Sunsets are like blazing bonfires guiding us towards darkness – whether we’re ready or not.
Dodging chaotic shade thrown jaggedly like daggers, I constantly rebuilt myself like a phoenix in the midst of smoldering midnight melancholy. The swirling backroads of Virginia’s majestic mountains both tore apart and transformed my identity, teaching me early on that transformation is unavoidable. Essentially, my climate has always been changing.
Despite its magnificent beauty, Forge Road (also known as Route 608) has always been quilted with lies, broken promises, and deception. Isolated and forgotten, older generations have sometimes referred to it as God’s landscape. It’s more like a concrete pathway to hell. In the past few decades, steadfast gentrification has blanketed the hillside, forcing farmers whose livelihoods depended on the land to completely rebuild from the bottom again. For miles, pastures were emptied and fields were plowed for the last time to make way for cumbersome suburban castles, their gates still spiking up into the sun’s raging horizon like needles in my eyes. The whittling away of those gorgeous hills once spotted with grazing cattle has covered hundreds of acres in gaudy communities. As a result, this manifested a cataclysmic split that echoed my perpetual pain. Forced tranquility seamlessly manipulated thru-travelers from denser populations as they searched for a paradise less paved.
But at five years old, I couldn’t yet tell the difference. I would have still called it an oasis.
Commonly known by locals as a racetrack for rednecks and rebels in southern Rockbridge County, Virginia, commuters typically travel Forge Road as an alternative route between Buena Vista (BV) and Glasgow. Until I was four years old, we lived in a trailer park in BV, but my mom feared my sister and I would be labeled as “trailer trash” when we started kindergarten. So, we left our well-insulated bedrooms for a drafty and cramped two-bedroom cottage at least 20 minutes from any of the neighboring towns: Buena Vista (population: 6k), Glasgow (population: 1k), and Lexington (population: 7k). My dad grew up in Lexington and Granny Elsie, his mother, maintained their family homeplace for decades. Despite the distance, Granny visited us as often as she could and helped us settle into our new home.
My mom was raised in Roanoke, the largest city in our part of Virginia. She would often tell us stories about how she’d watched farmland get sold and paved over to build a mall, parking lots, and other buildings. Joni Mitchell said it best: they’d paved paradise. But I never imagined anything like that would happen to us.
It was the summer of 1995. I had just moved into the tucked-away countryside with my mom, dad, and younger sister Sarah. Our new house, a 1930s farmette, was being freshly painted in a coat of ivory by my mom and Granny.
“Come quick!” I shrieked as the majestic fireball fiercely burned in the distance. Terrified, my Granny Elsie came running.
“What’s wrong, my dear?” she inquired, convinced of danger.
“Look,” I whispered and pointed at the screaming sky. After a moment, Granny’s face softened into a gentle smile. Wrapping our arms around each other, we fixed our gaze on the vibrant neon pink and burnt orange horizon.
I may not have been in any physical harm at that moment, but Granny saved me that day.
From that day on, it became vital for me to not only admire the world’s natural beauty, but to advocate for its existence. Years down the road, we’d sip her freshly brewed Southernly sweet tea and reflect on that evening while playing cards. Granny taught me that life is full of challenges, but she also showed me how to embrace the internalized rhythm of the natural world that pulses through my heart, spirit, and soul. For years to come, we spent countless hours celebrating our joyful adoration of the outdoors no matter the season.
Later on, Dad mirrored this sentiment. He had reluctantly left our family in 1997, but we reconnected when I was an adult. “No matter how you say it, it’s going to be a song,” he told me as we improvised a myriad of funky tunes (me on piano and vocals and him on bass or drums). And he was right.
My parents met in a rock band. Mom taught music, and Dad was a self-employed rockstar, so music was a non-negotiable part of our life. I often felt out of place around my peers. “Most likely to dig through the trash and recycle” was my so-called unofficial superlative, but it was true. In my bright stripes and funky hair, I punked my way through school, focusing more on how to save the planet than myself. I realize now those two go hand in hand.
When I was younger, I spent hours reading under the willow tree, swimming in Buffalo Creek, or writing furiously in a composition notebook. I’d wave and grin from the backseat in my mom’s car at old farmers on their rusty tractors. But, sheltered from modern culture, my sister and I also became socially awkward and immensely lonely. We spent most of our time exploring the natural world and I perfected hopping barbed wire fences and walking past grazing cows. Avoiding patties and thorny vines with finesse, we frequently hiked to Buffalo Creek to wade into the gently flowing water.
For my sister and I, our daily life over the years was a performance, and we were not allowed to opt out of that mindset under our mom’s watch. We were constantly putting on a show, from parades and summer theater performances to those infamous beauty pageants. Traveling to these much more densely populated locations allowed us spotty exposure to blissful modern culture, only to return reluctantly (and often begrudgingly) to our isolated home.
We had no well or city water, only an outdated cistern. It wasn’t potable, so we refilled jugs from Food Lion. When it was time to shower, we stood in tubs to collect gray water, then used it to flush (otherwise, we left the yellow to mellow). Mom would not let us keep the heat over 65 degrees in winter because of the price of propane, so I learned at a young age that fossil fuels were not sustainable. Our household’s avid reusing, reducing, and recycling led me to being intensely mindful of my habits and routines.
Our house was built on top of what used to be Mount Lydia Church. Formerly a place of worship for slaves, it transformed in later years into our homeplace. Located just down the road was Bunker Hill Mill, a plantation built on Buffalo Creek over 200 years before I learned to swim in it. And in our front yard, down the hill, is an overgrown cemetery. I would spend hours there quietly reflecting amidst the sunken, unlabeled graves. It often felt like more of a refuge than my dysfunctional home life.
Warning: this paragraph contains mention of abuse. If you find this content upsetting or disturbing, please skip ahead to the following paragraph. Like a frog in boiling water, the abuse began slowly. No one could hear the desperate screams as the cruelty intensified, nor did anyone seem to care. Like melting ice caps, I barely recognized what was happening until it was a prevalent part of who I had become: damaged. After multiple failed attempts to advocate for myself, I became overwhelmed with hopelessness. I wanted to experience what I naively believed was real: a safe world where I mattered. Stress and screams preoccupied my mind. As the violence continued to escalate, I became extremely anxious. Wandering into the woods became the only way for me to process the horrendous intensity at home. Whenever it was finally over or I found a way out, I exited however I could. Often it was through my bedroom window.
Countless nights, I slinked into the plutonium night where the ebony sky would sparkle above me. In school, I learned about constellations like Orion, Casseopoia, and the North Star from local Native American tribes such as the Monacans. I would lay outside for hours letting my imagination run away with ideas about what else existed outside of my painful reality. As I ventured down to Bunker Hill, tiptoeing carefully along fragile riparian buffers of the shimmering creek, I burrowed deeper into my mind looking for solace from the trauma and poverty that engulfed my life. In these moments, the dense shadows of piney woodland allowed me to gradually tap back into the present. I didn’t realize it then, but I had discovered a way to heal myself.
It was around this time that I first noticed the farmland shrinking away. Before long, several beloved pastures and fields were replaced with endless rows of suburban mansions. It was a stark contrast to my life in poverty. Agricultural fatigue had infected my neighborhood, and I stopped seeing as many tractors puckering down Forge Road. The myriad of rolling hills eroded into posh cul-de-sacs. New classmates on our bus made fun of my sister and I constantly for our secondhand clothing. As a result, I developed a problem with stealing in a desperate effort to fit in and feel normal.
Eventually, I began to accept my identity by embracing my passion for nature. I had been one of the first to attend a field trip to Boxerwood Nature Center, a local nonprofit that ran environmental education opportunities for young students. For the first time, I learned about the impacts of water pollution on the Chesapeake Bay. Boxerwood created an opportunity that changed my life forever, one that led me to discovering what my purpose was: to help make the planet a better place.
Ultimately, school became my safe zone. In high school, I started significantly investigating climate change. At 16, I completed a governor’s school summer program about issues affecting the Chesapeake Bay. My senior independent project “Conservation for a Better World” included organizing a solo litter pickup along Buffalo Creek. I even proudly sang a recycle rap on Earth Day with my sister to advocate for waste conservation.
Basically, I set my eyes on a career path that related to helping the environment and climate change. In the process, I slowly started learning how to take better care of myself, too. It wasn’t until decades later during adulthood that I finally learned that I didn’t have to always perform. On the contrary, I could advocate authentically for both myself and my world.
My Granny understood more than anyone else. She helped when she could. “You don’t like to let grass grow under your feet,” she later remarked with a chuckle about my road-runner lifestyle. As I matured, I spent incalculable numbers of miles driving all over tarnation, as she likes to say. Meanwhile, my mom and sister faded out of my world.
Eventually I started to live with Granny in Lexington. So many times rather than staying home with her, I’d say, “Granny, I need to get out.” I’d drive down to the Maury River to spend a few hours basking in the sun or wading away from the world. But what was I darting away from, anyway? Why didn’t I stay in one place more often? I later figured it out: my untreated mental health struggles (CPTSD, depression, anxiety, ADHD) were slowly poisoning me inside, so the whole time I was trying to run away from myself. Perhaps it wasn’t about letting the grass grow under my feet after all, but planting a garden to pollinate my future.
Granny’s incessant loyalty is and will always be as rare as a hopeful blue jewel. With her soft, calming eyes, she would watch me with the most honest admiration I have ever seen. From an observant young girl to a reckless teenager, I was a rose that grew from the cracked backroads of my broken childhood. Granny never stopped being my hero, showing up when I needed rides to appointments more times than I can count. Later, she would arrive with barely an inquisition when I needed to be picked up at night in dubious neighborhoods after a slew of poor choices. I grappled with my mental health for decades and it took a long time to get help that worked. Years of complex trauma eventually led to severe impulsivity and self-induced escapism.
Agricultural fatigue is a lot like compassion fatigue. I cared so much, so deeply, for so long, about the world around me as I simultaneously watched it crumble. Disheartened, I wanted someone to care about me like that too. In a way, my battles with not ever seeming to be able to get away from putting out fires in my life’s conveyor belt of relentlessly abrasive friction were a lot like the world today in perpetual crisis with the climate. Just like Greta, I sometimes felt like I was drowning in stress. I tiptoed around others and stopped advocating for myself for too long. But, my experiences also taught me grit.
Once I found the strength to get up again, my survival instincts brought me to develop a sense of agency for compassionate activism.
In this way, justice became a rainbow of healing in the warm sky that wrapped around me like a blanket. By focusing on who I can and have become rather than the obstacles that hindered me, I found a way to genuinely improve the sustainability of my own life and my impact on the global community. With newfound hope, I now know that I will survive if I choose love and peace.
Eventually, I moved away and started college. I studied Sociology and English (ELA), served my country as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Moldova, then established my career as an educator. I returned to academia a few years later and got my Master’s in Education (M.Ed.) with a focus in nature-based learning (NBL) in order to amplify my global impact. To this day, my pedagogy revolves around advocating and communicating for evidence-based practices and environmental education (EE). Not only that, but I have embraced my musicianship by performing on various instruments at local venues and composing albums with my father.
Ultimately, my experiences healing my trauma through nature have revealed that if I don’t share what’s important and how I need help, people won’t care or know why it matters to be supportive. Especially in rural areas like mine where mental health resources are often scarce, I have had to play an active role that took more than resilience; it took determination and self-control alongside pain, grief, and despair.
As I have watched my climate change around me, I see now that I too am the damaged wilderness on a mountain of chaos.
Like a tree branching out towards sunlight, I am continuing to reach towards brighter moments despite my twisted roots. It’s as if those pathways of agony and revolution are symbolically identical. As if without struggle, I could not have grown, nor healed alongside the transformations happening across the globe without repairing the damages present in my own environments.
In this way, my crisis and rebirth are the same. Like a phoenix, I’ve learned how to release and revitalize, then let go and fly, reaching up to rip down the barriers that have kept me apart from my needs and goals ahead. Despite being stigmatized, I’ve transformed and am taking back control, adding back what I wish to gain so I can find fresh clarity. May I continue to evolve. May my optimized self forgive my former selves who didn’t have the skills or knowledge to do so. And, may my past selves be forever proud of who I’ve become today. Growing up on chaos mountain taught me to sing my heart out. Like my dad once said, “It doesn’t matter how you say it. To me, it’s going to be a song.” And I will not be silenced.
As I move into my 33rd year on this planet, I see clearly how interconnected my mental health is with the natural world. This interconnection has taught me both why and how to actively stop climate change, as well as how to be more mindful of what I already have rather than be wasteful or inefficient. My dedication to global justice is an essential part of my wild, incorrigible spirit. Returning to Buffalo Creek whenever I can is a necessity for my mental health due to its deeply embedded sacrality in my soul. An essential part of my spirituality is optimized every time I lead myself down the hidden metal stairs with the loosely tied rope to keep me stable.
As I dip my toes in the clear fresh water, I am reminded of how brief our lives really are. Like the water, I keep moving forward, rejuvenated and empowered by the ecosystem to protect nature. Although depression and trauma still penetrate elements of my world, I’ve allowed my transformation to fuel my fire to fight for the future of our planet. My childhood escapism, which once led to a myriad of crises, eventually allowed me to find myself. I am just visiting this planet briefly, a small speck in time, but I’m still here. And the creek still flows.
Namaste.
Katrina Broughman (pronounced “Bruff-man”), a rural native from Rockbridge County, Virginia (VA), has a background in nonprofit leadership, networking/outreach, fundraising, and both English language Arts and environmental education and is an active changemaker in her communities. Katrina currently teaches in Amherst County, holds a B.A. ‘13 in English and Sociology with an emphasis in the environment from Mary Baldwin College (MBU), received her M.Ed.-EBL from MBU with additional M.A. (Sociology) coursework from Morehead State University (KY) in 2021, and has been a certified Virginia Master Naturalist with the Central Blue Ridge Chapter in Lovingston since 2018.
The post Chaos Mountain appeared first on Climate Generation.
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 -
French court rules Total must revise climate plan to account for all emissions
Oil and gas giant TotalEnergies has been given six months by a court to publish a more robust climate plan -
Uganda cites contentious IEA fossil fuel scenario backed by Trump administration
Critics of the African nation’s oil ambitions say referencing the International Energy Agency’s most pessimistic scenario for climate action is a risky policy
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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