The past three years have been exceptionally warm globally.
In 2023, global temperatures reached a new high, after they significantly exceeded expectations.
This record was surpassed in 2024 – the first year where average global temperatures were 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Now, 2025 is on track to be the second- or third-warmest year on record.
What has caused this apparent acceleration in warming has been subject to a lot of attention in both the media and the scientific community.
Dozens of papers have been published investigating the different factors that could have contributed to these record temperatures.
In 2024, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) discussed potential drivers for the warmth in a special section of its “state of the global climate” report, while the American Geophysical Union ran a session on the topic at its annual meeting.
In this article, Carbon Brief explores four different factors that have been proposed for the exceptional warmth seen in recent years. These are:
- A strong El Niño event that developed in the latter part of 2023.
- Rapid declines in sulphur dioxide emissions – particularly from international shipping and China.
- An unusual volcanic eruption in Tonga in 2022.
- A stronger-than-expected solar cycle.
Carbon Brief’s analysis finds that a combination of these factors explains most of the unusual warmth observed in 2024 and half of the difference between observed and expected warming in 2023.
However, natural fluctuations in the Earth’s climate may have also played a role in the exceptional temperatures, alongside signs of declining cloud cover that may have implications for the sensitivity of the climate to human-caused emissions.
An unusually warm three years
Between 1970 and 2014, average surface temperatures rose at a fairly steady rate of around 0.18C per decade.
Set against this long-term trend, temperature increases during the period from 2015 to 2022 were on the upper end of what would be expected.
The increases seen in 2023, 2024 and 2025 were well outside of that range.
The high temperatures of the past three years reflect a broader acceleration in the rate of warming over the past decade.
However, the past three years were unusually warm, even when compared to other years in the 2010s and 2020s.
Record-breaking warmth in 2023 meant that it beat the prior warmest year of 2016 by 0.17C – the largest magnitude of a new record in the past 140 years.
The year 2024 then swiftly broke 2023’s record, becoming the first year where average global temperatures exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
The 10 months of data available for 2025 indicates that the year is likely to be slightly cooler than 2023 – though it is possible it may tie or be slightly warmer.
The figure below shows global surface temperatures between 1970 and 2025. (The figures for 2025 include uncertainty based on the remaining three months of the year.)
It includes a smoothed average based on temperature data for 1970-2022 that takes into account some acceleration of warming – and then extrapolates that smoothed average forward to 2023-25 to determine what the expected temperature for those years would have been. (This follows the approach used in the WMO’s “state of the global climate 2024” report.)
This approach calculates how much warmer the past three years were than would be expected given the long-term trend in temperatures.
It shows that 2023 was around 0.18C warmer than expected, 2024 was a massive 0.25C warmer and 2025 is likely to be 0.11C warmer.
Researchers have identified a number of potential drivers of unexpected warmth over 2023-25. Here, Carbon Brief looks at the evidence for each one.
A weirdly behaving El Niño event
El Niño is a climate pattern of unusually warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the tropical Pacific that naturally occurs every two to seven years. Strong El Niño years generally have warmer global temperatures, with the largest effect generally occurring in the months after El Niño conditions peak (when SSTs reach their highest levels in the tropical Pacific).
A relatively strong El Niño event developed in the latter half of 2023, peaking around November before fading in the spring of 2024.
This event was the fourth-strongest El Niño ever recorded, as measured according to SSTs in the Niño 3.4 region in the central tropical Pacific. However, it was notably weaker than the El Niño events in both 1998 and 2016.
This can be seen in the chart below, which shows the strength of El Niño events (red shading) since the 1980s. (The blue shading indicates La Niña events – the opposite part of the cycle to El Niño, which results in cooler SSTs in the tropical Pacific.)
(It is worth noting that measuring the strength of El Niño events is not entirely straightforward. Other tools used by scientists to monitor changes to El Niño – such as the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) multivariate ENSO index – show the 2023-24 event was much weaker than indicated in the Niño 3.4 dataset.)
Global surface air temperatures tend to be elevated by around 0.1-0.2C in the six months after the peak of a strong El Niño event – defined here as when SSTs in the Niño 3.4 region reach 1.5C above normal.
The figure below shows the range of global temperature change for the 12 months before and 22 months after the peak of all 10 strong El Niño events since 1950. The light line represents the average of past strong El Niño events, the dark blue line the temperature change observed during the 2023-24 event and the shaded blue area the 5-95th percentile range.
The figure shows the 2023-24 El Niño was quite unusual compared to other strong El Niño events since 1970. Global temperatures rose to around 0.4C above expected levels – which is on the high side of previous El Niños.
The heat also came early, with high temperatures showing up around four months before the El Niño event peaked. This early heat is unlike any other El Niño event in modern history and is one of the reasons why 2023’s global temperatures were so unexpectedly warm.
Global temperatures remained elevated for a full 18 months after the El Niño peaked, well after conditions in the tropical Pacific shifted into neutral conditions – and even after mild La Niña conditions developed at the end of 2024 and into early 2025.
This figure does not explain how much of this unusual heat was actually caused by El Niño, compared to other factors, but it does suggest that El Niño behaviour alone does not fully explain unusually high temperatures in recent years.
Based on the historical relationship between El Niño and global temperatures, Carbon Brief estimates that El Niño contributed a modest 0.013C to 2023 temperatures and a more substantial 0.128C to 2024 temperatures, albeit with large uncertainties. (See “methodology” section at the end for details.)
However, it is possible that this 2023 estimate is too low. There are some suggestions in the literature that 2023-24 El Niño’s early warmth may have been caused by the rapid transition out of a particularly extended La Niña event. There are indications that temperatures have spiked in similar situations further back in the historical temperature record.
Falling sulphur dioxide emissions
Sulphur dioxide (SO2) is an aerosol that is emitted into the lower atmosphere by the burning of coal and oil. It has a powerful climate cooling effect – Carbon Brief analysis shows that global emissions of SO2 have masked about one-third of historical warming.
Global SO2 emissions have declined around 40% over the past 18 years, as countries have increasingly prioritised reducing air pollution, including through the installation of scrubbers at coal plants.
These declines have been particularly concentrated in China, which has seen a 70% decline in SO2 emissions since 2007. In addition, a rule introduced for international shipping in 2020 by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has resulted in an 80% decline in the sulphur content of shipping fuel used around the world.
The decline of SO2 emissions is shown in the figure below.
Shipping in particular has been suggested as a potential culprit for recent temperatures, given that ships emit SO2 over oceans where the air tends to be cleaner and so emissions have a bigger effect.
Seven of the eight studies that have explored the temperature impact of the IMO regulations have suggested a relatively modest effect, in the range of 0.03-0.08C. However, one study – led by former NASA scientist Dr James Hansen – calculated a much stronger effect of 0.2C that would explain virtually all the unusual warmth of recent years.
The figure below shows Carbon Brief’s estimate of the global average surface temperature changes caused by the low-sulphur shipping fuel rules, using the estimates produced by all eight studies. The central estimate (dark blue line) is relatively low, at around 0.05C, but the uncertainty range (light blue shading) across the studies remains large.
Overall, Carbon Brief’s analysis finds that around 0.04C of warming over 2020-23 and 0.05C of warming over 2020-24 can be attributed to SO2 declines from shipping and other sources.
However, this approach might slightly overstate the effects of SO2 on the exceptional temperatures of the past three years, as shipping and other SO2 declines would have had some effect on 2021 and 2022 as well.
It is also worth noting that the total effects of SO2 declines on global temperatures have been considerably larger and are estimated to be responsible for around one-quarter of all warming since 2007.
However, these SO2 decreases occurred over a long period of time and do not clearly explain the recent spike in temperatures.
An unusual volcanic eruption in Tonga
In early 2022, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai underwater volcano erupted spectacularly, sending a plume 55km into the atmosphere. This was by far the most explosive volcanic eruption since Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991.
This was a highly unusual volcanic eruption, which vaporised vast amounts of sea water and lofted it high into the atmosphere. Overall, around 146m metric tonnes of water vapour ended up in the stratosphere, which is the layer of the atmosphere above the troposphere.
Water vapour is a powerful greenhouse gas. While it is short-lived in the lower atmosphere, it can stick around for years in the stratosphere, where it has a significant warming effect on the climate.
The figure below shows the concentration of water vapour in the stratosphere between 2005 and mid-2025. It shows how the 2022 eruption increased atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas by around 15%. More than half the added water vapour has subsequently fallen out of the upper atmosphere.
Most early studies of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano focused specifically on the effects of stratospheric water vapour. These tended to show strong warming in the lower stratosphere and cooling in the middle-to-upper stratosphere, but only a slight warming effect on global surface temperatures of around 0.05C.
Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai had much lower sulphur emissions than prior explosive eruptions, such as Pinatubo and El Chichon. However it put 0.5–1.5m tonnes of sulphur into the stratosphere – the most from an eruption since Pinatubo.
Studies that included both sulphur and water vapour effects tend to find that the net effect of the eruption on surface temperatures was slight global cooling, concentrated in the southern hemisphere.
By using the estimates published in a 2024 study published in Geophysical Research Letters, which used the FaIR climate emulator model, Carbon Brief estimates that the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption cooled global surface temperatures by -0.01C in 2023 and -0.02C in 2024.
This suggests that the eruption was likely only a minor contributor to recent global surface temperatures.
A stronger-than-expected solar cycle
The source of almost all energy on Earth is the sun. Over hundreds of millions of years, variations in solar output have a big impact on the global climate.
Thankfully, over shorter periods of time the sun is remarkably stable, helping keep the Earth’s climate habitable for life. (Big changes – such as ice ages – have more to do with variations in the Earth’s orbit than changes in solar output.)
However, slight changes in solar output do occur – and when they do, they can influence climate change over shorter periods of time. The most important of these is the roughly 11-year solar cycle, which is linked with the sun’s magnetic field and results in changes in the number of sunspots and amount of solar energy reaching Earth.
The figure below shows a best-estimate of changes in total solar irradiance since 1980, based on satellite observations. Total solar irradiance is a measure of the overall amount of solar energy that reaches the top of the Earth’s atmosphere and is measured in watts per metre squared.
The 11-year solar cycle is relatively modest compared to the sun’s total output, varying only a few watts per metre squared between peak and trough – amounting to around 0.01% of solar output. However, these changes can result in variations of up to 0.1C in global temperatures within a decade.
The most recent solar cycle – solar cycle 25 – began around 2020 and has been the strongest solar cycle measured since 1980. It was stronger than most models had anticipated and likely contributed to around 0.04C global warming in 2023 and 0.07C in 2024.
Putting together the drivers
By combining earlier estimates of different factors contributing to 2023 and 2024 global surface temperatures, about half of 2023’s unusual warmth and almost all of 2024’s unusual warmth can be effectively explained.
This is illustrated in the figure below, which shows the five different factors discussed earlier – El Niño, shipping SO2, Chinese SO2, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano and solar cycle changes – along with their respective uncertainties.
The sum of all the factors is shown in the “combined” bar, while the actual warming compared to expectations is shown in red.
The upper chart shows 2023, while the lower one shows 2024.
It is important to note that the first bar includes both El Niño and natural year-to-year variability; the height of the bar reflects the best estimate of El Niño’s effects, while the uncertainty range encompasses year-to-year variability in global temperatures that may be – at least in part – unrelated to El Niño.
The role of natural climate variability
Large natural variability to the Earth’s climate is one of the main reasons why the combined value of the different drivers of expected warmth in 2023 has an uncertainty range that exceeds the observed warming – even though the best-estimate of combined factors only explains half of temperatures.
Or, to put it another way, there is up 0.15C difference in global temperatures year-on-year that cannot be explained solely by El Niño, human-driven global warming, or natural “forcings” – such as volcanoes or variations in solar output.
The figure below shows the difference between actual and expected warming in the global temperature record for every year in the form of a histogram. The vertical zero line represents the expectation given long-term global warming and the other vertical lines indicate the warming seen in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
The height of each blue bar represents the number of years over 1850-2024 when the average global temperature was that far (above or below) the expected level of warming.
Based on the range of year-to-year variability, temperatures would be expected to spike as far above the long-term trend as they did in 2023 once every 25 years, on average. The year 2024 would be a one-in-88 year event, whereas 2025 would be a less-unusual, one-in-seven year event.
These likelihoods for the past three years are sensitive to the approach used to determine what the longer-term warming level should be.
In this analysis, Carbon Brief used a local smoothing approach (known as locally estimated scatterplot smoothing) to determine the expected temperatures, following the approach used in the WMO “state of the climate 2024” report.
This approach results in a warming of 1.28C in 2023 and 1.30C in 2024, against which observed temperatures are compared.
Other published estimates put the longer-term warming in 2024 notably higher.
Earlier this year, the scientists behind the “Indicators of Global Climate Change” (IGCC) report estimated that human activity caused 1.36C of recent warming in 2024. They also found a slightly lower overall warming level for 2024 – 1.52C, as opposed to the WMO’s 1.55C – because they looked exclusively at datasets used by IPCC AR6. (This meant estimates from the Copernicus/ECMWF’s ERA5 dataset were not included.)
Based on climate simulations, the IGCC report finds the likelihood of 2024’s warmth to be a one-in-six year event and 2023’s a one-in-four event.
Using the same assumptions as the IGCC, Carbon Brief’s approach calculates that 2024 would be a less-common, one-in-18 year event.
However, the IGCC estimate of current human-induced warming is based on the latest estimates of human and natural factors warming the climate. That means that it already accounts for additional warming from low-sulphur shipping fuel, East Asian aerosols and other factors discussed above.
Therefore, the results from these two analyses are not necessarily inconsistent: natural climate variability (including El Niño) played a key role – but this came in addition to other factors. Natural fluctuations in the Earth’s climate alone would have been unlikely to result in the extreme global temperatures seen in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
A cloudy picture
Even if unusual recent global warmth can be mostly attributed to a combination of El Niño, falling SO2 emissions, the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano, solar cycle changes and natural climate variability, there are a number of questions that remain unanswered.
Most important is what the record warmth means for the climate going forward. Is it likely to revert to the long-term average warming level, or does it reflect an acceleration in the underlying rate of warming – and, if so, what might its causes be?
As explained by Carbon Brief in a 2023 article, climate models have suggested that warming will speed up. Some of this acceleration is built into the analysis presented here, which includes a slightly faster rate of warming in recent years than has characterised the period since 1970.
But there are broader questions about what – beyond declining SO2 and other aerosols – is driving this acceleration.
Research recently published in the journal Science offered some potential clues. It found a significant decline in planetary reflectivity – known as albedo – over the past decade, associated with a reduced low-level cloud cover that is unprecedented in the satellite record.
The authors suggest it could be due to a combination of three different factors: natural climate variability, changing SO2 and other aerosol emissions and the effects of global warming on cloud reflectivity.
Natural climate variability seems unlikely to have played a major role in reduced cloud cover, given that it was relatively stable until 2015. However, it is hard to fully rule it out given the relatively short satellite record.
Reductions in SO2 emissions are expected to reduce cloud reflectivity, but the magnitude of the observed cloud reflectivity changes are much larger than models simulate.
Models might be underestimating the impact of aerosols on the climate. But, if this were the case, it would indicate that climate sensitivity might be on the higher end of the range of model estimates, because models that simulate stronger aerosol cooling effects tend to have higher climate sensitivity.
Finally, cloud cover might be changing and becoming less reflective as a result of warming. Cloud responses to climate change are one of the largest drivers of uncertainty in future warming. One of the main reasons that some climate models find a higher climate sensitivity is due to their simulation of less-reflective clouds in a warming world.
The Science study concludes that the 2023 heat “may be here to stay” if the cloud-related albedo decline was not “solely” caused by natural variability. This would also suggest the Earth’s climate sensitivity may be closer to the upper range of current estimates, it notes.
Methodology
Carbon Brief built on work previously published in the IGCC 2024 and WMO state of the global climate 2024 reports that explores the role of different factors in the extreme temperatures in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
The impact of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on the temperatures was estimated using a linear regression of the annual mean global temperature anomaly on the Feb/Mar Niño 3.4 index. This resulted in an impact of −0.07C, 0.01C and 0.13C for 2022, 2023 and 2024 respectively (with a 95% confidence interval of ±0.13 ºC).
It is important to note that the uncertainties in the ENSO response estimated here also incorporate other sources of unforced internal (modes of variability in other basins such as AMV), and potentially some forced variability. The bar in the combined figure is labelled “El Niño and variability” to reflect this.
For details on calculations of the temperature impact of shipping and Chinese SO2 declines, see Carbon Brief’s explainer on the climate impact of changing aerosol emissions.
Solar cycle 25 was both slightly earlier and slightly stronger than prior expectations with a total solar irradiance anomaly of 0.97 watts per metre squared in 2023 relative to the mean of the prior 20 years. This resulted in an estimated radiative forcing of approximately 0.17 watts per metre squared and an estimated global surface temperature increase of 0.07C (0.05C to 0.10C) with a one- to two-year lag based on a 2015 study. Thus, the impact on 2023 and 2024 is around 0.04C and 0.07C, respectively (+/- 0.025C). This is a bit higher warming than is given by the FaIR model, as the 2015 study is based on global models that have ozone responses to the UV changes, which amplifies the temperature effects a bit.
The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai volcanic eruption added both SO2 and water vapour to the stratosphere (up to 55km in altitude). The rapid oxidation of SO2 to sulphate aerosol dominated the radiative forcing for the first two years after the eruption. As a result, the net radiative forcing at the tropopause was likely negative; −0.04 watts per metre squared and −0.15 watts per metre squared in 2022 and 2023, respectively, implying a temperature impact of -0.02C (-0.01C to -0.03C) calculated using the FaIR model.
The post Analysis: What are the causes of recent record-high global temperatures? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: What are the causes of recent record-high global temperatures?
US President Donald Trump grabbed the headlines again at the World Economic Forum, launching his “Board of Peace” for Gaza on the final day of the gathering of political and business leaders. But discussions on climate and energy continued below the media radar.
Climate Home New has been listening in – here are some of the best bits.
Occidental boss: Banks “coming back” to oil and gas
Banks which have previously refused to fund oil and gas projects are “coming back” to the industry, an American oil executive told an event at Davos on Thursday.
Vicki Hollub, CEO of Occidental Petroleum, the world’s 28th most polluting company, said in a conversation with US Energy Secretary Chris Wright that “there was a time” when banks shunned her industry. That, she added, had been a “burden”.
“But some of those banks are now coming back – and in fact I talked to one yesterday that had kind of abandoned us and now are back and wanting to do business in the oil and gas industry,” she said, without revealing the name of the bank.
A report by the London School of Economics last year found that many banks weakened their policies against fossil fuel lending in 2025 and the Net Zero Banking Alliance shut down in October 2025, after many – particularly American – banks left the green initiative.
Azeri oil chief says no spare cash for green tech
European investors appear to have been slower to abandon their climate commitments. Rovshan Najaf, president of SOCAR (the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic), told a separate Davos panel that his company struggles to get financing from most European commercial banks for its oil and gas operations.
As a result, he said, the firm must use its available cash to fund oil and gas projects – “one of the priority areas” – leaving it with little free capital to invest in lower-carbon fuels like green hydrogen and ammonia, or emissions-reducing technologies such as carbon capture or methane abatement.
Recent COP hosts Brazil and Azerbaijan linked to “super-emitting” methane plumes
Unlike renewables and electrification, there is still no commercial case for funding those potential breakthroughs at scale and making them affordable, he added.
“There should be a big picture approach to all energy mixes and how we can free up the capital [for decarbonisation],” he argued.
Najaf promised last year that the firm would achieve near-zero methane emissions in its oil and gas production by 2035. But, as Climate Home News reported recently, the latest data available from SOCAR shows that its methane emissions more than tripled from 2023 to 2024, when the country hosted COP29.
-
Climate at Davos: Clean tech powers on despite policy wobbles
Al Gore says climate policy may be suffering “a recession” in many countries – but the energy transition continues apace, driven by falling costs for renewables and batteries -
Climate at Davos: Energy security in the geopolitical driving seat
While climate change is a lower priority for leaders at this year’s World Economic Forum, control of energy supplies and minerals is a hot topic -
Ahead of Davos, climate drops down global elite’s list of pressing concerns
In the short term, leading business people, academics and politicians are more worried about geoeconomic confrontation than extreme weather
US promotes fossil gas to “ally” Europe
One key reason why SOCAR has been investing in more gas production and export capacity is deals with European governments to help replace Russian gas after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
At Davos, Wright praised Europe for being close to independence from Russian gas, saying it could achieve that goal in the next year or two.
He called for the EU to weaken its environmental regulations on methane – a particularly potent greenhouse gas – to enable American fossil gas to displace Russian supplies.
Despite President Donald Trump’s recent threats to take over Greenland, which have caused a growing rift with European leaders, Wright insisted Europe is “our main ally in defending the Western world”.
The US supplies about a quarter of the EU’s gas imports, a percentage which has risen since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But overall, the EU’s gas imports are declining and are predicted to keep falling, as the continent moves towards clean energy. On Thursday, data published by think-tank Ember showed that wind and solar generated more EU electricity than fossil fuels in 2025, producing a record 30% of EU power, ahead of fossil fuels at 29%.
“New era of climate extremes” as global warming fuels devastating impacts in 2025
On climate change, Wright played down the threat, saying that deaths from extreme weather have declined over the last 100 years.
While floods, droughts, storms and heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense as the planet warms, Wright is correct in saying they have caused fewer deaths over this long time period.
This has largely been the result of economic development and, more recently, climate resilience measures of the kind the Trump administration has drastically reduced US funding for.
The post Climate at Davos: Oil execs bemoan “burden” of bank boycotts appeared first on Climate Home News.
Climate at Davos: Oil execs bemoan “burden” of bank boycotts
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.
China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Tasks for 2026
‘GREEN RESOLVE’: The Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) said at its annual national conference that it is “essential” to “maintain strategic resolve” on building a “beautiful China”, reported energy news outlet BJX News. Officials called for “accelerating green transformation” and “strengthening driving forces” for the low-carbon transition in 2026, it added. The meeting also underscored the need for “continued reduction in total emissions of major pollutants”, it said, as well as for “advancing source control through carbon peaking and a low-carbon transition”. The MEE listed seven key tasks for 2026 at the meeting, said business news outlet 21st Century Business Herald, including promoting development of “green productive forces”, focusing on “regional strategies” to build “green development hubs” and “actively responding” to climate change.
CARBON ‘PRESSURE’: China’s carbon emissions reduction strategy will move from the “preparatory stages” into a phase of “substantive” efforts in 2026, reported Shanghai-based news outlet the Paper, with local governments beginning to “feel the pressure” due to facing “formal carbon assessments for the first time” this year. Business news outlet 36Kr said that an “increasing number of industry participants” will have to begin finalising decarbonisation plans this year. The entry into force of the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism means China’s steelmakers will face a “critical test of cost, data and compliance”, reported finance news outlet Caixin. Carbon Brief asked several experts, including the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Li Shuo, what energy and climate developments they will be watching in 2026.
COAL DECLINE: New data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed China’s “mostly coal-based thermal power generation fell in 2025” for the first time in a decade, reported Reuters, to 6,290 terawatt-hours (TWh). The data confirmed earlier analysis for Carbon Brief that “coal power generation fell in both China and India in 2025”, marking the first simultaneous drop in 50 years. Energy news outlet International Energy Net noted that wind generation rose 10% to 1,053TWh and solar by 24% to 1,573TWh.
EV agreement reached
‘NORMALISED COMPETITION’?: The EU will remove tariffs on imports of electric vehicles (EV) made in China if the manufacturers follow “guidelines on minimum pricing” issued by the bloc, reported the Associated Press. China’s commerce ministry stated that the new guidelines will “enable Chinese exporters to address the EU’s anti-subsidy case concerning Chinese EVs in a way that is more practical, targeted and consistent with [World Trade Organization] rules”, according to the state-run China Daily. An editorial by the state-supporting Global Times argued that the agreement symbolised a “new phase” in China-EU economic and trade relations in which “normalised competition” is stabilised by a “solid cooperative foundation”.
SOLAR REBATES: China will “eliminate” export rebates for solar products from April 2026 and phase rebates for batteries out by 2027, said Caixin. Solar news outlet Solar Headlines said that the removal of rebates would “directly test” solar companies’ profitability and “fundamentally reshape the entire industry’s growth logic”. Meanwhile, China imposed anti-dumping duties on imports of “solar-grade polysilicon” from the US and Korea, said state news agency Xinhua.
OVERCAPACITY MEETINGS: The Chinese government “warned several producers of polysilicon…about monopoly risks” and cautioned them not to “coordinate on production capacity, sales volume and prices”, said Bloomberg. Reuters and China Daily covered similar government meetings on “mitigat[ing] risks of overcapacity” with the battery and EV industries, respectively. A widely republished article in the state-run Economic Daily said that to counter overcapacity, companies would need to reverse their “misaligned development logic” and shift from competing on “price and scale” to competing on “technology”.
High prices undermined home coal-to-gas heating policy
SWITCHING SHOCK: A video commentary by Xinhua reporter Liu Chang covered “reports of soaring [home] heating costs following coal-to-gas switching [policies] in some rural areas of north China”. Liu added that switching from coal to gas “must lead not only to blue skies, but also to warmth”. Bloomberg said that the “issue isn’t a lack of gas”, but the “result of a complex series of factors including price regulations, global energy shocks and strained local finances”.
-
Sign up to Carbon Brief’s free “China Briefing” email newsletter. All you need to know about the latest developments relating to China and climate change. Sent to your inbox every Thursday.
HEATED DEBATE: Discussions of the story in China became a “domestically resonant – and politically awkward – debate”, noted the current affairs newsletter Pekingnology. It translated a report by Chinese outlet Economic Observer that many villagers in Hebei struggled with no access to affordable heating, with some turning back to coal. “Local authorities are steadily advancing energy supply,” People’s Daily said of the issue, noting that gas is “increasingly becoming a vital heating energy source” as part of China’s energy transition. Another People’s Daily article quoted one villager saying: “Coal-to-gas conversion is a beneficial initiative for both the nation and its people…Yet the heating costs are simply too high.”
DEJA-VU: This is not the first time coal-to-gas switching has encountered challenges, according to research by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, with nearby Shanxi province experiencing a similar situation. In Shanxi, a “lack of planning, poor coordination and hasty implementation” led to demand outstripping supply, while some households had their coal-based heating systems removed with no replacement secured. Others were “deterred” from using gas-based systems due to higher prices, it said.
More China news
- LOFTY WORDS: At Davos, vice-premier He Lifeng reaffirmed commitments to China’s “dual-carbon” goals and called for greater “global cooperation on climate change”, reported Caixin.
- NOT LOOKING: US president Donald Trump, also at Davos, said he was not “able to find any windfarms in China”, adding China sells them to “stupid” consumers, reported Euronews. China installed wind capacity has ranked first globally “for 15 years consecutively”, said a government official, according to CGTN.
- ‘GREEN’ FACTORIES: China issued “new guidelines to promote green [industrial] microgrids” including targets for on-site renewable use, said Xinhua. The country “pledged to advance zero-carbon factory development” from 2026, said another Xinhua report.
- JET-FUEL MERGER: A merger of oil giant Sinopec with the country’s main jet-fuel producer could “aid the aviation industry’s carbon reduction goals”, reported Yicai Global. However, Caixin noted that the move could “stifl[e] innovation” in the sustainable air fuel sector.
- NEW TARGETS: Chinese government investment funds will now be evaluated on the “annual carbon reduction rates” achieved by the enterprises or projects they support, reported BJX News.
- HOLIDAY CATCH-UP: Since the previous edition of China Briefing in December, Beijing released policies on provincial greenhouse gas inventories, the “two new” programme, clean coal benchmarks, corporate climate reporting, “green consumption” and hydrogen carbon credits. The National Energy Administration also held its annual work conference.
Spotlight
Why gas plays a minimal role in China’s climate strategy
While gas is seen in some countries as an important “bridging” fuel to move away from coal use, rapid electrification, uncompetitiveness and supply concerns have suppressed its share in China’s energy mix.
Carbon Brief explores the current role of gas in China and how this could change in the future. The full article is available on Carbon Brief’s website.
The current share of gas in China’s primary energy demand is small, at around 8-9%.
It also comprises 7% of China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fuel combustion, adding 755m tonnes of CO2 in 2023 – twice the total CO2 emissions of the UK.
Gas consumption is continuing to grow in line with an overall uptick in total energy demand, but has slowed slightly from the 9% average annual rise in gas demand over the past decade – during which time consumption more than doubled.
The state-run oil and gas company China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) forecast in 2025 that demand growth for the year may slow further to just over 6%.
Chinese government officials frequently note that China is “rich in coal” and “short of gas”. Concerns of import dependence underpin China’s focus on coal for energy security.
However, Beijing sees electrification as a “clear energy security strategy” to both decarbonise and “reduce exposure to global fossil fuel markets”, said Michal Meidan, China energy research programme head at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.
A dim future?
Beijing initially aimed for gas to displace coal as part of a broader policy to tackle air pollution.
Its “blue-sky campaign” helped to accelerate gas use in the industrial and residential sectors. Several cities were mandated to curtail coal usage and switch to gas.
(January 2026 saw widespread reports of households choosing not to use gas heating installed during this campaign despite freezing temperatures, due to high prices.)
Industry remains the largest gas user in China, with “city gas” second. Power generation is a distant third.
The share of gas in power generation remains at 4%, while wind and solar’s share has soared to 22%, Yu Aiqun, research analyst at the thinktank Global Energy Monitor, told Carbon Brief. She added:
“With the rapid expansion of renewables and ongoing geopolitical uncertainties, I don’t foresee a bright future for gas power.”
However, gas capacity may still rise from 150 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 to 200GW by 2030. A government report noted that gas will continue to play a “critical role” in “peak shaving”.
But China’s current gas storage capacity is “insufficient”, according to CNPC, limiting its ability to meet peak-shaving demand.
Transport and industry
Gas instead may play a bigger role in the displacement of diesel in the transport sector, due to the higher cost competitiveness of LNG – particularly for trucking.
CNPC forecast that LNG displaced around 28-30m tonnes of diesel in the trucking sector in 2025, accounting for 15% of total diesel demand in China.
However, gas is not necessarily a better option for heavy-duty, long-haul transportation, due to poorer fuel efficiency compared with electric vehicles.
In fact, “new-energy vehicles” are displacing both LNG-fueled trucks and diesel heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs).
Meanwhile, gas could play a “more significant” role in industrial decarbonisation, Meidan told Carbon Brief, if prices fall substantially.
Growth in gas demand has been decelerating in some industries, but China may adopt policies more favourable to gas, she added.
An energy transition roadmap developed by a Chinese government thinktank found gas will only begin to play a greater role than coal in China by 2050 at the earliest.
Both will be significantly less important than clean-energy sources at that point.
This spotlight was written by freelance climate journalist Karen Teo for Carbon Brief.
Watch, read, listen
EV OUTLOOK: Tu Le, managing director of consultancy Sino Auto Insights, spoke on the High Capacity podcast about his outlook for China’s EV industry in 2026.
‘RUNAWAY TRAIN’: John Hopkins professor Jeremy Wallace argued in Wired that China’s strength in cleantech is due to a “runaway train of competition” that “no one – least of all [a monolithic ‘China’] – knows how to deal with”.
‘DIRTIEST AND GREENEST’: China’s energy engagement in the Belt and Road Initiative was simultaneously the “dirtiest and greenest” it has ever been in 2025, according to a new report by the Green Finance & Development Center.
INDUSTRY VOICE: Zhong Baoshen, chairman of solar manufacturer LONGi, spoke with Xinhua about how innovation, “supporting the strongest performers”, standards-setting and self-regulation could alleviate overcapacity in the industry.
$574bn
The amount of money State Grid, China’s main grid operator, plans to invest between 2026-30, according to Jiemian. The outlet adds that much of this investment will “support the development and transmission of clean energy” from large-scale clean-energy bases and hydropower plants.
New science
- The combination of long-term climate change and extremes in rainfall and heat have contributed to an increase in winter wheat yield of 1% in Xinjiang province between 1989-2023 | Climate Dynamics
- More than 70% of the “observed changes” in temperature extremes in China over 1901-2020 are “attributed to greenhouse gas forcing” | Environmental Research Letters
China Briefing is written by Anika Patel and edited by Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
The post China Briefing 22 January 2026: 2026 priorities; EV agreement; How China uses gas appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China Briefing 22 January 2026: 2026 priorities; EV agreement; How China uses gas
Every year, understanding of climate science grows stronger.
With each new research project and published paper, scientists learn more about how the Earth system responds to continuing greenhouse gas emissions.
But with many thousands of new studies on climate change being published every year, it can be hard to keep up with the latest developments.
Our annual “10 new insights in climate science” report offers a snapshot of key advances in the scientific understanding of the climate system.
Produced by a team of scientists from around the world, the report summarises influential, novel and policy-relevant climate research published over the previous 18 months.
The insights presented in the latest edition, published in the journal Global Sustainability, are as follows:
- Questions remain about the record warmth in 2023-24
- Unprecedented ocean surface warming and intensifying marine heatwaves are driving severe ecological losses
- The global land carbon sink is under strain
- Climate change and biodiversity loss amplify each other
- Climate change is accelerating groundwater depletion
- Climate change is driving an increase in dengue fever
- Climate change diminishes labour productivity
- Safe scale-up of carbon dioxide removal is needed
- Carbon credit markets come with serious integrity challenges
- Policy mixes outperform stand-alone measures in advancing emissions reductions
In this article, we unpack some of the key findings.
A strained climate system
The first three insights highlight how strains are growing across the climate system, from indications of an accelerating warming and record-breaking marine heatwaves, to faltering carbon sinks.
Between April 2023 and March 2024, global temperatures reached unprecedented levels – a surge that cannot be fully explained by the long-term warming trend and typical year-to-year fluctuations of the Earth’s climate. This suggests other factors are at play, such as declining sulphur emissions and shifting cloud cover.
(For more, Carbon Brief’s in-depth explainer of the drivers of recent exceptional warmth.)
Ocean heat uptake has climbed as well. This has intensified marine heatwaves, further stressing ecosystems and livelihoods that rely on fisheries and coastal resources.
The exceptional warming of the ocean has driven widespread impacts, including massive coral bleaching, fish and shellfish mortality and disruptions to marine food chains.
The map below illustrates some of the impacts of marine heatwaves from 2023-24, highlighting damage inflicted on coral reefs, fishing stocks and coastal communities.
Land “sinks” that absorb carbon – and buffer the emissions from human activity – are under increasing stress, too. Recent research shows a reduction in carbon stored in boreal forests and permafrost ecosystems.
The weakening carbon sinks means that more human-caused carbon emissions remain in the atmosphere, further driving up global temperatures and increasing the chances that warming will surpass the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit.
This links to the fourth insight, which shows how climate change and biodiversity loss can amplify each other by leading to a decrease in the accumulation of biomass and reduced carbon storage, creating a destabilising feedback loop that accelerates warming.
New evidence demonstrates that climate change could threaten more than 3-6 million species and, as a result, could undermine critical ecosystem functions.
For example, recent projections indicate that the loss of plant species could reduce carbon sequestration capacity in the range of 7-145bn tonnes of carbon over the coming decades. Similarly, studies show that, in tropical systems, the extinction of animals could reduce carbon storage capacity by up to 26%.
Human health and livelihoods
Growing pressure on the climate system is having cascading consequences for human societies and natural systems.
Our fifth insight highlights how groundwater supplies are increasingly at risk.
More than half the global population depends on groundwater – the second largest source of freshwater after polar ice – for survival.
But groundwater levels are in decline around the world. A 2025 Nature paper found that rapid groundwater declines, exceeding 50cm each year, have occurred in many regions in the 21st century, especially in arid areas dominated by cropland. The analysis also showed that groundwater losses accelerated over the past four decades in about 30% of regional aquifers.
Changes in rainfall patterns due to climate change, combined with increased irrigation demand for agriculture, are depleting groundwater reserves at alarming rates.
The figure below illustrates how climate-driven reductions in rainfall, combined with increased evapotranspiration, are projected to significantly reduce groundwater recharge in many arid regions – contributing to widespread groundwater-level declines.
These losses threaten food security, amplifying competition for scarce resources and undermining the resilience of entire communities.
Human health and livelihoods are also being affected by changes to the climate.
Our sixth insight spotlights the ongoing and projected expansion of the mosquito-borne disease dengue fever.
Dengue surged to the largest global outbreak on record in 2024, with the World Health Organization reporting 14.2m cases, which is an underestimate because not all cases are counted.
Rising temperatures are creating more favourable conditions for the mosquitoes that carry dengue, driving the disease’s spread and increasing its intensity.
The chart below shows the regions climatically suitable for Aedes albopictus (blue line) and Aedes aegypti (green line) – the primary mosquitoes species that carry the virus – increased by 46.3% and 10.7%, respectively, between 1951-60 and 2014-23.
The maps on the right reveal how dengue could spread by 2030 and 2050 under an emissions scenario broadly consistent with current climate policies. It shows that the climate suitable for the mosquito that spreads dengue could expand northwards in Canada, central Europe and the West Siberian Plain by 2050.
The ongoing proliferation of these mosquito species is particularly alarming given their ability to transmit the zika, chikungunya and yellow fever viruses.
Heat stress is also a growing threat to labour productivity and economic growth, which is the seventh insight in our list.
For example, an additional 1C of warming is projected to expose more than 800 million people in tropical regions to unsafe heat levels – potentially reducing working hours by up to 50%.
At 3C warming, sectors such as agriculture, where workers are outdoors and exposed to the sun, could see reductions in effective labour of 25-33% across Africa and Asia, according to a recent Nature Reviews Earth & Environment paper.
Meanwhile, sectors where workers operate in shaded or indoor settings could also face meaningful losses. This drain on productivity compounds socioeconomic issues and places a strain on households, businesses and governments.
Low-income, low-emitting regions are set to shoulder a greater relative share of the impacts of extreme heat on economic growth, exacerbating existing inequalities.
Action and policy
Our report illustrates not only the scale of the challenges facing humanity, but also some of the pathways toward solutions.
The eighth insight emphasises the critical role of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in stabilising the climate, especially in “overshoot” scenarios where warming temporarily surpasses 1.5C and is then brought back down.
Scaling these CDR solutions responsibly presents technical, ecological, justice, equity and governance challenges.
Nature-based approaches for pulling carbon out of the air – such as afforestation, peatland rewetting and agroforestry – could have negative consequences for food security, biodiversity conservation and resource provision if deployed at scale.
Yet, research has suggested that substantially more CDR may be needed than estimated in the scenarios used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC’s) last assessment report.
Recent findings showed that a pathway where temperatures remain below 1.5C with no overshoot would require up to 400Gt of cumulative CDR by 2100 in order to buffer against the effect of complex geophysical processes that can accelerate climate change. This figure is roughly twice the amount of CDR assessed by the IPCC.
This underscores the need for robust international coordination on the responsible scaling of CDR technologies, as a complement to ambitious efforts to reduce emissions. Transparent carbon accounting frameworks that include CDR will be required to align national pledges with international goals.
Similarly, voluntary carbon markets – where carbon “offsets” are traded by corporations, individuals and organisations that are under no legal obligation to make emission cuts – face challenges.
Our ninth insight shows how low-quality carbon credits have undermined the credibility of these largely unregulated carbon markets, limiting their effectiveness in supporting emission reductions.
However, emerging standards and integrity initiatives, such as governance and quality benchmarks developed by the Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Markets, could address some of the concerns and criticism associated with carbon credit projects.
High-quality carbon credits that are verified and rigorously monitored can complement direct emission reductions.
Finally, our 10th insight highlights how a mix of climate policies typically have greater success than standalone measures.
Research published in Science in 2024 shows how carefully tailored policy packages – including carbon pricing, regulations, and incentives – could consistently achieve larger and more durable emission reductions than isolated interventions.
For example, in the buildings sector, regulations that ban or phase out products or activities achieve an average effect size of 32% when included in a policy package, compared with 13% when implemented on their own.
Importantly, policy mixes that are tailored to the country context and with attention to distributional equity are more likely to gain public support.
These 10 insights in our latest edition highlight the urgent need for an integrated approach to tackling climate change.
The science is clear, the risks are escalating – but the tools to act are available.
The post Guest post: 10 key climate science ‘insights’ from 2025 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
-
Greenhouse Gases5 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change5 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Spanish-language misinformation on renewable energy spreads online, report shows
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Climate Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits