- What timeline options were delegates debating?
- How did the timeline discussions unfold?
- What were the main points of disagreement?
- Why is the IPCC in a ‘serious funding crisis’?
- How have scientists reacted?
- What other issues remain unresolved?
- How are the IPCC AR7 reports progressing?
- How might the IPCC use AI and enhance gender inclusivity?
Climate change contributed to turning Los Angeles and its surroundings into a dry tinder-box of fuel just at the time of year when strong winds make fire most dangerous, a group of scientists have found.
Thirty-two scientists working with the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group found that climate change – resulting in a world 1.3C hotter than pre-industrial times – made the dry conditions that fuelled the fires 35% more likely. A further rise in global warming to 2.6C, which is expected by 2100 on the current path, will make these conditions another 35% more likely again, they added.
“Drought conditions are more frequently pushing into winter, increasing the chance a fire will break out during strong Santa Ana winds that can turn small ignitions into deadly infernos,” said Clair Barnes, a WWA researcher from Imperial College London. “Without a faster transition away from planet-heating fossil fuels, California will continue to get hotter, drier, and more flammable,” she added.
Despite coming to power after the fires’ worst destruction, US President Donald Trump has officially begun the process of leaving the Paris climate agreement, paused all foreign climate finance, promoted fossil fuels and announced restrictions on wind power.
Climate “whiplash effect”
Over the last three weeks, fires around Los Angeles have destroyed over 10,000 homes and killed at least 28 people. While fires in the summer are common in southern California, the winter is usually too wet for fires to spread despite strong winds at that time of year.
But this winter was the driest for over 30 years, affecting the oak trees, shrubs and grasses which surround the city. These dried-out plants fuelled fires which were spread rapidly by high winds and which a fire service with inadequate water supplies struggled to contain, the study found. Fire-prone conditions have lengthened by about 23 extra days each year, the scientists said.
They concluded that, while the extension of the dry season into the windy season is linked to climate change, the role of climate change in the strength of the winds themselves is unclear and requires more research.
While this winter has been dry, the previous two winters were among the rainiest of the last few decades, promoting the growth of the plants which burned this winter. The WWA scientists suggested this may be an example of the climate-driven “whiplash effect”, where very dry and wet weather follow each other, as they did when drought gave way to flooding in East Africa in 2023.
But climate change was not the only factor that worsened the fires in the Los Angeles region. The scientists said that water infrastructure – not designed to fight a rapidly expanding wildfire – was unable to keep up with the scale and extreme needs.
“It was designed for more routine structural fires not the sort of unprecedented and coninuous needs that were posed by the fast moving wildfire that we saw”, said Roop Singh, head of urban and attribution at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has said that some fire fighters’ hydrants failed because of a lack of water pressure. WWA said that investments in improved pressure management are needed.
The WWA researchers also emphasised the importance of early warning and evacuation systems as 17 of the 28 deaths occurred in West Altadena, a neighborhood where some residents were only advised to leave after the fire had reached the area.
The family of 73-year-old Priscilla Shurney, who died two days after a rushed evacuation, told the LA Times their relative would still be alive if timely warnings had been given.
Park Williams, a geography professor at the University of California, said that while climate change had made the vegetation that served as fuel drier than it would otherwise have been, “the real reason they become disasters is that homes have been built in areas where fast-moving, high-intensity fires are inevitable”.
“Communities can’t build back the same, because it will only be a matter of years before these burned areas are vegetated again and a high potential for fast-moving fire returns to these landscapes,” he added.
Despite warnings like this, many residents have said they will rebuild their burned-down homes – and Newsom has promised to put public money towards reconstruction efforts.
Singh warned that in Los Angeles and globally, there has been an increase in building in the interface between wildlands and cities. She gave the example of the Greek capital Athens, which has a similar Mediterranean climate to southern California and suffered from climate-driven fires this summer.
Trump vows action on disasters
In his inauguration speech on January 20, Trump – a climate change sceptic – said the LA fires had been burning for weeks “without even a token of defense”.
He noted that the disaster had affected “some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in our country” who lost their homes to the flames.
“That’s interesting. But we can’t let this happen. Everyone is unable to do anything about it. That’s going to change,” he said, without elaborating on how his government would act.
Later, while visiting storm-hit North Carolina and fire-stricken California, the president said he would sign an executive order to overhaul or get rid of the main federal agency that responds to emergencies, calling it a “disaster” and saying he preferred to give federal money to states to handle catastrophes themselves.
(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)
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Climate change helped turn LA into dry tinderbox before fires, scientists find
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Three countries have been named by the Paris Agreement’s compliance committee for failing to submit a nationally determined contribution (NDC) and repeatedly snubbing offers of help with their climate plans.
After months of internal debate over whether to identify serial non-responders, the Paris Agreement’s Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC) named the three countries which have failed to engage with it over their NDCs on Friday.
It named Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and North Korea in a footnote of its annual report, adding that it decided to name them “with a view to facilitating engagement”, adding that representatives of the three nations had been invited to its meeting in early 2027 “with the purpose of identifying any challenges and constraints”.
“The Committee noted the importance of Parties engaging with the Committee in a timely manner, while noting that some delays may be due to the national capabilities and circumstances of the Parties”, the report said.
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Paris Agreement committee snubbed over missing NDC climate plans
Many governments have still not submitted a nationally determined contribution to the UN, breaching a key requirement of the Paris Agreement
In July, PAICC said 12 countries had ignored its repeated attempts to discuss why they had not published an NDC as required every five years under the 2015 Paris accord.
Members of the committee had been divided over whether to name them, but at a September meeting decided to do so in their annual report to the annual climate COP summit.
By the time the report was published on Friday, only Congo, Senegal and North Korea “had not communicated an NDC or submitted a [Biennial Transparency Report] and had not yet responded to any of the Committee’s notifications, despite several reminders issued by the Committee in this regard”.
Rainforest and renewable energy ambitions
The silence from Congo and Senegal is notable because the former is home to much of the Congo Basin rainforest while the latter has sought billions of dollars in climate finance to support its renewable energy ambitions.
After Brazil, Congo has more rainforest than any country in the world. This forest, and the country’s peatlands, absorb huge amounts of greenhouse gas but are fast being lost to expanding farmland, charcoal production, logging and mining.
Senegal signed a Just Energy Transition Partnership with Canada and wealthy European nations in 2023, to help it meet its renewable energy targets under the-then government of Macky Sall. It was chair of the Least Developed Countries group between January 2022 and December 2023.
Tejas Rao, who is researching the PAICC as part of a doctoral thesis at Cambridge University, said the governments of the three countries should engage with the committee.
“Engagement costs these governments very little and the committee has shown it will listen,” he said.
“Silence leaves the committee with no basis to help, and it leaves the [governments] exposed to the narrative that they are simply disengaged,” he told Climate Home News.
Paris Agreement requirement
The 2015 Paris Agreement requires all parties to publish an NDC every five years outlining their emissions reduction targets, with each plan meant to be more ambitious than the country’s last NDC.
The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in February 2025. While most countries missed this deadline, all but around 30 – mostly small emitters but including Egypt, Vietnam and Argentina – have now submitted them.
Over the year, the PAICC – which is made up of government climate officials from developed and developing countries – has been communicating with governments that have not submitted NDCs and trying to overcome barriers to them doing so.
Some nations have cited exceptional circumstances as the reason for not submitting an NDC, a process that requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC, seen by Climate Home News, said that the country’s civil war had led to the suspension of its NDC preparation.
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The US and Iran are not signed up to the Paris Agreement and so do not have active NDCs, nor does Taiwan, which is not a UN member state.
Rao said that because the PAICC is “facilitative and non-punitive”, naming the countries “is meant to open a door, not close one – the invited consultation is the point”.
“In recent months, governments that explained their constraints, whether capacity, finance or domestic process, have been met with follow-up and support rather than sanction, and the number of silent governments has fallen sharply,” Rao said.
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Paris Agreement committee names three countries snubbing it over NDCs
Countries have failed – for the sixth time running – to agree on the timeline for publishing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) next set of influential reports.
The IPCC’s 65th session (IPCC-65) was seen by many to be the final opportunity for countries to agree on a schedule where its seventh assessment report (AR7) would be published in time for the UN’s second “global stocktake” of climate action.
Before last week’s meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, IPCC chair Prof Sir Jim Skea had warned that releasing the reports in time for the stocktake in 2028 would depend on a timelines being agreed by the end of 2026.
But the week-long meeting descended into fraught disagreements between governments, resulting in Skea “suspending” the talks on Friday evening with no decision made.
Countries were also unable to agree on the IPCC’s budget for the rest of the AR7 cycle, leaving the body with a “serious funding crisis”.
The IPCC has pledged to reconvene the meeting at the “earliest opportunity”; however, it has not yet given an indication of when this will be.
In his concluding remarks, Skea described the Addis Ababa summit as a “profound disappointment” and “among the most difficult IPCC meetings”, according to reporting from the Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).
Some countries have reacted with dismay to the breakdown of negotiations, warning that a failure to have the IPCC’s latest assessments on climate adaptation and mitigation ready for the UN stocktaking exercise would undermine global climate action.
A climate envoy fr