The UK is roughly halving the climate aid it allocates to developing countries, when accounting changes and inflation are factored in, according to new analysis by Carbon Brief.
On 19 March, the government announced that the UK would provide “around £6bn” of international “climate finance” over the next three years.
This replaces a previous goal to provide £11.6bn across the 2021-2026 period to help nations in the global south cut their emissions and deal with climate threats.
The new target was reported as a spending reduction of up to 14% compared to recent years, reflecting the UK’s wider plan to cut development aid and spend more on defence.
In fact, Carbon Brief analysis reveals that the cut is far larger in real terms, with the new target worth around 30% less per year once inflation is taken into account.
When also excluding the government’s use of widely criticised “creative accounting” to boost apparent spending, the new pledge is roughly 50% lower than the old one.
The drop in climate finance means that – alongside other major donors – the UK is diverging from an international target, agreed in 2024 at COP29 in Baku, to ramp up climate aid to $300bn a year by 2035.
‘Innovative reforms’
Under the Paris Agreement, the UK and other developed countries committed to provide financial support for climate action in developing countries. This “climate finance” comes from the UK’s wider budget for “official development assistance”.
Successive governments have pledged set amounts of climate finance over five-year periods, supporting everything from solar energy in Nigeria to mangroves in Indonesia.
In 2019, the Conservative government promised to “double” the previous target of £5.8bn for the financial years 2016-17 to 2020-21 and reach a total of £11.6bn between 2021-22 and 2025-26.
The current Labour government inherited this goal in 2024, at a time of geopolitical instability, conflict and threats to global climate action.
Alongside other developed countries, the UK then pledged at the COP29 climate summit in2024 to roughly triple the total amount of global climate finance to $300bn a year by 2035.
With its £11.6bn target expiring in April 2026, the government has been under pressure to set a new goal that would increase climate finance in line with this global ambition.
Instead, since COP29, the UK has announced it will cut overall aid spending to 0.3% of gross national income, compared to the historic 0.7%, to raise money for military spending.
This continues a trend of aid cuts started by the former Conservative government and mirrors similar cuts taking place in other countries. Most notably, the US has virtually eliminated its contribution to international climate finance.
In March, foreign secretary Yvette Cooper finally announced details of how the UK’s headline cuts in overseas aid would impact specific spending priorities between 2026-27 and 2028-29, including climate finance. She said:
“Over the next three years, the UK will spend around £6bn of official development assistance as international climate finance. We will balance support between mitigation and adaptation and maintain a focus on nature.”
This amounts to a clear cut in annual climate-finance spending, even without considering the impact of inflation or accounting changes, as the chart below shows.
Despite Cooper’s pledge to “maintain a focus on nature”, the government also scrapped the “ring-fencing” of funds for nature and forest conservation, as well as the practice of setting five-year goals to provide more certainty to climate-aid recipients.
(The relatively vague “around” £6bn is also notable, given the previous targets were set at precisely £11.6bn and £5.8bn. This could allow the government to ultimately spend less than £6bn.)
The government is also clear that it is shifting its focus to using public development aid to “unlock private investment for development”, framing its overall approach as “innovative development reforms”. Cooper stated that, as well as the £6bn in climate finance:
“We will aim to generate an additional £6.7bn of UK-backed climate and nature positive investments and to mobilise billions more in private finance.”
Cooper described “climate and nature” as two of the government’s four “priority” themes for its dwindling aid spending.
Nevertheless, the international development committee of MPs expressed “deep concern” about the new climate pledge and NGOs called it a “backward step”.
Accounting changes
Media coverage of Cooper’s announcement stated that the new climate-finance target was 13-14% lower than the previous one.
This is based on the difference between average annual contributions out to 2029 under the new pledge – around £2bn – and the £2.3bn average from the previous period.
However, Carbon Brief analysis suggests that this straightforward approach makes the target seem more ambitious than it actually is.
When the £11.6bn target was set in 2019, only specific, climate-related projects funded directly by the UK government counted towards it. Then, in 2023, the Conservative government decided to loosen the criteria for the funds it counted towards the target.
This included relabelling existing support for multilateral development banks (MDBs), humanitarian aid and more private-sector investments as “climate finance”.
This approach – which mirrors that of other climate-finance donors – means the government is now on track to hit the £11.6bn target. (For more details, see Carbon Brief’s previous coverage.)
NGOs criticised this “creative accounting” at the time. Similarly, the UK’s official aid watchdog described the changes as “moving the goalposts”, as they meant the government could meet its target without providing as much new money. Nevertheless, the current Labour government has retained the changes.
The government released a list of specific aid allocations alongside Cooper’s recent announcement, which includes how much it plans to give to MDBs, as well as the UK-owned development body, British International Investment (BII).
Most of this money would not have been counted as climate finance under the old accounting system. Under the new system, a large portion of it will be.
Carbon Brief estimates that £1.7bn of new climate finance over the next three years – roughly 28% of the total – would not have counted as climate finance before the government’s accounting changes.
As the chart above shows, much of the money reclassified as climate aid will derive from automatically counting a fixed share of UK funding for MDBs as “climate-relevant”.
MDBs, including the World Bank and the African Development Bank, are major contributors to global climate finance. Member states, such as the UK, pay money into these banks, which then use their financial resources to support development projects.
Notably, while virtually all of the UK’s traditional climate finance has been provided as grants to developing countries, MDBs provide most of their support as loans. The prevalence of loans in global climate finance is a long-standing point of contention for developing countries.
Including inflation
The second key factor that influences the comparison between the UK’s old and new climate-finance targets is inflation. Experts have highlighted the importance of correcting for inflation when considering long-term finance targets.
This issue is particularly important now, as in recent years there has been significant inflation in the UK and around the world. This means the finance that the UK committed to give back in 2019 would not go as far today as it did then.
Adjusting for this inflation, Carbon Brief estimates that the £11.6bn target would equate to £14.3bn today, using 2021-22 – the start of the £11.6bn target – as the base year.
This means the government would have to pledge £14.3bn over five years – or £2.86bn a year – just to match the spending power of its previous goal. This new goal of £2bn a year is effectively a 30% real-terms cut in annual climate finance from the UK.
As the chart below shows, the previous climate target from five years ago is roughly twice as large per year as the new 2026 target, after correcting for inflation and once accounting changes have been removed.
Of course, ultimately, the government relied on accounting changes to meet the previous £11.6bn target as well.
Nevertheless, this comparison shows the significant backsliding in ambition, from 2021 when the plan was an £11.6bn goal, relying on a narrow range of sources – to a 2026 target that is lower in real terms, while drawing from a wider range of sources.
Global cuts
In 2024, developed countries such as the UK collectively agreed to raise their global climate-finance contributions to $300bn a year by 2035, as part of their Paris Agreement obligations.
This international target replaced the previous goal of $100bn per year by 2020, which was belatedly met in 2022.
While the new target will include large contributions from the private sector and MDBs, there is an expectation that a significant portion of it will still come directly from developed countries.
In this context, it is clear that the trajectory of UK climate finance is going in the wrong direction – falling, rather than increasing
The UK is certainly not alone in this regard. Speaking in parliament, Cooper told MPs that “allies such as Germany, France and Sweden have made similar choices” to cut aid in order to fund military spending.
Very few developed countries – and none of the biggest donors – have officially announced new or updated climate-finance targets for the coming years.
However, analysis by aid organisation CARE International last year concluded that other major climate-finance donors, including Germany and France, will also see their climate finance fall over the coming year, following cuts to their aid budgets.
The most significant drop has come from the US, which has effectively cut its international climate finance from several billion dollars a year to zero, under the Trump administration.
In addition to cutting its overall contribution, the UK is signalling that it will focus less on grant-based climate finance from government spending and more on “unlocking” billions of pounds in private-sector finance for climate action, as well as on “reform of the international development system”.
Such approaches may end up playing a major role in nations hitting the $300bn target by 2035.
However, this is highly contentious, with many developing countries arguing at UN negotiations that developed countries are reneging on their responsibilities to directly “provide” climate finance.
Methodology
The UK has announced that it will spend “around £6bn” on international climate finance between 2026-27 and 2028-29. Alongside this announcement, it released a list of “official development assistance (ODA) programme allocations 2026-27-2028-29”. These include details of “planned multilateral ODA programming” – covering MDBs – and spending on “arm’s-length bodies, private sector investments, subscriptions”, including BII.
Carbon Brief calculated the climate-related shares of core MDB finance – which the UK now counts as climate finance – using the climate shares for each MDB identified by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2023. These estimates may be conservative, as MDBs have committed to increasing the shares of their projects that are climate-related.
Carbon Brief calculated the extra BII contributions that the UK will count as climate finance by assuming, based on the most recent BII annual accounts, that 41% of its commitments each year will be climate-related. Previously, only 30% of BII contributions were counted as climate finance, so Carbon Brief assumed the difference between these shares would be additional.
The government has also said it now automatically counts 30% of all humanitarian assistance provided to the 10% most climate-vulnerable countries as climate finance. Based on figures provided to Carbon Brief via freedom of information request, this amounts to roughly 10% of all humanitarian assistance in recent years. The government has said it will “spend approximately £1.4bn each year in the places with the highest humanitarian need over the next three years”. Carbon Brief assumed that 10% of this – £140m each year – would count as climate finance.
To calculate the impact of inflation on the £11.6bn target, Carbon Brief used the UK Treasury’s GDP deflator, with 2021-22 as the baseline year.
The figures in this analysis are estimates based on the data released by the government so far. Climate-finance data is subject to various accounting changes and the final figures – when they are released – are likely to be different.
The post Analysis: UK is ‘halving’ its climate finance for developing countries appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: UK is ‘halving’ its climate finance for developing countries
Four Ugandan farmers filed a case with London’s High Court on Tuesday, aiming to stop the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) from starting to operate by asking the court to apply Uganda’s laws against the project’s UK-registered company.
The controversial 1,443-kilometre (897-mile) pipeline, majority-owned by French energy company TotalEnergies, aims to carry crude from Ugandan fields for export through neighbouring Tanzania. About 80% has been built so far, according to its developers.
The pipeline’s first oil exports are expected as soon as October, according to its developers, and the campaign group Avaaz, which is backing the farmers’ crowdfunded lawsuit, called it “one final chance to stop one of the worst oil pipelines on the planet”.
The claim, filed by London law firm Leigh Day, argues that EACOP Ltd’s role in developing and operating the pipeline breaches Ugandan laws that protect citizens’ right to a clean and healthy environment.
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Ugandan farmers use British court to try to stop East Africa oil pipeline
The farmers and their lawyers will argue that a UK-based entity linked to the East African Crude Oil Pipeline has breached Ugandan law and construction should halt -
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Oil and gas giant TotalEnergies has been given six months by a court to publish a more robust climate plan -
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One of the claimants, Racheal Tugume, told a press conference she had been displaced from her land due to the pipeline’s construction, which she said had damaged local rivers, wildlife and ecosystems that communities depend on for their livelihoods just as erratic weather linked to climate change takes an increasing toll.
“I am very happy that there are people in countries like the UK who are listening to us, who are behind us and who have come to support us,” Tugume said, adding that she hoped the case would bring justice to communities affected by the pipeline.
Ugandan law in UK court
While the pipeline is a joint venture led by TotalEnergies, with smaller stakes owned by Ugandan, Tanzanian and Chinese national oil firms, it is operated by EACOP Ltd, a company registered to an office in London’s Canary Wharf financial district.
EACOP Ltd did not respond to a request for comment.
The claim appears to be the first attempt to have Uganda’s climate and environmental protections enforced in a foreign court, partly reflecting concerns over whether cases challenging the multibillion-dollar pipeline would get a fair trial in Uganda.
Ugandans living near new oil pipeline let down by compensation programmes
Concerns about access to a fair hearing are among the issues the court will consider when deciding if it should take on the case, said Matthew Renshaw, partner at Leigh Day.
Renshaw said that precedents including the Nigerian oil pollution case against Shell have shown that claims against British-registered companies for harms overseas can be successfully fought in UK courts.
“We are proud to represent the four brave principled individuals,” Renshaw said.
Constitutional protections
The pipeline project has already been subject to repeated lawsuits in several countries, none of which have succeeded. A climate lawsuit filed in Uganda more than a decade ago by a group of young people has yet to conclude. Another at the East African Court of Justice, brought by campaign groups against Uganda and Tanzania, was rejected on procedural grounds last November.
A separate ongoing lawsuit in TotalEnergies’ home country of France – a refiled version of an earlier failed claim – cannot stop EACOP going ahead, but it does seek damages from TotalEnergies for affected communities.
With the newly launched case, Leigh Day’s legal adviser Marc Willers said the claim draws on specific Ugandan laws in a bid to stop EACOP’s operations.
Uganda may see lower oil revenues than expected as costs rise and demand falls
These include the Ugandan constitution, a 2019 environmental law and the National Climate Change Act 2021, which gives Ugandans the right to bring a case before a court in circumstances where anyone or any entity threatens the country’s ability to mitigate climate change.
Stopping a “carbon bomb”
The pipeline, which will link Uganda’s Lake Albert oil fields to Africa’s east coast in Tanzania, has already displaced thousands of people and cuts through the Lake Victoria basin, one of East Africa’s major freshwater systems and a critical water source for around 40 million people.
According to the BankTrack non-profit, when the pipeline is at peak production, it will carry 216,000 barrels of crude oil per day and release over 33 million tonnes of carbon emissions each year. Over its full lifetime of 25 years, it is estimated to release about 379 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions across its value chain including construction, refining and product use.
A May 2026 report from Earth Insight also warns that the pipeline and related infrastructure could affect 158 wetlands in Uganda, 11 rivers, 44 protected areas and seven key biodiversity areas while disrupting about 2,000 square km of protected wildlife habitats.
This is why the primary focus of the UK court case is to stop the operation of the pipeline in its tracks, Leigh Day’s Willers said, calling it a “carbon bomb” that would worsen the world’s climate crisis.
Long wait for first hearing
While the purpose of the case is to stop the pipeline from launching operations, Renshaw said it could take about 12 months before the case gets a first hearing and about 18 months before it goes to trial.
Billions unlocked as Green Climate Fund agrees to spend more and save less
The farmers are, however, seeking an injunction to stop EACOP Ltd from proceeding with operations. In the event that shipments begin, the lawsuit will still seek to stop the pipeline from then on, Renshaw said.
“We will be doing what we can to expedite matters but it is possible that EACOP will have started operating the pipeline before the claim is heard. If that is the case, the claim would intend to halt operations from that point. For example, the pipeline may operate for just one year rather than 30-plus, resulting in far less harm,” he said.
The post Ugandan farmers launch UK court case against East African oil pipeline appeared first on Climate Home News.
Ugandan farmers launch UK court case against East African oil pipeline
Climate Change
Cited 7 July 2026: ‘Impossible’ heat | Global ocean record | Climate change and the ozone hole
Welcome to Cited, your essential guide to new climate research.
In the news
‘HEAT ALERT’: At least 25 people died as a “heat dome” smothered the eastern half of the US, reported the Guardian, with more than 20 states under “stifling temperatures more than 100F (38C)”. More than 140 million people were under heat alerts, the outlet said, with dead bodies found in “homes with no air conditioning, outside their residences, on the street and in parked cars”. Analysis by World Weather Attribution (WWA) found that the combined heat and humidity would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused warming, reported the New York Times.
‘MORTALITY WILL RISE FURTHER’: Meanwhile, extreme heat continued to hit Europe, with Le Monde reporting on temperatures of 40C in France, Portugal and Spain again this past weekend, alongside “devastating” wildfires. Public Health France doubled its preliminary estimate of the “excess deaths” from the extreme heat in late June, from 1,000 to more than 2,000, according to the Guardian. The higher figure was still “probably an underestimate”, the agency said. Analysis published by Carbon Brief put the figure at 2,700 heat-related deaths. A WWA attribution study, covered by Carbon Brief, found that Europe’s June heatwave would have been “virtually impossible” even 50 years ago.
‘BOOST TO GLOBAL TEMPERATURES’: The UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) “raised its forecast for the rapid emergence of a strong El Niño in the coming months, warning that the phenomenon is likely to drive global temperatures higher”, reported Reuters. A WMO scientist told the newswire that “El Niño conditions have emerged in the equatorial Pacific and there is a remarkable agreement between forecast models that this will be a strong El Niño”.
Research picks
Extremes
- The annual season when “intense” tropical cyclones occur has lengthened by 10-14 days per decade across the world since the 1980s | Nature Communications
- There is an “increasing” and “overlooked” global threat from glacial outburst floods from small lakes | Nature Sustainability
- Female smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa experience crops losses 2-2.5 times greater than male smallholders in periods of extreme heat | Nature Sustainability
Policy
- The summaries for policymakers in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) mitigation reports over 2001-22 “have not yet become more solution-oriented while abiding by their policy-neutrality principle” | npj Climate Action
- Two-thirds of countries address inequality in their national pledges under the Paris Agreement – particularly in “countries with lower levels of human development and greater income inequality” | Climate and Development
- To “future proof” the Paris Agreement’s “well-below 2C” limit, it should be interpreted as a median “peak warming” of 1.6-1.8C, rather than a 66-90% chance of staying below 2C | Nature Climate Change
Land sink
- From 2001 to 2015, northern Eurasia absorbed about 0.47bn tonnes of carbon each year – around one-third of the total global land carbon sink | Global Biogeochemical Cycles
- Model simulations of potential land-use carbon emissions out to 2100 show that “deforestation and forest regrowth dominate variability” of emissions, with policy timing and ambition “exerting strong control” | Nature Communications
- Tropical forests are facing an increase in areas that exceed critical temperatures where their “photosynthetic system breaks down” | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Captured
On 21 June, global average sea surface temperature (SST) reached a record high for the day of the year, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). Daily SST for the global ocean, excluding polar regions, reached 20.86C on 21 June, exceeding the 20.83C reached on the same day in both 2023 and 2024, the C3S said. Global SST has remained at record levels for every day since. The conditions “could indicate the beginning of a new phase, leading, once more, to uncharted territory”, said C3S director Carlo Buontempo.
56 hours and 30 hours
The amount of time that the average lifespan of tropical cyclones in the north-east and north-west Pacific has shortened, respectively, over 1982-2024, according to a study in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science. This shorter lifespan “compresses the time available for weather forecasting and disaster preparedness”, the authors said.
Spotlight
The ozone hole and climate change
As a new “thought experiment” asks whether the hole in the ozone layer could, theoretically, have been identified decades before it was discovered, Carbon Brief explores the interactions between climate change and the ozone hole.
It is now more than 40 years since the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica, detailed in the journal Nature in 1985.
A study more than a decade earlier had predicted that chlorine-based substances – such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) – could lead to the destruction of ozone in the stratosphere.
So, in theory, how early could the ozone hole have been detected?
New research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explored this very question.
Study co-author Prof Susan Solomon from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a leading atmospheric scientist. In the late 1980s, Solomon and colleagues identified the mechanism behind how CFCs were causing ozone depletion.
The new study is a “thought experiment”, Solomon told Carbon Brief, asking when scientists could have discovered the ozone hole had they had access to modern satellite observations.
“We found that depletion could have been detected as early as 1957 in the tropical upper stratosphere, where natural variability is especially small,” explained Solomon.
This would have been before the use of CFCs became widespread, Solomon added. Instead, early ozone depletion was caused by carbon tetrachloride, a chemical used as a cleaning agent, as well as in fire extinguishers and for producing refrigerants.
For many decades, the ozone hole and global warming have often been confused by the public and the media, Solomon explained:
“It’s common to imagine that because ozone is so important at shielding us from the UV [ultraviolet] light that causes skin cancer, then having less ozone must mean the Earth would warm up.”
For example, in a 1995 editorial, the Los Angeles Times congratulated the Nobel prize-winning chemists who identified the threat of CFCs to the ozone layer. The newspaper noted that these processes “threaten calamitous global warming by damaging the Earth’s protective layer of ozone”.
However, said Solomon, “the Earth is warmed much more by visible light – UV doesn’t really contribute, so ozone depletion doesn’t cause significant warming”.
Regional impacts
The depletion of ozone actually has a very small cooling effect at the Earth’s surface. But this is more than outweighed by the warming impact of CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances.
This warming impact means that efforts to reverse ozone depletion have had a beneficial impact on the climate.
The Montreal Protocol, a 1987 international agreement to phase out CFCs, “has played – and is playing – a very substantial role in safeguarding climate too”, said Solomon:
“It turns out that the CFCs and their replacement gases HCFCs [hydrochlorofluorocarbons] are strong greenhouse gases, so phasing out their production has not only avoided a lot of ozone depletion that would otherwise have occurred, it also had a big influence on global warming.”
HCFCs were considered as “transitional substitutes” for CFCs – they still damaged ozone, but to a lesser extent – until ozone-safe alternatives were commercially available.
Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are not ozone depleting, began to be used widely in the 1990s. However, HFCs are also potent greenhouse gases. HFCs and similar replacements are now being phased out under the 2016 Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol.
While the ozone hole itself has only a very small impact on global temperatures, it does have a clear impact on the regional climate over Antarctica.
Prof David Thompson from Colorado State University, working with colleagues including Solomon, has published research demonstrating that “changes in southern-hemisphere winds linked to the stratospheric ozone losses extend all the way down to the ground in some seasons”, explained Solomon.
This has “reduc[ed] warming that would have occurred in interior Antarctica and enhanc[ed] warming in the Antarctic Peninsula region”, she said.
The knock-on impacts include “wind changes [that] actually extend beyond Antarctica to the mid-latitudes of the southern hemisphere, where they even affect rainfall”, she added.
Preprints to watch
Carbon Brief’s pick of new papers under review
- The drying impact over Africa from using stratospheric aerosol injections to stabilise global temperatures would only be minimised “when combined with a strong decarbonisation effort” | Earth System Dynamics
- The El Niño-Southern Oscillation and Indian Ocean Dipole could “shape” the playing conditions at the Rugby World Cup 2027 in Australia | Journal of Southern Hemisphere Earth Systems Science
- A “strong” weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) would “profoundly alter the climate-carbon cycle system”, underscoring the “importance of explicitly accounting for AMOC risks in long-term climate assessments” | Earth System Dynamics
Noticeboard
- 6 July-25 September: Registration open for experts to review the first-order draft of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group I report
- 7-15 July: UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, New York
- 19 July: Application deadline for a postdoctoral scholar in transdisciplinary climate research at Penn State University, US | Salary: unknown
- 22 July: Application deadline for PhD project on “climate change impacts on the Antarctic coastal ocean carbon sink” at the University of East Anglia, UK
- 26 July: Application deadline for PhD projects on “AI for land-atmosphere feedbacks during hydroclimatic extremes” at the Helmholtz School for Integrated Data Science in Environmental & Life Sciences, Germany
- 29 July: Application deadline for an assistant professor in Earth and environmental geosciences (palaeoclimatology) at Colgate University, US | Salary: $97,500-101,500
- 31 July: Application deadline for PhD project on Arctic Ocean methane oxidation at Stockholm University, Sweden
Cited is researched and written by Cecilia Keating, Robert McSweeney, Ayesha Tandon, Daisy Dunne and Dr Giuliana Viglione.
Please send tips, feedback and upcoming climate research to cited@carbonbrief.org
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cited email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post Cited 7 July 2026: ‘Impossible’ heat | Global ocean record | Climate change and the ozone hole appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cited 7 July 2026: ‘Impossible’ heat | Global ocean record | Climate change and the ozone hole
In June 2026, a record-breaking heatwave swept across Europe, with France among the first and hardest hit countries.
In a new analysis, we estimate that the extreme conditions caused more than 2,700 heat-related deaths in France.
We also show how France’s extreme temperatures in June exceeded projections from climate models.
Our findings illustrate the human toll of extreme weather as the world warms.
We also highlight the challenges in projecting the magnitude of future heatwaves and their impacts on people.
Outpacing projections
For most of this century, Europe has seen summer heat extremes that outpace projections from climate models.
Several different factors likely explain this trend, including reductions in planet-cooling aerosols as nations have cleaned up their air pollution, as well as changes in atmospheric circulation patterns, which models struggle to represent.
In June 2026, daily high temperatures averaged across France reached 36.9C, shattering the previous June record set in 2022 by 2.4C.
[For more on the impacts and coverage of Europe’s June heatwave, see Carbon Brief’s explainer.]
The rise in observed temperatures in France has outpaced projections made by climate models, with June maximum temperatures more in line with what was expected for the 2070s.
This is illustrated in the figure below, which shows how France’s average maximum daily high temperature for June recorded in 2026 (black line) compares to climate model projections (blue and orange lines).
Counting the death toll of climate change
The downstream impacts of these extreme temperatures are lethal.
Scientists are able to estimate the death toll of high temperatures in many locations, depending on the availability of mortality and climate data.
There are several ways to do this.
One option is to examine death certificates to see which deaths have been directly recorded by physicians as related to heat. However, there is strong evidence that this method significantly undercounts heat-related deaths, as most death certificates do not consider environmental factors such as heat when diagnosing the cause of death.
Alternatively, it is possible to calculate the rate of total (“all-cause”) mortality in a given time period relative to previous time periods – for example, by comparing the total number of deaths in June 2026 compared to the average of previous Junes. This “excess deaths” figure can be used as an estimate of the deaths from a heat wave.
Using this approach, Public Health France attributed around 2,000 deaths in France to the extreme heat in the week of 22-28 June.
Finally, scientists can use long-term data on overall mortality and correlate changes in mortality with changes in temperature to understand the statistical relationship between the two.
Research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2025 that used this third approach found that mortality rates in France increase rapidly in cold or hot conditions as daily maximum temperatures depart further from approximately 20C.
This pattern of a U-shaped response of mortality to temperature – shown in the figure below – is very consistent across time periods and regions around the world.
To calculate the death toll of the June 2026 heatwave in France, we compared observed temperatures over 12-29 June to their baseline average over 1980-2025.
The difference between these two temperatures helps us understand how many more people died than they would have in the absence of such extreme conditions.
Over 12-29 June, we found that France has experienced around 2,700 heat-related deaths above the average baseline. Day-to-day heat-related mortality rates rose from less than 100 to almost 300 on the hottest days of 24 and 25 June.
This is shown in the graph below, which illustrates the cumulative total heat-related deaths seen in France over the two-and-a-half week period. The inset shows how heat-related deaths fluctuated on a day-to-day basis during this time.
Recent analysis by World Weather Attribution has already shown that human-caused climate change increased the frequency and intensity of the June heat wave across Europe.
Meanwhile, previous research has shown there is substantial evidence that heat-related mortality in Europe has already been elevated by greenhouse gas emissions.
As a result, we can be confident that at least some of the more than 2,700 deaths already seen in France are directly due to the burning of fossil fuels.
Calculating climate risk
In April, the UN-led body responsible for coordinating the work of climate modelling centres – the Coupled Modelling Intercomparison Project (CMIP) – unveiled a set of seven new emissions scenarios.
These are designed to replace the previous scenarios that have been used by scientists to understand how the climate might change in the future. They will feed into the upcoming seven assessment report (AR7) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The range of future emissions in the new CMIP scenarios is smaller, with scenarios of very high or very low emissions no longer on the table.
The retirement of the very-high emissions scenario – known as “RCP8.5” – led to certain commentators in the media and in politics, including US president Donald Trump, arguing that the risks of climate change had been “overstated”.
[For more on false and misleading claims around the new emissions scenarios, see Carbon Brief’s factcheck.]
Our analysis of June’s heat-related deaths in France suggests that, even if the most severe emissions pathways are no longer needed, climate impacts are taking a heavy toll on society.
Moreover, the temperatures seen in France show that climate models continue to underpredict the magnitude of heatwaves for a particular level of global warming.
This is because greenhouse gas emissions are only a first step in estimating the impacts of climate change.
The second step is converting emissions to changes in the climate at both the global and local levels – or hazards. This includes heatwaves, flash floods and droughts.
The third step is to determine how changes in the hazards will affect local populations. This can be determined by calculating people’s exposure and vulnerability to hazards.
Substantial uncertainty persists at every stage of this sequence.
For example, scientists do not know exactly how the global climate will react to ever-rising greenhouse gas emissions – nor the extent to which global temperature increases will drive local climate hazards. We also do not know how climate change at a local level impacts human health outcomes.
Managing the future of heat risk
Almost all heat-related deaths are preventable.
Adaptation options, such as air conditioning, heat action plans and social support for isolated people, will be crucial as the climate moves away from the typical conditions that people are used to.
Our previous research showed that France made a lot of progress reducing heat-related mortality after the deadly 2003 summer heatwave by taking many of these actions.
Adaptation can reduce deaths, but it cannot eliminate the risk created by continued warming.
Without a move away from fossil fuels, future heatwaves will keep testing the limits of public health systems and more people will die.
The post Guest post: France’s June heatwave caused more than 2,700 heat-related deaths appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: France’s June heatwave caused more than 2,700 heat-related deaths
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