Warm-water coral reefs have crossed a tipping point due to global heating and are dying at an accelerated rate due to repeated mass bleaching events, impacting hundreds of millions of people who rely on them for fishing, tourism and protection from rising seas and storm surges, according to new research.
Global average temperatures are about 1.3-1.4C above pre-industrial times, which is higher than coral reefs can withstand. Their thermal tipping point is estimated to be 1.2C of warming.
If the trend is not reversed, coral reefs around the world will be lost, warned the second Global Tipping Points report, released on Monday and produced by more than 160 scientists in 23 countries, led by the Global Systems Institute at the UK’s University of Exeter.
Of the seven tipping points monitored by the researchers, this is the first to be shown as already passed. “We’ve actually already lost about half our warm-water coral reef cover, and we can expect accelerated change in the next few decades as well,” said Mike Barrett, chief scientific advisor at WWF-UK.
The report also said parts of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are losing ice at an accelerating speed, coming close to collapse. Greenland’s ice sheet is losing 266 billion tonnes of ice mass per year. If that meltwater flows into the North Atlantic and destabilises its subpolar gyre (large rotating current), it could produce a “Little Ice Age” in Europe, with worsening heatwaves in the summer but freezing months in the winter.
The report also said the Amazon rainforest is at greater risk than previously thought. Steven Smith from the Global Systems Institute told a webinar on the report that “the combined effects of climate change and deforestation put this [the rainforest] under threat between 1.5 to 2 degrees of warming.”
-
Efforts to green lithium extraction face scrutiny over water use
Direct lithium extraction has been hailed as a way to reduce mining impacts in South America but experts warn the technology may not be ready for large-scale deployment -
Loss and damage fund will launch call for proposals at COP30
The fund will ask for projects to be submitted which address the loss and damage caused by climate change in developing countries -
Foreign aid cuts put adaptation finance pledge at risk, NGOs warn
Rich countries’ support for resilience-boosting measures in developing nations may fall far short of their promise to double adaptation finance by this year, says a new report
Overshooting the 1.5C warming limit governments promised to try to keep to under the Paris Agreement now looks “pretty inevitable”, and could happen around 2030, according to the report.
The researchers said they are working with Brazil to ensure that tipping points are discussed at the COP30 climate summit it will host in November, highlighting actions that need to be taken fast.
Those include phasing out fossil fuels, increasing support for clean technologies and infrastructure, and switching to more sustainable food systems.
“Governance systems, national policies, rules, multinational agreements – including the Paris Agreement – were not designed with tipping points in mind,” said Manjana Milkoreit from the University of Oslo. “They’re made for linear or gradual changes, not the abrupt, irreversible and interconnected shifts in the Earth systems that we’re now facing.”
The consequences of a warming ocean
Corals not only provide livelihoods, food security and protection from tropical storms for over half a billion people – they also deliver $2.7 trillion annually in global economic benefits, the scientists said.
Melanie McField, founder and director of the Healthy Reefs for Healthy People Initiative (HRI), explained that the tipping point is not necessarily irreversible, as not all corals are affected at the same time – and ocean protection efforts in general could save them from becoming victims of overfishing and pollution.
In recent weeks, new reports have confirmed the effects of heat on the oceans and marine life. The EU Copernicus Ocean State Report showed that almost a quarter of the global ocean surface experienced at least one severe to extreme marine heatwave event in 2023 – a trend that has accelerated since 2005.
-
Panama environment minister backs calls for reform of UN climate process
Panama’s environment minister told Climate Home that decision-making rules at the UN climate talks should be reformed to deliver faster changes. -
Angola lowers climate ambition in blow to “spirit” of Paris Agreement
The country’s latest climate plan slashes its emissions-cutting target, a move the government says is realistic given Angola’s economic challenges and lack of international support -
AI and satellite data help researchers map world’s transition minerals rush
Filling “mind-boggling” gaps in mining data will make it easier to track the environmental impact of surging global appetite for critical minerals, experts say
And last month, the annual planetary boundaries report from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) said the planetary limit for ocean acidification had been surpassed for the first time, weakening the oceans’ ability to act as Earth’s stabiliser.
Oceans turn more acidic by absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere, a process that threatens marine life, with 1,677 species at risk of extinction, PIK said. The Copernicus report indicates a 16.5% increase in ocean acidity since 1985.
Meanwhile, ocean heatwaves not only have become more frequent but have also caused the planet’s seas to reach new record temperatures. The warmest the ocean has been since satellite data started to be collected was in spring 2024, when the global average hit 21C. More than 90% of the excess heat trapped in the Earth’s system due to human-caused global warming has been absorbed by the oceans, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Marta Marcos, an associate professor at the University of the Balearic Islands and one of the Copernicus’ study authors, told Climate Home News another key issue is the acceleration in sea level rise, which began speeding up in the 1960s-70s and is now above 4 millimetres per year. “Sea level not only continues to rise, but is rising at an ever faster rate,” she said.
While sea level rise is a global trend, the major risk is in densely populated cities near the sea. For example, in Europe around 200 million people live near coastlines – and higher baseline sea levels increase the threat to their homes and infrastructure from extreme weather. “When a storm comes, with its surge and waves, it has a much greater destructive potential,” explained Marcos.
Blue NDCs bring oceans into climate plans
Marcos believes there is growing government interest in protecting the oceans. In September, the High Seas Treaty, which lays the ground for the creation of marine protected areas (MPAs) in international waters, reached the 60 government ratifications needed for it to take effect.
And during New York Climate Week in September, Chile and the UK committed to include ocean-based solutions in their national climate plans (known as NDCs). Eleven countries have now joined the “Blue NDC” project which encourages governments – depending on their circumstances – to manage marine ecosystems, phase out offshore oil and gas production, expand clean ocean energy, cut emissions and support sustainable fisheries.
Others with Blue NDCs are Brazil, France, Australia, Fiji, Kenya, Mexico, Palau, Madagascar and the Republic of Seychelles.
Such ocean-based solutions can provide 35% of the emissions reductions the world needs by 2035, a study by the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy shows.
Mary Creagh, the UK’s minister for nature, said oceans are central to her country’s NDC – but work is still being finalised on how to count emissions reductions from seagrass and seaweed management and coastal restoration. “We’re working on the science, which we’re happy to share globally once it is complete,” she added.
One key challenge is getting the world’s largest fish-producing countries to sign up to tackle ocean issues in their climate plans, particularly Asian heavyweights such as China, Indonesia, India and Vietnam.
Blue NDC member and COP30 host Brazil, meanwhile, recently announced its largest oil and gas discovery in 25 years in the Santos Basin, 400 kilometres off its coast.
Nonetheless, Marcos said such initiatives are important, adding that any effective action “has to be global, coordinated, and based on data and science”.
Marinez Scherer, a marine biologist and coastal management expert who is the COP30 Special Envoy for Oceans, said the upcoming operationalisation of the High Seas Treaty is a step forward on the path to the climate summit, which she said would discuss a plan to speed up implementation of ocean solutions.
Scherer said COP30 will present measures that are currently working in Brazil and show the world what’s needed to “plan and manage the ocean in a very healthy and sustainable way”.
The post As coral reefs pass tipping point, ocean protection rises up political agenda appeared first on Climate Home News.
As coral reefs pass tipping point, ocean protection rises up political agenda
The United Nations has said the world must cut greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 6% per year to limit global warming enough to be able to return to the 1.5C goal by 2100, as decades of insufficient climate action have now made an overshoot inevitable.
In a video message accompanying the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) 2026 Emissions Gap Report, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the world could no longer avoid overshooting the 1.5C limit and that the consequences were already devastating. However, he said it was still possible to return average global temperatures to 1.5C above preindustrial times by the end of the century.
“Overshoot is not surrender,” he said, adding that the report, released on Wednesday, sets out what is needed to limit warming. That entails cutting global greenhouse gas emissions by 18% by 2030, 45% by 2035 and 69% by 2040, all compared with 2025 levels.
This implies average annual reduction rates of 5.7% for 2025-2035, higher than the pathways laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its last major scientific report, which required annual reduction rates of about 5%, UNEP said.
Paris Agreement committee names three countries snubbing it over NDCs
The more ambitious emissions reductions – which countries are still far off achieving – would put the world on the lowest-possible overshoot pathway, giving a 50% chance of limiting peak warming to 1.7–1.8C around mid-century before bringing global temperatures back to 1.5C or below by 2100, the report said. Reaching this scenario will also require carbon removal from the atmosphere, it added.
UNEP noted that if countries fully implement their current national climate plans (NDCs), they would only reduce emissions by 5-8% by 2030 and 11-15% by 2035, relative to 2025 levels.
UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said the world must not give up on the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious warming limit, adding that every additional fraction of a degree and additional year of heating above 1.5C increases climate change impacts and risks, such as the deadly floods, heatwaves and wildfires that have plagued many nations this year.
“We must pull out all the stops to minimise peak warming and return to 1.5C by the end of the century. This is possible,” she said, adding that governments must urgently implement policies that deliver rapid and sustained emissions reductions.
Climate pledges fall short
New climate pledges since last year’s report have made a negligible difference to projected emissions and warming, UNEP said. Under current policies, the world is on course for 2.8C of warming this century, while full implementation of national climate pledges and continued similar efforts would limit warming to 2.6C, the report found.
UNEP said its projections had deteriorated, attributing this to the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement under President Donald Trump and revised estimates of historical emissions.
Even with the most optimistic pledge-based scenario – which assumes countries deliver both their current national climate commitments and additional net-zero targets – warming would now only be limited to 2.1C this century, the report found.
IPCC scientists vow to press on with climate reports despite political deadlock
Speaking to journalists ahead of the report’s launch, co-author Anne Ohlhoff said the US exit from the Paris accord meant that its previous national climate target was no longer included in UNEP’s global projections. The country has also dropped its net-zero emissions goal, she said, affecting the outlook because the US is the world’s second-largest emitter.
She warned that there is still a large gap between countries’ emissions commitments for 2035 and the reductions needed under the report’s lowest-possible 1.5C overshoot scenario.
Every five years of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions at current levels pushes peak warming up by around 0.1C, she said, adding that without urgent action, it could quickly become impossible to keep peak warming below 1.7–1.8C.
Describing the emissions gap as a “leadership gap”, UN chief Guterres warned that current national climate plans and policies “fall dangerously short” of what is needed to limit warming. He urged countries to adopt credible roadmaps for transitioning away from fossil fuels, accelerate clean energy deployment and electrification, invest in electricity grids and storage, cut methane emissions and halt deforestation.
Carbon removal needed, but risky
Alongside deep emissions cuts, removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere needs to be accelerated throughout the century, the report found. The world will need to remove and permanently store about 320 billion tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere to return global temperatures to around 1.5C by 2100.
The estimated carbon removal is equivalent to around eight years of global CO₂ emissions at 2024 levels. However, UNEP cautions that removing carbon at this scale remains uncertain because of technological and socio-economic challenges.
Keywan Riahi, a contributor to the report, said carbon could be removed through nature-based approaches, such as planting forests and improving wetland management, which help ecosystems absorb carbon emissions, as well as engineering solutions that capture emissions from energy production or remove carbon directly from the air.
However, he warned that both nature-based and technological approaches face risks and might not deliver carbon removal at the scale needed. This is because nature solutions such as planetary sinks are weakening because of climate change while techno-fixes remain uncertain, he added.
“All of those technologies come with risks,” Riahi told reporters, adding that what the world needs is to try “to keep the overshoot as low as possible, so that we do not need to rely on these technologies to take CO₂ out of the atmosphere later on”.
Renewable energy supports emissions cuts
Despite the expected overshoot of the 1.5C warming limit, the UNEP Emissions Gap Report underscored that the rapid growth of renewable energy and the impact of climate policies so far show that deeper emissions cuts remain possible.
It stated that since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, global renewable electricity capacity has grown three times faster than anticipated, while solar photovoltaic (PV) deployment has increased sevenfold compared with projections made a decade ago.
Maintaining the recent pace of renewable energy expansion, alongside stronger policies, could put the world on track to meet the global goal of tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, the report said. It could also increase the share of wind and solar in electricity generation to levels consistent with the pathway that limits the overshoot of 1.5C to the lowest possible level, it added.
SE Asia speeds up plan for connected clean power grid after oil shock
Andersen said the explosion of renewable energy and slower-than-projected growth in coal energy supply showed that accelerating climate action is possible. However, she warned that progress remains insufficient, particularly in phasing down fossil fuels and halting forest loss.
“Nations must understand that the point of return begins now, not later,” she said, calling for “fast, deep and sustained emissions reductions”. She urged governments to strengthen their climate action at upcoming UN climate talks and accelerate efforts to keep the 1.5C pathway within reach.
Bill Hare, chief executive of Climate Analytics, said major fossil fuel-producing countries need to take greater responsibility for reducing their emissions, saying that big polluters such as the US and Saudi Arabia need “to stop playing politics and face the scientific reality”.
“Right now they are looking at the fire, denying it exists and pouring more petrol on it, while their own citizens increasingly face searing heat, wildfires and other impacts,” he said. “Governments [need] to get on with enacting policies that cut fossil fuel use as soon as possible.”
The post UN sets steep emission cuts to reverse 1.5C overshoot by end of century appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN sets steep emission cuts to reverse 1.5C overshoot by end of century
When the Turkish COP31 presidency presented its priorities to international business leaders for the first time in New York in September, among those invited to give the private sector’s first response was Ali Koç, scion of one of Türkiye’s wealthiest families.
On stage, the vice chair of the board of Koç Holding said the family company, which weeks earlier had been announced as one of the top sponsors for the UN climate summit, can be seen as “quite exemplary” for its climate record.
What Koç did not mention was that the group’s biggest money-making arm – Türkiye’s largest oil refiner Tüpraş – plans to keep running its refineries “at maximum potential”. Nor did he say that, in 2025, both parent company and subsidiary cut their 2030 climate targets to a level they had already nearly achieved, as Climate Home News’ analysis of company records reveals.
The decision to hand Koç Holding a prominent role at COP31 – the company is also the summit’s “Global Business Partner” – has reignited a long-running controversy over the platforming of fossil fuel interests at the annual UN climate conference.
It has also thrown into question how COP sponsors are chosen and screened. The hosting agreement between the Turkish government and the UN climate secretariat (UNFCCC) says that a partner company’s “climate integrity” should be taken into account.