gaps in its emissions data and reporting, under the transparency rules of the Paris Agreement.
China’s next transparency report to the UN, due by the end of this year, should also provide more clarity on the methodology and data underlying the revised numbers.
This underscores the importance of monitoring, reporting and verification for industrial process emissions. “Mass balances” based on fossil-fuel consumption and product output could be used as a check on CO2 emissions reporting. Finally, China’s emissions data could also be made more granular and clearly defined.
Carbon Brief has approached the National Bureau of Statistics and Ministry of Ecology and Environment for comment.
The University of Maryland’s Cui tells Carbon Brief that in general, China’s climate goals are “improv[ing]” in terms of their coverage and scope. However, she adds:
“The issue is…the ambiguity and inconsistency in the coverage, definition and method between target setting and progress tracking, which can lead to large uncertainties and room for manipulation. It highlights the importance of transparency in national climate targets, following the UNFCCC’s international transparency framework, which should also be applied as best practices for domestic targets.”
About the data
The calculations in this analysis are based on China’s total coal, oil and gas consumption from energy statistical yearbooks covering the years until 2023, with data for 2024 and 2025 taken from the latest statistical communiques.
“Originally reported” CO2 emissions were back-calculated from carbon-intensity reductions and GDP growth given in annual statistical communiques. The revised emissions for 2020, 2024 and 2025 are similarly back-calculated from the reductions in carbon intensity from 2020 to 2025 and from 2024 to 2025, as reported in the 15th five-year plan outline and the 2025 statistical communique, respectively, combined with annually reported GDP growth.
Cement process emissions up to 2024 are from Robbie Andrews’ estimates, scaled to 2025 based on year-on-year change in total cement output.
Process emissions from the metals industry are based on calculating emissions for aluminium, silicon, lead, zinc and crude steel from the bottom-up, using industrial output data and IPCC default emission factors scaled to the reported total in 2021. For steel, the calculations are based on typical quicklime use in basic-oxygen and electric-arc furnaces.
Emissions from the incineration of plastics are based on a peer-reviewed estimate of plastics incineration in 2022, combined with growth rates in the overall power generation from waste-to-energy plants. The analysis assumes that the share of plastics in the energy content of the incinerated waste stayed constant over this period, which is a conservative assumption given the rapid rise in plastics production.
Total non-energy use of fossil fuels in 2020, 2024 and 2025 is available from an NEA data release, with data for 2021-2023 found in the China energy statistical yearbook 2025.
The mix of coal, oil and gas within non-energy use is based on the energy statistical yearbook data up to 2023, with the increase in coal in 2024 and 2025 based on Wind Financial Terminal data on coal consumption in the chemical industry. Gas use, which is relatively minor, is assumed to have grown on trend and oil is calculated as the residual.
Primary plastics, rubber, and urea output data are from NBS industrial statistics. The production of solvents, lubricants and waxes, as well as the use of bitumen in construction, is from energy statistical yearbooks. The analysis assumes no change in output from 2023 to 2025, given the lack of clear trends.
The post Analysis: China’s new carbon metric leaves Germany-sized gap in its emissions appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: China’s new carbon metric leaves Germany-sized gap in its emissions
At least 67 NHS hospital wards, departments and other sites across the UK have been forced to temporarily close or relocate due to weather-related flooding over the past five years, a Carbon Brief investigation reveals.
Maternity centres, surgical theatres, a neonatal intensive-care unit and even entire hospital buildings have been disrupted by heavy rainfall or encroaching floodwaters.
Carbon Brief submitted freedom-of-information (FOI) requests to 162 NHS trusts, which show that while many flood-related shutdowns were brief, some lasted for weeks or months.
In total, 148 trusts responded to these requests with reports of 67 flood-related shutdowns, giving detailed data for 30 incidents that resulted in a total of 3,000 days of closures.
Reports of flooding at NHS sites have been on the rise, according to NHS England data.
This comes as the UK experiences wetter winters, with periods of extreme rainfall that are increasingly linked to human-caused climate change.
These floods can exacerbate existing problems in a healthcare system that is already struggling with insufficient funding, old hospital buildings and a backlog of maintenance work.
Indeed, while there have been efforts to make UK hospitals more resilient to extreme weather, one expert tells Carbon Brief that such measures are difficult to implement when these institutions are struggling to keep their “heads above water”.
Rising floods
Floods pose a threat to people’s health, but they also threaten the UK’s healthcare infrastructure. Water can enter hospitals, paralyse ambulance services and damage equipment, placing strain on an already stretched NHS.
NHS records show that the number of flood incidents “caused by external weather events” in facilities across England has doubled since 2021, reaching nearly 400 in 2024-25.
Equivalent data is not available for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, although there have been reports of floods disrupting services across the whole UK.
As global temperatures rise and the atmosphere holds more moisture, UK winters are getting wetter. Attribution studies show climate change has increased the severity of recent rainfall and flooding events – including Storm Eunice in 2022 and Storm Babet in 2023.
There is also a risk of increased flooding when heavy rain hits after periods of intense drought, of the kind seen in recent years.
Environment Agency modelling suggests that a rising share of medical facilities in England will be at risk of flooding due to climate change. It says the share of sites at risk will increase from a quarter in 2024 to a third by the middle of the century.
Despite this apparent threat facing the UK’s healthcare system, there is limited information about the extent to which these floods are already disrupting NHS services.
Closed services
To build a fuller picture of NHS-wide flooding, Carbon Brief sent FOI requests to 162 trusts and health boards – the organisations in charge of health services – across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
They were asked for details of wards, departments or services that had been temporarily or permanently closed due to weather-related flooding, such as river floods or heavy rainfall, between 2021-22 and the start of 2026.
In total, 148 of these bodies responded with details of 67 incidents in which weather-related floods have triggered closures. The map below shows where these incidents were located, from hospital wards in Scotland to an eye unit on the south coast of England.
The 67 flooding-related disruptions reported by NHS trusts and health boards is likely an underestimate. Many trusts told Carbon Brief they did not record such detailed information or that collating it would be too time-consuming.
Nevertheless, the results provide an insight into the kind of risks facing NHS services as weather gets more extreme.
Among the closures were 13 accident and emergency (A&E) departments, urgent treatment centres and minor injuries units. There were also 10 hospital wards, 10 surgical theatres, five maternity units and a neonatal intensive-care unit affected by flooding.
Many trusts did not provide information about how long each closure lasted. However, the 30 incidents where timespans were provided add up to the equivalent of more than 3,000 days – or eight years – of closures across NHS sites.
The infographic below provides a snapshot of some notable closures from the dataset.
The entire Buckland Hospital site in Dover closed for two days in 2025 amid “exceptional rainfall” and flash floods. People seeking radiology, maternity and urgent-care services were told not to visit over the weekend and various clinical services were delayed or cancelled.
The NHS declared a “major incident” in 2021 when flood waters “caused power outages impacting multiple areas” at Whipps Cross Hospital in north-east London – including its maternity service – for four days. Neighbouring hospitals also flooded.
Some closures lasted far longer. In Stroud General Hospital, a surgical theatre was closed for two weeks and an X-ray facility for around two months after storm water overflowed into the building in 2023.
Several NHS trusts stressed that the flooding incidents they reported were localised – often resulting from roof leaks exacerbated by heavy rain – and resulted in minimal disruption. Sometimes, as with a cardiology suite in Cannock Chase Hospital, the service was moved and the trust says patient care was not disrupted.
However, the responses also showed the breadth of damage such events can cause, including rainwater “pouring onto expensive equipment” and floods triggering the long-term relocation of services.
For example, Orchard Cottage, a site that provided care for adults with learning disabilities in Derbyshire, experienced major flooding during Storm Babet in 2023 and was permanently shut down as a result.
Adaptation needs
The UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, a group of UK health organisations, concluded in a report in 2025 that, with flood risks projected to grow, there is an “urgent need for adaptation measures” across the nation’s healthcare facilities.
Government advisors at the Climate Change Committee have highlighted the need for flood resilience in UK hospitals, including flood barriers, waterproofed electricals and built-in redundancy for critical areas, such as theatres, labs and IT equipment.
There have been various measures at both government and NHS level intended to improve the resilience of medical facilities to climate-related hazards.
The UK’s national adaptation programme sets out expectations for NHS England to “adapt NHS infrastructure to extreme weather events”. All trusts must have “green plans” in place, which require climate change to be factored into infrastructure decisions, for example, through the creation of drainage systems or green spaces.
Yet, as it stands, three-quarters of UK doctors say their workplaces are not prepared for the impact of extreme weather and nearly half of healthcare workers report that extreme weather has disrupted NHS services in the past five years.
Many hospitals have outdated infrastructure – often predating the founding of the NHS – which was not designed to cope with climate change. Prof Hugh Montgomery, chair of intensive-care medicine at University College London, tells Carbon Brief:
“The hospitals themselves weren’t built for this weather any more than anything else is really – and of course it’s going to get worse, in an exponential function.”
Many of the FOI responses provided to Carbon Brief identified specific building defects, such as roof leaks, which led to the flooding incidents during periods of heavy rainfall. There is a huge – and growing – backlog of maintenance work at NHS hospitals that was estimated in 2024-25 to need repairs costing £15.9bn.
Chris Naylor, a senior fellow at the King’s Fund, a thinktank focusing on health policy, tells Carbon Brief:
“Dealing with some of the backlog maintenance would probably help with climate adaptation as well, because of leaky roofs and all the rest of it. But we do also need to be thinking specifically about climate adaptation within the NHS and making sure there is funding for that.”
Montgomery points out that with trusts “mostly bankrupt” and most hospitals running a deficit, the question remains how to fund such interventions. “They’re struggling to keep their heads above water and they’re losing money,” he says.
Dr Mark Harber, a consultant nephrologist and special adviser on climate change at the Royal College of Physicians, tells Carbon Brief that hospitals at least need to make plans for extreme weather. This is particularly important for patients in need of time-dependent and life-saving treatments, such as kidney dialysis and chemotherapy.
Harber notes that hospitals, supply chains and transport could all be disrupted by floods:
“You have to have plans in place to deal with that, even if the NHS can’t deal with the flooding risk per se.”
Carbon Brief asked NHS England – which is responsible for the majority of the trusts that reported flooding disruption – for comment, but had not received a response at the time of publication.
Methodology
The list of incidents reported by trusts can be viewed here.
Carbon Brief sent FOI requests to 120 English NHS trusts that have reported any incidents of flooding since 2021 in NHS England’s Estates Returns Information Collection (ERIC) dataset. This covers around 60% of all English NHS trusts.
Carbon Brief also filed FOI requests with all 42 of the health boards and trusts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which are equivalent to English NHS trusts.
All trusts and health boards were asked for details of wards, departments or services that have been temporarily or permanently closed due to weather-related flooding, such as river flooding or heavy rainfall.
This matches the wording used to describe a flooding event in the ERIC system, which requires the reporting of all flood events “caused by external weather events” that trigger a risk assessment by staff. Such external events are distinct from floods caused by other issues that are not related to the weather, such as burst pipes.
In total, 14 trusts did not respond and many more said they did not hold the data requested. Some trusts provided data, but on further questioning stated that the data they provided covered all flooding events and it was not possible to say which were related to weather conditions. These cases have not been included in the final dataset.
The post Revealed: Floods have forced at least 67 closures at NHS hospitals since 2021 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revealed: Floods have forced at least 67 closures at NHS hospitals since 2021
Adeline Rochet is a programme manager for the Corporate Leaders Group Europe, a business coalition driving the transition to a sustainable, competitive, and resilient economy convened by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL).
Europe’s economy depends on the natural world functioning as it should, but the effects of climate change risk undermining increasingly delicate ecosystems. Talks about the European Union’s next long-term budget miss this fact.
Climate-related losses in the EU have already reached €822 billion since 1980, with a quarter of that damage concentrated in just the past four years. Ecosystems are under increasing pressure: more than 80% of protected habitats are in poor condition, soils are degrading and water stress is rising across the continent.
The latest state of the climate report by the EU’s Earth monitoring service Copernicus confirms this worrying state of affairs: 95% of Europe experienced above-average temperatures in 2025.
Economic exposure to nature-related risk is also growing. Businesses, banks and insurers are beginning to reflect this in their risk assessments.
So, will the policymakers in charge of developing the European Union’s next big budget integrate this vision? We are in the midst of finding out.
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Every seven years, the EU must negotiate a new budget that will help fund priorities over a seven-year-long period. The current one, which runs out next year, is worth more than a trillion euros.
Talks about the next multiannual financial framework (MFF) for 2028-2034 are now getting serious and the initial outline of this new budget shows it will focus on competitiveness, resilience and prosperity.
But, as the European Parliament adopted its negotiating position for the crunch budget talks and EU member states shape their approach ahead of a Council meeting on May 26, it is clear that the positioning of nature within this framework is strategically underestimated.
Why nature impacts economic growth
Back in 2022, France’s nuclear power output was severely affected when heatwaves drove up the temperature of the rivers used to cool atomic reactors, impacting other European countries too. This was particularly poor timing given the energy price crisis triggered earlier that year by Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
Low river levels caused by drought have also heavily impacted economic activity and growth in countries like Germany, due to the negative effect on inland trade, while degraded fields in the Netherlands combined with heavy rainfall have ruined potato harvests.
These examples show that we cannot detach the health of the European economy from the good functioning of nature.
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Nearly three-quarters of businesses in the eurozone rely directly on ecosystem services such as clean water, fertile soils and pollination. That dependency extends into the financial system, where around 75% of bank lending is exposed to companies dependent on these natural assets.
They entirely underpin supply chains and financial stability across the European economy. If load-bearing ecosystems collapse, businesses not only face disruption in their own operations, but they will also be exposed to failures from suppliers and customers.
This is not just a risk for individual companies, it is a threat for the whole system.
A budget that looks greener than it is
According to the latest proposals for the next MFF, a single 35% climate and environmental target will replace priorities that used to have distinct funding. As it stands, biodiversity has a 10% target, yet spending has struggled to reach even 8%, already showing how easily it is put to one side in practice.
In the new framework, biodiversity is absorbed into a broader category with no separate tracking or visibility. Dedicated instruments are folded into larger funding envelopes, and nature-based investments are placed in direct and distorted competition with industrial projects.
These are often faster to deploy and easier to measure, making them more attractive.
Headline figures reinforce some appearance of ambition, with €587–635 billion allocated to climate and environmental objectives. But since these are aggregated numbers, they do not show how much will reach ecosystem conservation or restoration.
Less visibility, weaker accountability
Biodiversity funding also remains structurally fragile, with around 80% concentrated in agriculture policy rather than supported by a diversified investment strategy.
This shift is structural: nature has been relegated from a defined priority to a mere discretionary allocation, and the governance model reinforces this dynamic.
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Greater reliance on National and Regional Partnership Plans (NRPPs) moves decision-making into national spending choices, where fiscal and domestic political pressure will likely mean long-term ecosystem investments struggle to compete with short-term economic demands.
The current MFF paints a worrying picture of structural triple risk for nature: reduced visibility, increased competition for funding and weaker accountability.
Nature is critical infrastructure
It is a point worth reiterating: investment in nature offers clear economic returns. Healthy ecosystems drive resilience by reducing exposure to climate damage and supporting local economic activity.
Public finance plays a decisive role in enabling these investments at scale, making budget design a question of risk management and capital allocation.
Nature-based solutions already perform essential economic functions. They regulate water systems, restore carbon sinks, provide a buffer against extreme weather events and support agricultural productivity.
These are characteristics of infrastructure. Energy systems, transport networks and digital capacity are treated as strategic investments because they underpin competitiveness.
Natural systems play the exact same role, so why does the current budget plan not reflect this?
The next EU budget will shape investment for the decade ahead. Its structure will determine how risks are managed and where capital flows. Nature cannot be erased in favour of competing short-term priorities.
In the upcoming negotiations, European leaders still have the option to treat nature as a structural objective and a core asset, supporting Europe’s resilience and long-term competitiveness. But they must act now, before it’s too late.
The post Nature cannot be ignored by Europe’s next big budget appeared first on Climate Home News.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/05/25/nature-cannot-be-ignored-by-europes-next-big-budget/
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