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China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
China’s CO2 emissions down
STRUCTURAL DECLINE: China’s clean power generation growth has, for the “first time”, been the driver of a fall in the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions levels, new analysis for Carbon Brief found. CO2 emissions were down 1.6% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025 and have fallen 1% over the last 12 months, it added, driven by decreasing power sector emissions – all despite rapid electricity demand growth. This could mark a “potentially significant turning point” in China’s emissions trajectory, the analysis said.
BOOMING INDUSTRIES: China’s clean-energy sectors have been “developing rapidly”, China’s tax bureau said, with the sectors’ sales revenue growing 13.6% year-on-year – “11.5 percentage points higher than the national average”, according to industry news outlet China Energy News. Analysis by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies noted “production of the ‘three new’ industries was strong” in the first quarter of 2025. More than 3m workers were employed in the “ecological and environmental protection sector” in China in 2024, Chinese financial news outlet Yicai said. Meanwhile, Chinese finance news outlet Caixin reported on Shandong and Guangdong becoming the first two provinces in China to issue “market-based pricing rules for wind and solar power”, in a policy push that is expected to create short-term uncertainty for clean-energy industries.
COAL ASSETS: China’s fossil fuel sector emitted “nearly 25m tonnes of methane” in 2024 – the vast majority of which came from coal mines, including abandoned mines, a new report by the International Energy Agency said. It added that fossil-fuel methane emissions in China are set to fall by nearly 15% by 2030 and by around 30% by 2035. Elsewhere, carbon offsetting company Verra has developed a new methodology that could “channel more private capital toward the early phase out of coal-fired power plants” in Asia, Bloomberg said. However, Yan Qin, principal analyst at ClearBlue Markets, told Carbon Brief that Chinese stakeholders are “unlikely” to use the credits as they are not recognised in China’s voluntary carbon market. The state-run newspaper China Daily reported that China developed a “deep-sea vault” for greenhouse gases in the South China Sea, designed to store 1.5m tonnes of CO2 annually.
Drought hit China’s breadbasket
DROUGHT: Severe drought has hit several provinces across China, including Henan, Jiangsu and Shaanxi, with high temperatures and low rainfall “affecting local farming and water resources”, Yicai reported. Bloomberg noted that the “hot and dry weather is threatening wheat production, potentially disrupting output”. One trading firm has trimmed its forecast of China’s wheat production for 2025, Reuters reported. Upcoming summer monsoonal rains, known as meiyu (梅雨), “could help ease concerns over crop development”, Bloomberg said, although it added that global warming appeared to be driving “wild swings” in rainfall patterns during the season.
PESTS: A new study from Peking University, covered by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP), found that migratory pests from southeast Asia are “partially driving rice yield losses in southern China”. The researchers added that “continued global warming” will likely increase how often issues with crop pests arise, “posing a major obstacle to stabilising food production”. China has released a plan for disaster prevention during 2025’s flood season in order to ensure a “bumper harvest”, which includes measures to prevent damage from floods, drought, heat, typhoons and pests, the state-run newspaper China Daily said.
POLLEN: Meanwhile, Beijing’s forestation drive has led to a rise in cases of hay fever, Bloomberg reported, noting that trees commonly used in the programme, such as “willows and poplar trees”, have high pollen output. It added that, according to environmental experts, China “didn’t have a better choice of plants when it started the forestation campaign” – quoting one saying that the country’s goal was to “get green first, and then to consider other things”.
Global south policymakers in Beijing
RENEWABLES TO AFRICA: New research by UK-based thinktank ODI Global has found that solar and wind power projects accounted for 59% of China’s energy investments in Africa in 2024, SCMP said. South African policymakers travelled to China to discuss “large-scale renewable energy”, “clean coal” and “grid management” with Chinese counterparts and industry representatives, according to the Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily. Elsewhere, Nigeria “recently floated, and then quickly walked back, a proposed ban on imported solar panels” as the country tries to develop its own local solar industry, the China Global South Project reported.
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MONEY TO CELAC: Meanwhile, representatives of Latin American and Caribbean countries travelled to Beijing for a forum hosted by China, in which President Xi Jinping pledged to provide “66bn yuan ($9bn) in credit” and expand cooperation in “clean energy” with the region, SCMP reported. The “Beijing declaration” issued after the forum emphasised the need for “all parties to consider acceding to international instruments on climate change…and avoiding the creation of new trade barriers”.
LULA TO CHINA: Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was also in China on a state visit, the New York Times said, noting that Lula was seeking “gains in new technologies, including…green energy”. His visit culminated in Chinese companies announcing $5bn in investments in Brazil, Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported, including in “sustainable aviation fuel”, “electric and hybrid cars” and other energy-related projects. A joint statement issued by the two countries stated that they will “deepen cooperation” on the energy transition and stated China will “send a high-level delegation” to COP30.
XI TO RUSSIA: Earlier, Xi made a state visit to Russia, during which Chinese and Russian policymakers discussed “Chinese companies’ involvement in Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects”, Reuters reported. A joint statement, published by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, pledged to implement projects “in the fields of oil, gas, LNG, civilian nuclear energy, coal, electricity [and] renewable energy”. State broadcaster CGTN called the China-Russia east-route gas pipeline, which began operating last December, a “landmark” in energy cooperation “benefiting about 450m people along its route”. Oleg Deripaska, chairman of the ecological committee of the China-Russia Friendship Committee for Peace and Development, told the People’s Daily: “Russia can learn from China’s experience of supply-side structural reforms to promote the creation of a mature green energy market.”
Captured
China currently has 161m tonnes (Mt) per year of electric arc furnace (EAF) steelmaking capacity and is building another 55Mt, according to a new data analysis tool developed by energy thinktank Global Energy Monitor. However, it noted, China “exhibits substantial gaps in data availability”, with feedstock information available for less than 8% of its EAF capacity.
Spotlight
What China’s coal country thinks about climate change
A new survey of Shanxi residents, exploring attitudes to climate change and “just transition”, offers a rare insight into the views of Chinese people on the frontline of the energy transition in the country’s largest coal-producing province.
In this issue, Carbon Brief interviews Tom Wang, one of the organisers of the survey, about its key findings. Wang is executive director of People of Asia for Climate Solutions, a climate advocacy group.
This interview was edited for length and clarity. A full version is available on Carbon Brief’s website.
Carbon Brief: Why did you want to conduct this survey?
Tom Wang: I’m from Shanxi province. I grew up thinking that coal was a necessary part of life. But I also lost quite a lot of people in my family to coal-mine accidents or air pollution.
Shanxi province is the world’s largest coal producer. [Note: The province’s coal output reached 1.3bn tonnes in 2024.] We contribute around one-third of [China’s] coal. Millions of people rely on coal-related jobs.
[But China’s climate policies mean] Shanxi cannot depend on the coal economy. Shanxi province’s own policies have also covered the energy transition. These policies [are not] being translated into something more tangible to people’s lives. People are not prepared.
That is why we wanted to do this survey. We ask two simple questions: do you know about and support the energy transition – and are you prepared?
CB: What do people in Shanxi think about the energy transition, climate change and climate policy?
TW: When it comes to climate change, awareness levels are very different between different demographic groups. For example, government workers and people with higher income or education levels know about climate change.
Some could identify things happening around them, such as warmer temperatures every year, longer drought periods and not having any snow last winter. Some even mentioned extreme weather, including heatwaves and a week-long rainstorm that ruined a lot of Shanxi’s ancient temples.
However, the most vulnerable communities, by which I basically mean the coal community, don’t really know about climate change. They know about [climate] buzzwords, but they don’t really understand them.
CB: Why is that?
TW: Most state-owned media talk a lot about climate change. However, they do not explain what that means for people’s everyday lives.
When we explain the energy transition means we are going to use less coal, they can understand…and feel the impact on their lives quite sharply.
CB: The survey also asked people what they would like to see prioritised in a just transition away from coal. What did respondents say was important to them?
TW: We all know JET-P, the Just Energy Transition Partnership. However, in Shanxi province, what we really need is the JET-B, a Just Energy Transition Brotherhood.
Rich provinces in China relied heavily on Shanxi’s coal to develop their economies. [The JET-B calls on them to] support Shanxi with its energy transition. Many [respondents] agreed with this!
Also, the people of Shanxi are actually willing to change or improve their own skill-sets. They know how dangerous it is to work in the coal industry. There is a high awareness of the lack of a future for the coal industry among respondents. People are quite happy to move on, if they are provided with good training and strong support to help that transition go smoothly.
CB: According to the survey, just over a quarter of Shanxi’s young people felt they did not have the skills they needed for a clean-energy economy. Around half were worried about the closure of coal mines and coal-power plants. What can be done to address their concerns?
TW: In Shanxi province we have universities that are dedicated to the coal industry. We have spent so much energy and resources on preparing our young people for the coal industry, instead of preparing them for the transition away from coal.
Young people don’t know how to prepare for the energy transition. And then there’s the current job market. Shanxi’s economy is so weak – in 2024, our province had the lowest economic growth rate in China.
Shanxi is not very good at setting up new industries. We have all of this potential but we are not really translating it into jobs. That’s why the young generation doesn’t feel confident.
CB: What lessons should be taken away from the survey?
TW: We need to prepare…the coal community and the young generation today. We cannot afford to wait any longer. We need to tangibly start to train people and raise new sectors.
Communications are also critical. We need to inspire people. Young people and the coal community are feeling lost.
We need to highlight that all these [possibilities] are out there. That’s what I would like our policymakers, investors and NGOs to tell people. And richer provinces should step up and say: “Now it’s time for us to help you.”
Watch, read, listen
CLIMATE SCIENCE: The Science and Technology Daily interviewed Prof Liu Congqiang, founding dean of the School of Geosystem Science of Tianjin University, on how the earth systems discipline emerged in China and how it contributes to researching climate change.
NEW STRATEGIES: The Diplomat examined how ambitious climate diplomacy can be sustained without high-level climate cooperation between the US and China.
CLIMATE LEADER: Global Solutions published an article by Henry Huiyao Wang, founder and president of the influential thinktank Center for China and Globalization, on how China can “leverage” its energy transition successes to advance “global climate mitigation”.
ELECTROSTATE: The Financial Times explored how China’s growing electrification helps it overcome a number of geopolitical, security and supply chain “vulnerabilit[ies]”.
New science
Nature Food
China’s agricultural machinery emissions have increased nearly sevenfold since 1985, new research has shown, adding that if they continue to grow they could “hinder” the country’s ability to reach its carbon-neutrality targets. The study, covered by Carbon Brief, used data from the China “statistical yearbook” to calculate the emissions of four types of farm equipment. Prof Zhangcai Qin, a professor at Sun Yat-sen University who was not involved in the new study, told Carbon Brief that disaggregating the emissions of agricultural machinery from food systems more broadly “allow[s] policymakers to design targeted interventions without compromising agricultural productivity”.
Communications Earth & Environment
A new study found that China’s “young natural forests” currently store more above-ground carbon than comparable “young planted forests” – mainly due to differences in tree density. The authors mapped the “aboveground carbon accumulation rates” for China’s young “natural” and “planted” forests in 2020. They found that planted forests sequester carbon more quickly than natural forests. However, they projected that by 2060, natural forests will still hold more above-ground carbon than planted forests.
A new study used machine learning to calculate a possible carbon emissions trajectory for China through to 2030. It mapped China’s carbon
China Briefing is compiled by Wanyuan Song and Anika Patel. It is edited by Wanyuan Song and Dr Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
The post China Briefing 15 May 2025: CO2 emissions fall; Drought affects food production; Climate diplomacy at CELAC appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 13 June 2025: Trump’s ‘biggest’ climate rollback; UK goes nuclear; How Carbon Brief visualises research
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Trump’s latest climate rollback
RULES REPEALED: The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has begun dismantling Biden-era regulations limiting pollution from power plants, including carbon dioxide emissions, reported the Financial Times. Announcing the repeal, climate-sceptic EPA administrator Lee Zeldin labelled efforts to fight climate change a “cult”, according to the New York Times. Politico said that these actions are the “most important EPA regulatory actions of Donald Trump’s second term to date”.
WEBSITE SHUTDOWN: The Guardian reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Climate.gov website “will imminently no longer publish new content” after all production staff were fired. Former employees of the agency interviewed by the Guardian believe the cuts were “specifically aimed at restricting public-facing climate information”.
EVS TARGETED: The Los Angeles Times reported that Trump signed legislation on Thursday “seeking to rescind California’s ambitious auto emission standards, including a landmark rule that eventually would have barred sales of new gas-only cars in California by 2035”.
UK goes nuclear
NEW NUCLEAR: In her first spending review, UK chancellor Rachel Reeves announced £14.2bn for the Sizewell C new nuclear power plant in Suffolk, England – the first new state-backed nuclear power station for decades and the first ever under a Labour government, BBC News reported. The government also announced funding for three small nuclear reactors to be built by Rolls-Royce, said the Times. Carbon Brief has just published a chart showing the “rise, fall and rise” of UK nuclear.
MILIBAND REWARDED: The Times described energy secretary Ed Miliband as one of the “biggest winners” from the review. In spite of relentless negative reporting around him from right-leaning publications, his Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) received the largest relative increase in capital spending. Carbon Brief’s summary has more on all the key climate and energy takeaways from the spending review.
Around the world
- UN OCEAN SUMMIT: In France, a “surge in support” brought the number of countries ratifying the High Seas Treaty to just 10 short of the 60 needed for the agreement to become international law, according to Sky News.
- CALLING TRUMP: Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said he would “call” Trump to “persuade him” to attend COP30, according to Agence France-Presse. Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that the country’s environmental agency has fast tracked oil and highway projects that threaten the Amazon.
- GERMAN FOSSIL SURGE: Due to “low” wind levels, electricity generation from renewables in Germany fell by 17% in the first quarter of this year, while generation from fossil-fuel sources increased significantly, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
- BATTERY BOOST: The power ministry in India announced 54bn rupees ($631m) in funding to build 30 gigawatt-hours of new battery energy storage systems to “ensure round-the-clock renewable energy capacities”, reported Money Control.
-19.3C
The temperature that one-in-10 London winters could reach in a scenario where a key Atlantic ocean current system “collapses” and global warming continues under “intermediate” emissions, according to new research covered by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- A study in Science Advances found that damage to coral reefs due to climate change will “outpace” reef expansion. It said “severe declines” will take place within 40-80 years, while “large-scale coral reef expansion requires centuries”.
- Climatic Change published research which identified “displacement and violence, caregiving burdens, early marriages of girls, human trafficking and food insecurity” as the main “mental health” stressors exacerbated by climate change for women in lower and middle-income countries.
- The weakening of a major ocean current system has partially offset the drying of the southern Amazon rainforest, research published in Environmental Research has found, demonstrating that climate tipping elements have the potential to moderate each other.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Aerosols – tiny light‑scattering particles produced mainly by burning fossil fuels – absorb or reflect incoming sunlight and influence the formation and brightness of clouds. In this way they have historically “acted as an invisible brake on global warming”. New Carbon Brief analysis by Dr Zeke Hausfather illustrated the extent to which a reduction in aerosol emissions in recent decades, while bringing widespread public health benefits through avoided deaths, has “unmasked” the warming caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases. The chart above shows the estimated cooling effect of aerosols from the start of the industrial era until 2020.
Spotlight
How Carbon Brief turns complex research into visuals
This week, Carbon Brief’s interactive developer Tom Pearson explains how and why his team creates visuals from research papers.
Carbon Brief’s journalists will often write stories based on new scientific research or policy reports.
These documents will usually contain charts or graphics highlighting something interesting about the story. Sometimes, Carbon Brief’s visuals team will choose to recreate these graphics.
There are many reasons why we choose to spend time and effort doing this, but most often it can be boiled down to some combination of the following things.
Maintaining editorial and visual consistency
We want to, where possible, maintain editorial and visual consistency while matching our graphical and editorial style guides.
In doing this, we are trying to ease our audience’s reading experience. We hope that, by presenting a chart in a way that is consistent with Carbon Brief’s house style, readers will be able to concentrate on the story or the explanation we are trying to communicate and not the way that a chart might have been put together.
Highlighting relevant information
We want to highlight the part of a chart that is most relevant to the story.
Graphics in research papers, especially if they have been designed for a print context, often strive to illustrate many different points with a single figure.
We tend to use charts to answer a single question or provide evidence for a single point.
Paring charts back to their core “message”, removing extraneous elements and framing the chart with a clear editorial title helps with this, as the example below shows.
Ensuring audience understanding
We want to ensure our audience understands the “message” of the chart.
Graphics published in specialist publications, such as scientific journals, might have different expectations regarding a reader’s familiarity with the subject matter and the time they might be expected to spend reading an article.
If we can redraw a chart so that it meets the expectations of a more general audience, we will.
Supporting multiple contexts
We want our graphics to make sense in different contexts.
While we publish our graphics primarily in articles on our website, the nature of the internet means that we cannot guarantee that this is how people will encounter them.
Charts are often shared on social media or copy-pasted into presentations. We want to support these practices by including as much context relevant to understanding within the chart image as possible.
Below illustrates how adding a title and key information can make a chart easier to understand without supporting information.
When we do not recreate charts
When will we not redraw a chart? Most of the time! We are a small team and recreating data graphics requires time, effort, accessible data and often specialist software.
But, despite these constraints, when the conditions are right, the process of redrawing maps and charts allows us to communicate more clearly with our readers, transforming complex research into accessible visual stories.
Watch, read, listen
SPENDING $1BN ON CLIMATE: New Scientist interviewed Greg de Temmerman, former nuclear physicist turned chief science officer at Quadrature Climate Foundation, about the practicalities and ethics of philanthropic climate-science funding.
GENDER HURDLES: Research director Tracy Kajumba has written for Climate Home News about the barriers that women still face in attending and participating in COPs.
OCEAN HEATWAVES: The New York Times presented a richly illustrated look at how marine heatwaves are spreading across the globe and how they affect life in the oceans.
Coming up
- 16-26 June: Bonn climate talks, Bonn, Germany
- 16 June: 79th meeting of the World Meteorological Organization executive council, Geneva, Switzerland
- 17 June: International Energy Agency (IEA) Oil 2025 report launch
Pick of the jobs
- Inside Climate News, California environmental reporter | Salary: Unknown. Location: Southern California
- Natural Resources Wales, lead marine and energy policy advisor | Salary: £45,367-£50,877. Location: Wales
- Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, senior manager, climate | Salary: £82,000. Location: London/hybrid
- Green Party,social media and digital content officer | Salary: £33,211. Location: London/remote
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 13 June 2025: Trump’s ‘biggest’ climate rollback; UK goes nuclear; How Carbon Brief visualises research appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The UK’s chancellor Rachel Reeves gave the green light this week to the Sizewell C new nuclear plant in Suffolk, along with funding for “small modular reactors” (SMRs) and nuclear fusion.
In her spending review of government funding across the rest of this parliament, Reeves pledged £14.2bn for Sizewell C, £2.5bn for Rolls-Royce SMRs and £2.5bn for fusion research.
The UK was a pioneer in civilian nuclear power – opening the world’s first commercial reactor at Calder Hall in Cumbria in 1956 – which, ultimately, helped to squeeze out coal generation.
Over the decades that followed, the UK’s nuclear capacity climbed to a peak of 12.2 gigawatts (GW) in 1995, while electricity output from the fleet of reactors peaked in 1998.
The chart below shows the contribution of each of the UK’s nuclear plants to the country’s overall capacity, according to when they started and stopped operating.
The reactors are dotted around the UK’s coastline, where they can take advantage of cooling seawater, and many sites include multiple units coded with numbers or letters.
Since Sizewell B was completed in 1995, however, no new nuclear plants have been built – and, as the chart above shows, capacity has ebbed away as older reactors have gone out of service.
After a lengthy hiatus, the Hinkley C new nuclear plant in Somerset was signed off in 2016. It is now under construction and expected to start operating by 2030 at the earliest.
(Efforts to secure further new nuclear schemes at Moorside in Cumbria failed in 2017, while projects led by Hitachi at Wylfa on Anglesey and Oldbury in Gloucestershire collapsed in 2019.)
The additional schemes just given the go-ahead in Reeves’s spending review would – if successful – somewhat revive the UK’s nuclear capacity, after decades of decline.
However, with the closure of all but one of the UK’s existing reactors due by 2030, nuclear-power capacity would remain below its 1995 peak, unless further projects are built.
Moreover, with the UK’s electricity demand set to double over the next few decades, as transport, heat and industry are increasingly electrified, nuclear power is unlikely to match the 29% share of generation that it reached during the late 1990s.
There is an aspirational goal – set under former Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson – for nuclear to supply “up to” a quarter of the UK’s electricity in 2050, with “up to” 24GW of capacity.
Assuming Sizewell B continues to operate until 2055 and that Hinkley C, Sizewell C and at least three Rolls-Royce SMRs are all built, this would take UK capacity back up to 9.0GW.
Methodology
The chart is based on data from the World Nuclear Association, with known start dates for operating and retired reactors, as well as planned closure dates announced by operator EDF.
The timeline for new reactors to start operating – and assumed 60-year lifetime – is illustrative, based on published information from EDF, Rolls-Royce, the UK government and media reports.
The post Chart: The rise, fall and rise of UK nuclear power over eight decades appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Chart: The rise, fall and rise of UK nuclear power over eight decades
Recent years have seen a rapid succession of climate-related records broken.
To name just a few, the world has witnessed record warmth in the Atlantic, unprecedented glacier melt, all-time low Antarctic sea ice extent, the Amazon’s worst drought since observations began and UK temperatures soaring past 40C for the first time.
In a review article, published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, my coauthors and I look at how the frequency of weather records is changing as the planet warms.
We find that the number of hot temperature records observed around the world since 1950 far exceed what would be expected in a million years in a world without human-caused climate change.
Specifically, we show that “all-time” daily hot records on land were more than four times higher in 2016-24 than they would have been in a world without climate change.
Meanwhile, daily maximum rainfall records were up 40% over the same time period and record cold events were twice as rare.
A key finding of our research is that it is the pace of global warming that controls the occurrence of records.
We show that, if the pace of warming were to slow down, the frequency of record-breaking hot events would start to decline – even if global temperatures continue to rise.
Counting records
By definition, records are supposed to be rare events, at least in a system that is not changing.
Statistics of record occurrence are remarkably simple. They are expected to become rarer the longer a measurement series gets.
The chance of observing a new record after 20 years of measurement is one in 20, or 5%. And after 100 years of observations, the chances of a new record drops to 1%.
For example, this is why it becomes increasingly difficult to break records in athletics as time goes by, unless training methods or sports equipment improve.
Record-breaking weather events – for example, the highest windspeed, most intense rainfall or hot and cold temperatures – also face these odds in a climate that is “stationary”.
However, today’s climate is not stationary, but warming at a very high pace. This has significant implications for the record count.
The plot below shows how the frequency of all-time hot records (dashed red line) and record cold events (dashed blue line) has changed since the 1960s. This is compared to the probability that would be expected under a stationary climate (black line).
(The plot uses ERA5, a reanalysis dataset, which combines observations and models from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).)
It illustrates how the frequency of hot events declined more slowly than would be expected in a stationary climate since 1950, before increasing in the last 15 years. Meanwhile, the frequency of record cold events is declining more quickly than expected.
The record ratio
Tracking the ratio between the measured number of records and the one theoretically expected in a stationary climate – the “record ratio” – reveals the fingerprint of climate change.
Analysis of ERA5 data and Berkeley Earth surface temperature observations finds that the record ratio over the last decade for hot records over global land regions is more than four. For cold records, it is between 0.2 and 0.5, showing that record-breaking cold has declined
In other words, there were more than four times as many hot record events and less than half as many cold record events than would be expected without global warming.
In 2023 and 2024, the record ratio for hot events reached 5.5 and 6.2, respectively.
Record ratios tend to be higher over global oceans than on land. They are also higher for monthly or seasonal record temperatures than all-time daily records.
This is because natural variability in the climate tends to be smaller over oceans and for longer averaging periods, such as months and seasons.
Record counts directly relate to the relationship between rates of warming and natural fluctuations in the climate. This is sometimes referred to as the “signal-to-noise ratio”. (The “signal” being the long-term trend of climate change and “noise” referring to short-term fluctuations of natural variability.)
As a result, event types and regions with a higher signal-to-noise ratio tend to see a greater number of records.
Another way of illustrating the signal of climate change is by counting the total number of records in a measurement series.
In a stationary climate, there should be about five records in 100 years of temperature measurements, 7.5 in 1,000 years and less than 10 in 10,000 years.
However, our analysis of records in two measurement series shows how the number of record-breaking events has become significantly higher as the climate has changed.
For example, as the figure on the left below illustrates, a new annual record for average global temperature has been set 25 times over the past 175 years.
Meanwhile, the figure on the right shows how, in the Pacific north-west, a new five-day average heat record has been set 14 times within the last 75 years. The spike in temperature in 2021 reflects the brutal heatwave that killed hundreds of people and brought devastating wildfires that almost entirely destroyed the Canadian village of Lytton.
(In both figures, the warm records are marked by pink circles.)
According to fundamental laws of statistics, 14 new records would not be expected in more than a million years in a climate that is not warming.
It is worth noting that some climate variables, including ocean heat content, sea level rise and minimum glacier or ice sheet volumes, are changing so relentlessly that new record levels are currently set every year.
Record-shattering events
Record-shattering events are a subset of record-breaking events whose magnitude exceeds the previous event by a large margin.
In our research, we define this as more than one standard deviation, which is a measure of how spread out data is from the average.
(The exact value of standard deviation varies for different parts of the world. For example, when it comes to year-to-year average temperatures, one standard deviation is typically 2-3C in the Arctic, but less than 0.5C over the ocean).
These events of unprecedented intensity are often very impactful as they strongly exceed the conditions that society or ecosystems have experienced in the past.
The 2021 heatwave in the Pacific north-west, mentioned above, is a forbidding example.
Our research finds that the large number of record-shattering events in the past three decades is the consequence of a very high warming rate.
Using a simple timeseries model, we illustrate why the pace of warming is the key factor explaining the occurrence of record-shattering events.
In the left-hand figure, we assume a 150-year period of no warming followed by some linear warming at three different rates, which is a very simplistic approximation of historical and future warming pathways.
The right-hand figure illustrates what happens to the probability of record-shattering events in the Pacific north-west region under these three simplified pathways. It shows that the probability of record-shattering events at first rapidly increases and then stabilises. And the level at which the probability stabilises is greater the higher the rate of warming.
We therefore conclude that the high frequency of record-shattering hot extremes in recent years is controlled by the very high rate of warming caused by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
This tight coupling of record counts to the rate or speed of warming implies that there will be early benefits of slowing down global warming.
In our research, we look at how the probability of hot and cold records changes under different emissions reduction scenarios. To do this, we analysed the occurrence of record hot and cold events in climate model projections in the CMIP6 archive.
The figure below shows how stabilising temperatures by achieving net-zero carbon emissions (SSP1-1.9 and SSP1-2.6) will lead to a rapid decline of records, even if temperatures remain higher than in the historical period.
(It is worth noting that, while the number of records will decline under this lower-emissions scenario, the number of heatwaves would remain higher than today.)
Under intermediate (SSP2-4.5), high (SSP3-7.0) and very high emission (SSP5-8.5) scenarios, the number of records would continue to increase to levels much higher than today.
Rainfall records
We would also expect rainfall records to become progressively rarer in a stationary climate.
However, we find that record-breaking heavy precipitation occurred about 40% more often in 2015-24 than would be expected in a stationary climate. Many record-shattering heavy rainfall extremes occurred in the mid-latitudes and led to flooding which had large impacts.
(Calculating the frequency of records is more challenging for rainfall than for temperature, given small-scale variations and uncertainties in rainfall observations.)
The greater number of record-breaking rainfall events is due to an increase in precipitation intensity over most land regions as the atmosphere warms, as well as larger variations of rainfall intensity on a day-to-day, season-to-season and year-to-year basis .
We also find that the margin by which previous rainfall records are broken tends to become larger and larger in time. This is due to the “non-symmetric” distribution of rainfall – where there are many days with little precipitation, less with heavy precipitation and very few with very extreme precipitation.
It is therefore not surprising to see record-shattering precipitation events exceeding previous records by 20-50% in intensity, even if overall precipitation intensity increases by roughly 7% per degree of warming.
Preparing for the future
Efforts to adapt to climate change are typically informed by the worst events observed in recent generations.
This means that society is often underprepared for record-shattering events – which by their very definition are of unprecedented intensity.
Qualitative and quantitative storyline methods can offer insight into the many record-breaking events to come into the future – and, thus, help society prepare for escalating climate impacts.
These methods combine information from historical and paleoarchives, long measurement series, targeted climate model experiments, statistical and machine learning methods and weather forecasting systems.
Ultimately, these methods can improve society’s preparedness to climate change, so that the next record-shattering extreme does not come as a surprise.
The post Guest post: How climate change is fuelling record-breaking extreme weather appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: How climate change is fuelling record-breaking extreme weather
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