Welcome to Carbon Brief’s Cropped.
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Europe focuses on biodiversity
‘WORSE THAN TERRORISM’: Climate change and biodiversity loss pose a more “fundamental threat” to the UK than terrorism or Vladimir Putin, UK foreign secretary David Lammy said in his first major policy address, the Independent reported. Giving a speech at London’s Kew Gardens, Lammy said that climate change and biodiversity loss “may not feel as urgent as a terrorist or an imperialist autocrat”, but they are “more fundamental…systemic…pervasive…and accelerating towards us”, the Independent said. The Financial Times said that Lammy pledged that climate change and biodiversity loss would be “central to all the Foreign Office does”, and that he will create “special representatives” in each area. The Guardian noted this will be the first time the UK has appointed a special envoy for nature.
RISE OF RIBERA: Elsewhere, Teresa Ribera, Spain’s ecological transition minister, has been appointed as EU commissioner Ursula von der Leyen’s second-in-command, with a “vast portfolio” including climate and competition policy, Politico reported. The Guardian said that the “outspoken” Ribera is to become one of six vice-presidents in the incoming EU executive led by von der Leyen, which is expected to start work at the end of the year. Euronews said that green activists have “breathed a sigh of relief” at the appointment.
AGRICULTURE COMMISSIONER: Von der Leyen has also appointed a new agricultural commissioner in Christophe Hansen, a Luxembourg MP from the centre-right Christian Social People’s party, the Irish Independent reported. According to the newspaper, von der Leyen has given Hansen “100 days to prepare a vision for the EU agriculture and food sectors”, tasking him with ensuring they are both competitive and “within the boundaries of our planet”. Portuguese news agency Lusa said that Portuguese farmers have “high expectations” that Hansen will prioritise the needs of agricultural workers. Elsewhere, DeSmog has mapped “Ireland’s powerful farming lobby”.
Australia’s deforestation hotspots
OUTLIERS: A new report from the environment and heritage department of the New South Wales government found that more than 45,000 hectares of native vegetation were cleared in 2022 to make way for farming, infrastructure and other projects. Nathaniel Pelle, a campaigner with the Australian Conservation Foundation, told the Sydney Morning Herald that Australia is an “outlier among wealthy countries for forest loss”. He added: “Europe has been historically cleared, Canada has been historically cleared, the US and Australia have been historically cleared, but what separates us from them is that we’re still doing it.” Deforestation in the state is “among [the] worst in the world”, the newspaper wrote.
‘ZOMBIE INDUSTRY’: The report showed that land clearing has been on the rise since 2015, when the previous government announced upcoming changes to its land-clearing laws, the outlet said. In a separate article, the Sydney Morning Herald called logging in the neighbouring state of Victoria the “‘zombie’ industry that won’t die”. According to the newspaper, “commercial logging officially ended” on 1 January, but timber mills “continue to process native hardwood timbers” – sourced from private landowners and from the government’s “fuel-reduction” wildfire-prevention strategies. The outlet wrote: “Environment groups say logging is now taking place without proper planning or oversight, leaving threatened species at risk.”
EPA ON THE AGENDA: Despite promises to “develop new nature legislation” and put nature “back on the priority list”, Australia’s Labor government – elected in May 2022 – “has not lived up to…early rhetoric” around nature protection, Adam Morton wrote in a column for the Guardian. Morton noted that the push to create a national environment agency, Environment Protection Australia, “look[s] to be in trouble”, as deals with either the Greens or the Coalition look unlikely. Writing in the Conversation, environmental-law expert Dr Justine Bell-James said: “All this is bad news for our threatened species and sick ecosystems. We know what needs to be done. But our government is showing worrying signs of letting industry and developers control their environmental agenda.”
Spotlight
Humans and polar bears collide at Earth’s Arctic research hub
In this spotlight, Carbon Brief reports from the Earth’s most-northerly human settlement, which is increasingly facing polar bear encounters amid rapid Arctic change.
Ask anyone living and working in Ny-Ålesund – the Earth’s most northern human settlement, located on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean – what they perceive to be the number one threat to their safety and they will each offer the same answer: polar bears.
A little more than 1,200km from the North Pole, the tiny Arctic town of Ny-Ålesund started life as a coal mining district in the early 20th century, but today operates solely as an international climate research hub, hosting about 60 scientists at its busiest time in the summer months.
The vast Arctic wilderness surrounding the town is home to one of the world’s largest permanent polar bear populations.
Protective measures
Ever since Ny-Ålesund’s inception, the company running logistics in the town has implemented strict protocols with the aim of protecting people from polar bears.
The few roads leading out of town are marked with polar bear hazard signs. Nearly every communal building in the town carries posters with instructions of what to do in the event of a polar bear sighting.
When researchers go out into the field to carry out their research, at least one of them must act as a “polar bear guard” – meaning they need to pass shooting practice and carry a rifle in case they need to kill a bear in an emergency.
“We are entering a habitat that is not ours,” Dorothea Moser, an ice cores researcher with the British Antarctic Survey, the UK’s polar research institute, told Carbon Brief. “With polar bear protection, we’re trying to protect both us as researchers and the polar bear.”

As part of the protective measures when out in the field, guards carry binoculars and constantly scan the environment around them. If they spot a bear on the horizon, the research team will immediately leave the area and notify the town.
If a polar bear is spotted within contact distance – the animals can run at speeds up to 25 miles per hour – then researchers will let off a flare in an attempt to scare it away.
“We can defend ourselves with flares, we’re scaring away the polar bear and creating more space between us in a defensive way,” Moser added. “Of course, we also have to carry a weapon, but we hope that we never have to use it. In the past 30 years, we have not had any lethal encounters.”
Rapid change
These strict measures have protected both scientists and bears for decades in Ny-Ålesund, but rapid change in the region could threaten this delicate balance.
Svalbard bears were nearly hunted to extinction in the 20th century. However, a ban was put in place in 1973, which saw numbers recover. Now, the Beaufort Sea subpopulation, which includes Svalbard bears, is considered “stable”.
However, climate change is causing Svalbard’s environment to shift rapidly, with temperatures rising seven times faster than the global average.
Rapid warming has had a devastating impact on sea ice, which blankets the Arctic Ocean in the cooler winter months before shrinking back at the height of summer. As the Earth warms, the extent of the sea ice in summer is becoming smaller every year.
This is a problem for polar bears, which use sea ice to hunt seals, their main source of prey. Research has found that the disappearance of sea ice is forcing bears to search further afield for food, sometimes bringing them closer towards human settlements.
Ingrid Kjerstad, research coordinator at the Norwegian Polar Institute in Ny-Ålesund, which oversees all scientific research in the town, told Carbon Brief that their records show the number of polar bears coming into contact with humans in the region has increased in recent years.
An increase in human-bear encounters is a worry for both researchers and wildlife. Although scientists in Ny-Ålesund have avoided shooting a bear, there have been several lethal incidents involving both human and animal fatalities in Svalbard’s capital of Longyearbyen.
The evidence of more human-bear encounters in Ny-Ålesund is still “anecdotal” and has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed science journal, Kjerstad added, but is yet another sign of how rapid environmental change is transforming life at Earth’s northern edge.
News and views
BIODIVERSITY FINANCE: Funding to help developing nations address biodiversity loss grew by more than $4bn in 2022, but mostly in the form of loans, rather than grants, according to new figures from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported by Climate Home News. The OECD report, which analysed the period from 2015 to 2022, showed that biodiversity funding grew from $11.1bn in 2021 to $15.4bn in 2022. Climate Home News added that the increase came largely from multilateral institutions – mainly development banks – which increased their funding from $2.7bn in 2021 to $5.7bn in 2022, “mostly by offering concessional loans, which are cheaper than borrowing on commercial terms”.
DAM IT: Dams around the world will struggle to cope with increasingly common severe rainfall, “leading to an increased likelihood of failure and risk of catastrophic flooding”, according to two researchers at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education. They added that “it is not clear what climate and hydrological data was used to design” most of the world’s dams and spillways. Covering the IHE Delft commentary, Sudanese outlet Dabanga wrote that, due to a lack of preventative maintenance, the Jebel Aulia dam south of Khartoum “may lead to a failed agricultural season” this winter. It added: “A collapse of the dam also threatens people in Khartoum.”
CALI INCOMING: The COP16 nature summit will be a key “political moment and a very important moment for biodiversity”, UN biodiversity chief Astrid Schomaker told a press conference on 23 September. Unlike the previous summit, a number of high-profile politicians are due to attend the upcoming talks in Cali, Colombia – including Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Mexico’s president-elect, Dr Claudia Sheinbaum. There will also be a “very strong presence” of Indigenous peoples at the talks, Colombia’s environment minister, Susana Muhamad, told the press briefing. Muhamad also called on richer countries to put more money into the dedicated fund to support biodiversity goals. Meanwhile, Carbon Brief has updated its interactive tracker of national biodiversity strategies and action plans to include new submissions.
ECOCIDE RECOGNITION: Vanuatu has renewed its push to recognise “ecocide” – “the severe and reckless destruction of nature” – under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the Pacific Island News Association reported. The Pacific nation first proposed the addition of ecocide in 2019, the news outlet said, and its bid received a boost from a 2021 independent expert report that “outlined the legal framework for ecocide”. The article quoted Vanuatu’s UN ambassador, Odo Tevi, who said that existing laws protecting nature “are insufficient” and that the definition should “focu[s] on the severity of the outcome rather than specific prohibited behaviours”.
SHAPE UP OR SHIP OUT: Drought in South America is forcing grain shippers “to look for alternatives” as the water level on the Paraná River has dropped precipitously, the Argentine trade publication ArgenPorts reported. Argentine officials noted that while water levels are far below normal at present, the effects of the drought “will not be as cruel and harsh as the one that occurred from 2020 to 2022”. Elsewhere, the “unprecedented drought” in Ecuador has led to “mass power cuts”, forest fires and the declaration of a “red alert” in several parts of the country, according to MercoPress.
Watch, read, listen
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: In Scientific American, science historian Prof Naomi Oreskes argued that the Svalbard Global Seed Vault “illustrate[s] why we need to prevent climate disaster rather than plan for it”.
HISTORY REPEATS: Nigeria’s the Cable examined how a burst dam that displaced 400,000 people in Borno state 30 years ago has flooded once again amid extreme rainfall in the country.
CONTINUED STRUGGLE: Despite legal wins across the world, Indigenous peoples still face evictions from their lands and struggle to obtain the reparations promised to them, a Mongabay investigation found.
PESTICIDE LOOPHOLE: An investigation by Unearthed alleged that companies are exploiting loopholes in France’s landmark pesticide ban to ship growing amounts of harmful chemicals overseas.
New science
- Extreme permafrost thaw could lead to a “rapid intensification” of wildfires in western Siberia and Canada, said research in Nature Communications. Using a wide range of climate simulations, the study found that warming-driven rapid permafrost thaw could lead to “massive soil drying, surface warming and reduction of relative humidity”, which could in turn boost fires.
- Prioritising boosting carbon stores on agricultural land could draw down as much CO2 as global tree-planting by 2050 and provide farmers with hundreds of billions of dollars in economic benefits, a new Nature Food study found. The authors used an economic land-use model to project how boosting carbon in agriculture could benefit producers and the planet.
- New research in Environmental Research Letters found that the number of heatwave days affecting global cropland will increase nearly 4.5-fold by the end of the century under a medium-emissions scenario. Using observational data and climate models, researchers found “consistent increases” in the frequency and intensity of heatwaves affecting croplands in the future.
In the diary
- 10-30 September: 79th session of the UN General Assembly | New York
- 22-28 September: Climate Week NYC 2024 | New York
- 23-27 September: 20th meeting of the Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee to the Stockholm Convention | Rome
- 29 September: International day of awareness of food loss and waste
- 1-2 October: Forest Europe ministerial conference | Königswinter, Germany
- 8-10 October: Global Nature Positive Summit | Sydney
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org.
The post Cropped 25 September 2024: Biodiversity loss ‘worse than terrorism’; Human-polar bear conflict; Australia’s ‘zombie’ forestry appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Greenhouse Gases
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Food inflation on the rise
DELUGE STRIKES FOOD: Extreme rainfall and flooding across the Mediterranean and north Africa has “battered the winter growing regions that feed Europe…threatening food price rises”, reported the Financial Times. Western France has “endured more than 36 days of continuous rain”, while farmers’ associations in Spain’s Andalusia estimate that “20% of all production has been lost”, it added. Policy expert David Barmes told the paper that the “latest storms were part of a wider pattern of climate shocks feeding into food price inflation”.
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NO BEEF: The UK’s beef farmers, meanwhile, “face a double blow” from climate change as “relentless rain forces them to keep cows indoors”, while last summer’s drought hit hay supplies, said another Financial Times article. At the same time, indoor growers in south England described a 60% increase in electricity standing charges as a “ticking timebomb” that could “force them to raise their prices or stop production, which will further fuel food price inflation”, wrote the Guardian.
‘TINDERBOX’ AND TARIFFS: A study, covered by the Guardian, warned that major extreme weather and other “shocks” could “spark social unrest and even food riots in the UK”. Experts cited “chronic” vulnerabilities, including climate change, low incomes, poor farming policy and “fragile” supply chains that have made the UK’s food system a “tinderbox”. A New York Times explainer noted that while trade could once guard against food supply shocks, barriers such as tariffs and export controls – which are being “increasingly” used by politicians – “can shut off that safety valve”.
El Niño looms
NEW ENSO INDEX: Researchers have developed a new index for calculating El Niño, the large-scale climate pattern that influences global weather and causes “billions in damages by bringing floods to some regions and drought to others”, reported CNN. It added that climate change is making it more difficult for scientists to observe El Niño patterns by warming up the entire ocean. The outlet said that with the new metric, “scientists can now see it earlier and our long-range weather forecasts will be improved for it.”
WARMING WARNING: Meanwhile, the US Climate Prediction Center announced that there is a 60% chance of the current La Niña conditions shifting towards a neutral state over the next few months, with an El Niño likely to follow in late spring, according to Reuters. The Vibes, a Malaysian news outlet, quoted a climate scientist saying: “If the El Niño does materialise, it could possibly push 2026 or 2027 as the warmest year on record, replacing 2024.”
CROP IMPACTS: Reuters noted that neutral conditions lead to “more stable weather and potentially better crop yields”. However, the newswire added, an El Niño state would mean “worsening drought conditions and issues for the next growing season” to Australia. El Niño also “typically brings a poor south-west monsoon to India, including droughts”, reported the Hindu’s Business Line. A 2024 guest post for Carbon Brief explained that El Niño is linked to crop failure in south-eastern Africa and south-east Asia.
News and views
- DAM-AG-ES: Several South Korean farmers filed a lawsuit against the country’s state-owned utility company, “seek[ing] financial compensation for climate-related agricultural damages”, reported United Press International. Meanwhile, a national climate change assessment for the Philippines found that the country “lost up to $219bn in agricultural damages from typhoons, floods and droughts” over 2000-10, according to Eco-Business.
- SCORCHED GRASS: South Africa’s Western Cape province is experiencing “one of the worst droughts in living memory”, which is “scorching grass and killing livestock”, said Reuters. The newswire wrote: “In 2015, a drought almost dried up the taps in the city; farmers say this one has been even more brutal than a decade ago.”
- NOUVELLE VEG: New guidelines published under France’s national food, nutrition and climate strategy “urged” citizens to “limit” their meat consumption, reported Euronews. The delayed strategy comes a month after the US government “upended decades of recommendations by touting consumption of red meat and full-fat dairy”, it noted.
- COURTING DISASTER: India’s top green court accepted the findings of a committee that “found no flaws” in greenlighting the Great Nicobar project that “will lead to the felling of a million trees” and translocating corals, reported Mongabay. The court found “no good ground to interfere”, despite “threats to a globally unique biodiversity hotspot” and Indigenous tribes at risk of displacement by the project, wrote Frontline.
- FISH FALLING: A new study found that fish biomass is “falling by 7.2% from as little as 0.1C of warming per decade”, noted the Guardian. While experts also pointed to the role of overfishing in marine life loss, marine ecologist and study lead author Dr Shahar Chaikin told the outlet: “Our research proves exactly what that biological cost [of warming] looks like underwater.”
- TOO HOT FOR COFFEE: According to new analysis by Climate Central, countries where coffee beans are grown “are becoming too hot to cultivate them”, reported the Guardian. The world’s top five coffee-growing countries faced “57 additional days of coffee-harming heat” annually because of climate change, it added.
Spotlight
Nature talks inch forward
This week, Carbon Brief covers the latest round of negotiations under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which occurred in Rome over 16-19 February.
The penultimate set of biodiversity negotiations before October’s Conference of the Parties ended in Rome last week, leaving plenty of unfinished business.
The CBD’s subsidiary body on implementation (SBI) met in the Italian capital for four days to discuss a range of issues, including biodiversity finance and reviewing progress towards the nature targets agreed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
However, many of the major sticking points – particularly around finance – will have to wait until later this summer, leaving some observers worried about the capacity for delegates to get through a packed agenda at COP17.
The SBI, along with the subsidiary body on scientific, technical and technological advice (SBSTTA) will both meet in Nairobi, Kenya, later this summer for a final round of talks before COP17 kicks off in Yerevan, Armenia, on 19 October.
Money talks
Finance for nature has long been a sticking point at negotiations under the CBD.
Discussions on a new fund for biodiversity derailed biodiversity talks in Cali, Colombia, in autumn 2024, requiring resumed talks a few months later.
Despite this, finance was barely on the agenda at the SBI meetings in Rome. Delegates discussed three studies on the relationship between debt sustainability and implementation of nature plans, but the more substantive talks are set to take place at the next SBI meeting in Nairobi.
Several parties “highlighted concerns with the imbalance of work” on finance between these SBI talks and the next ones, reported Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB).
Lim Li Ching, senior researcher at Third World Network, noted that tensions around finance permeated every aspect of the talks. She told Carbon Brief:
“If you’re talking about the gender plan of action – if there’s little or no financial resources provided to actually put it into practice and implement it, then it’s [just] paper, right? Same with the reporting requirements and obligations.”
Monitoring and reporting
Closely linked to the issue of finance is the obligations of parties to report on their progress towards the goals and targets of the GBF.
Parties do so through the submission of national reports.
Several parties at the talks pointed to a lack of timely funding for driving delays in their reporting, according to ENB.
A note released by the CBD Secretariat in December said that no parties had submitted their national reports yet; by the time of the SBI meetings, only the EU had. It further noted that just 58 parties had submitted their national biodiversity plans, which were initially meant to be published by COP16, in October 2024.
Linda Krueger, director of biodiversity and infrastructure policy at the environmental not-for-profit Nature Conservancy, told Carbon Brief that despite the sparse submissions, parties are “very focused on the national report preparation”. She added:
“Everybody wants to be able to show that we’re on the path and that there still is a pathway to getting to 2030 that’s positive and largely in the right direction.”
Watch, read, listen
NET LOSS: Nigeria’s marine life is being “threatened” by “ghost gear” – nets and other fishing equipment discarded in the ocean – said Dialogue Earth.
COMEBACK CAUSALITY: A Vox long-read looked at whether Costa Rica’s “payments for ecosystem services” programme helped the country turn a corner on deforestation.
HOMEGROWN GOALS: A Straits Times podcast discussed whether import-dependent Singapore can afford to shelve its goal to produce 30% of its food locally by 2030.
‘RUSTING’ RIVERS: The Financial Times took a closer look at a “strange new force blighting the [Arctic] landscape”: rivers turning rust-orange due to global warming.
New science
- Lakes in the Congo Basin’s peatlands are releasing carbon that is thousands of years old | Nature Geoscience
- Natural non-forest ecosystems – such as grasslands and marshlands – were converted for agriculture at four times the rate of land with tree cover between 2005 and 2020 | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Around one-quarter of global tree-cover loss over 2001-22 was driven by cropland expansion, pastures and forest plantations for commodity production | Nature Food
In the diary
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean | Brasília
- 5 March: Nepal general elections
- 9-20 March: First part of the thirty-first session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) | Kingston, Jamaica
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz.
Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 25 February 2026: Food inflation strikes | El Niño looms | Biodiversity talks stagnate
Greenhouse Gases
Dangerous heat for Tour de France riders only a ‘question of time’
Rising temperatures across France since the mid-1970s is putting Tour de France competitors at “high risk”, according to new research.
The study, published in Scientific Reports, uses 50 years of climate data to calculate the potential heat stress that athletes have been exposed to across a dozen different locations during the world-famous cycling race.
The researchers find that both the severity and frequency of high-heat-stress events have increased across France over recent decades.
But, despite record-setting heatwaves in France, the heat-stress threshold for safe competition has rarely been breached in any particular city on the day the Tour passed through.
(This threshold was set out by cycling’s international governing body in 2024.)
However, the researchers add it is “only a question of time” until this occurs as average temperatures in France continue to rise.
The lead author of the study tells Carbon Brief that, while the race organisers have been fortunate to avoid major heat stress on race days so far, it will be “harder and harder to be lucky” as extreme heat becomes more common.
‘Iconic’
The Tour de France is one of the world’s most storied cycling races and the oldest of Europe’s three major multi-week cycling competitions, or Grand Tours.
Riders cover around 3,500 kilometres (km) of distance and gain up to nearly 55km of altitude over 21 stages, with only two or three rest days throughout the gruelling race.
The researchers selected the Tour de France because it is the “iconic bike race. It is the bike race of bike races,” says Dr Ivana Cvijanovic, a climate scientist at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development, who led the new work.
Heat has become a growing problem for the competition in recent years.
In 2022, Alexis Vuillermoz, a French competitor, collapsed at the finish line of the Tour’s ninth stage, leaving in an ambulance and subsequently pulling out of the race entirely.
Two years later, British cyclist Sir Mark Cavendish vomited on his bike during the first stage of the race after struggling with the 36C heat.
The Tour also makes a good case study because it is almost entirely held during the month of July and, while the route itself changes, there are many cities and stages that are repeated from year to year, Cvijanovic adds.
‘Have to be lucky’
The study focuses on the 50-year span between 1974 and 2023.
The researchers select six locations across the country that have commonly hosted the Tour, from the mountain pass of Col du Tourmalet, in the French Pyrenees, to the city of Paris – where the race finishes, along the Champs-Élysées.
These sites represent a broad range of climatic zones: Alpe d’ Huez, Bourdeaux, Col du Tourmalet, Nîmes, Paris and Toulouse.
For each location, they use meteorological reanalysis data from ERA5 and radiant temperature data from ERA5-HEAT to calculate the “wet-bulb globe temperature” (WBGT) for multiple times of day across the month of July each year.
WBGT is a heat-stress index that takes into account temperature, humidity, wind speed and direct sunlight.
Although there is “no exact scientific consensus” on the best heat-stress index to use, WBGT is “one of the rare indicators that has been originally developed based on the actual human response to heat”, Cvijanovic explains.
It is also the one that the International Cycling Union (UCI) – the world governing body for sport cycling – uses to assess risk. A WBGT of 28C or higher is classified as “high risk” by the group.
WBGT is the “gold standard” for assessing heat stress, says Dr Jessica Murfree, director of the ACCESS Research Laboratory and assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Murfree, who was not involved in the new study, adds that the researchers are “doing the right things by conducting their science in alignment with the business practices that are already happening”.
The researchers find that across the 50-year time period, WBGT has been increasing across the entire country – albeit, at different rates. In the north-west of the country, WBGT has increased at an average rate of 0.1C per decade, while in the southern and eastern parts of the country, it has increased by more than 0.5C per decade.
The maps below show the maximum July WBGT for each decade of the analysis (rows) and for hourly increments of the late afternoon (columns). Lower temperatures are shown in lighter greens and yellows, while higher temperatures are shown in darker reds and purples.
Six Tour de France locations analysed in the study are shown as triangles on the maps (clockwise from top): Paris, Alpe d’ Huez, Nîmes, Toulouse, Col du Tourmalet and Bordeaux.
The maps show that the maximum WBGT temperature in the afternoon has surpassed 28C over almost the entire country in the last decade. The notable exceptions to this are the mountainous regions of the Alps and the Pyrenees.
The researchers also find that most of the country has crossed the 28C WBGT threshold – which they describe as “dangerous heat levels” – on at least one July day over the past decade. However, by looking at the WBGT on the day the Tour passed through any of these six locations, they find that the threshold has rarely been breached during the race itself.
For example, the research notes that, since 1974, Paris has seen a WBGT of 28C five times at 3pm in July – but that these events have “so far” not coincided with the cycling race.
The study states that it is “fortunate” that the Tour has so far avoided the worst of the heat-stress.
Cvijanovic says the organisers and competitors have been “lucky” to date. She adds:
“It has worked really well for them so far. But as the frequency of these [extreme heat] events is increasing, it will be harder and harder to be lucky.”
Dr Madeleine Orr, an assistant professor of sport ecology at the University of Toronto who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that the paper was “really well done”, noting that its “methods are good [and its] approach was sound”. She adds:
“[The Tour has] had athletes complain about [the heat]. They’ve had athletes collapse – and still those aren’t the worst conditions. I think that that says a lot about what we consider safe. They’ve still been lucky to not see what unsafe looks like, despite [the heat] having already had impacts.”
Heat safety protocols
In 2024, the UCI set out its first-ever high temperature protocol – a set of guidelines for race organisers to assess athletes’ risk of heat stress.
The assessment places the potential risk into one of five categories based on the WBGT, ranging from very low to high risk.
The protocol then sets out suggested actions to take in the event of extreme heat, ranging from having athletes complete their warm-ups using ice vests and cold towels to increasing the number of support vehicles providing water and ice.
If the WBGT climbs above the 28C mark, the protocol suggests that organisers modify the start time of the stage, adapt the course to remove particularly hazardous sections – or even cancel the race entirely.
However, Orr notes that many other parts of the race, such as spectator comfort and equipment functioning, may have lower temperatures thresholds that are not accounted for in the protocol, but should also be considered.
Murfree points out that the study’s findings – and the heat protocol itself – are “really focused on adaptation, rather than mitigation”. While this is “to be expected”, she tells Carbon Brief:
“Moving to earlier start times or adjusting the route specifically to avoid these locations that score higher in heat stress doesn’t stop the heat stress. These aren’t climate preventative measures. That, I think, would be a much more difficult conversation to have in the research because of the Tour de France’s intimate relationship with fossil-fuel companies.”
The post Dangerous heat for Tour de France riders only a ‘question of time’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Dangerous heat for Tour de France riders only a ‘question of time’
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 20 February 2026: EU’s ‘3C’ warning | Endangerment repeal’s impact on US emissions | ‘Tree invasion’ fuelled South America’s fires
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Preparing for 3C
NEW ALERT: The EU’s climate advisory board urged countries to prepare for 3C of global warming, reported the Guardian. The outlet quoted Maarten van Aalst, a member of the advisory board, saying that adapting to this future is a “daunting task, but, at the same time, quite a doable task”. The board recommended the creation of “climate risk assessments and investments in protective measures”.
‘INSUFFICIENT’ ACTION: EFE Verde added that the advisory board said that the EU’s adaptation efforts were so far “insufficient, fragmented and reactive” and “belated”. Climate impacts are expected to weaken the bloc’s productivity, put pressure on public budgets and increase security risks, it added.
UNDERWATER: Meanwhile, France faced “unprecedented” flooding this week, reported Le Monde. The flooding has inundated houses, streets and fields and forced the evacuation of around 2,000 people, according to the outlet. The Guardian quoted Monique Barbut, minister for the ecological transition, saying: “People who follow climate issues have been warning us for a long time that events like this will happen more often…In fact, tomorrow has arrived.”
IEA ‘erases’ climate
MISSING PRIORITY: The US has “succeeded” in removing climate change from the main priorities of the International Energy Agency (IEA) during a “tense ministerial meeting” in Paris, reported Politico. It noted that climate change is not listed among the agency’s priorities in the “chair’s summary” released at the end of the two-day summit.
US INTERVENTION: Bloomberg said the meeting marked the first time in nine years the IEA failed to release a communique setting out a unified position on issues – opting instead for the chair’s summary. This came after US energy secretary Chris Wright gave the organisation a one-year deadline to “scrap its support of goals to reduce energy emissions to net-zero” – or risk losing the US as a member, according to Reuters.
Around the world
- ISLAND OBJECTION: The US is pressuring Vanuatu to withdraw a draft resolution supporting an International Court of Justice ruling on climate change, according to Al Jazeera.
- GREENLAND HEAT: The Associated Press reported that Greenland’s capital Nuuk had its hottest January since records began 109 years ago.
- CHINA PRIORITIES: China’s Energy Administration set out its five energy priorities for 2026-2030, including developing a renewable energy plan, said International Energy Net.
- AMAZON REPRIEVE: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has continued to fall into early 2026, extending a downward trend, according to the latest satellite data covered by Mongabay.
- GEZANI DESTRUCTION: Reuters reported the aftermath of the Gezani cyclone, which ripped through Madagascar last week, leaving 59 dead and more than 16,000 displaced people.
20cm
The average rise in global sea levels since 1901, according to a Carbon Brief guest post on the challenges in projecting future rises.
Latest climate research
- Wildfire smoke poses negative impacts on organisms and ecosystems, such as health impacts on air-breathing animals, changes in forests’ carbon storage and coral mortality | Global Ecology and Conservation
- As climate change warms Antarctica throughout the century, the Weddell Sea could see the growth of species such as krill and fish and remain habitable for Emperor penguins | Nature Climate Change
- About 97% of South American lakes have recorded “significant warming” over the past four decades and are expected to experience rising temperatures and more frequent heatwaves | Climatic Change
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured

Repealing the US’s landmark “endangerment finding”, along with actions that rely on that finding, will slow the pace of US emissions cuts, according to Rhodium Group visualised by Carbon Brief. US president Donald Trump last week formally repealed the scientific finding that underpins federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, although the move is likely to face legal challenges. Data from the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm, shows that US emissions will drop more slowly without climate regulations. However, even with climate regulations, emissions are expected to drop much slower under Trump than under the previous Joe Biden administration, according to the analysis.
Spotlight
How a ‘tree invasion’ helped to fuel South America’s fires
This week, Carbon Brief explores how the “invasion” of non-native tree species helped to fan the flames of forest fires in Argentina and Chile earlier this year.
Since early January, Chile and Argentina have faced large-scale and deadly wildfires, including in Patagonia, which spans both countries.
These fires have been described as “some of the most significant and damaging in the region”, according to a World Weather Attribution (WWA) analysis covered by Carbon Brief.
In both countries, the fires destroyed vast areas of native forests and grasslands, displacing thousands of people. In Chile, the fires resulted in 23 deaths.

Multiple drivers contributed to the spread of the fires, including extended periods of high temperatures, low rainfall and abundant dry vegetation.
The WWA analysis concluded that human-caused climate change made these weather conditions at least three times more likely.
According to the researchers, another contributing factor was the invasion of non-native trees in the regions where the fires occurred.
The risk of non-native forests
In Argentina, the wildfires began on 6 January and persisted until the first week of February. They hit the city of Puerto Patriada and the Los Alerces and Lago Puelo national parks, in the Chubut province, as well as nearby regions.
In these areas, more than 45,000 hectares of native forests – such as Patagonian alerce tree, myrtle, coigüe and ñire – along with scrubland and grasslands, were consumed by the flames, according to the WWA study.
In Chile, forest fires occurred from 17 to 19 January in the Biobío, Ñuble and Araucanía regions.
The fires destroyed more than 40,000 hectares of forest and more than 20,000 hectares of non-native forest plantations, including eucalyptus and Monterey pine.
Dr Javier Grosfeld, a researcher at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) in northern Patagonia, told Carbon Brief that these species, introduced to Patagonia for production purposes in the late 20th century, grow quickly and are highly flammable.
Because of this, their presence played a role in helping the fires to spread more quickly and grow larger.
However, that is no reason to “demonise” them, he stressed.
Forest management
For Grosfeld, the problem in northern Patagonia, Argentina, is a significant deficit in the management of forests and forest plantations.
This management should include pruning branches from their base and controlling the spread of non-native species, he added.
A similar situation is happening in Chile, where management of pine and eucalyptus plantations is not regulated. This means there are no “firebreaks” – gaps in vegetation – in place to prevent fire spread, Dr Gabriela Azócar, a researcher at the University of Chile’s Centre for Climate and Resilience Research (CR2), told Carbon Brief.
She noted that, although Mapuche Indigenous communities in central-south Chile are knowledgeable about native species and manage their forests, their insight and participation are not recognised in the country’s fire management and prevention policies.
Grosfeld stated:
“We are seeing the transformation of the Patagonian landscape from forest to scrubland in recent years. There is a lack of preventive forestry measures, as well as prevention and evacuation plans.”
Watch, read, listen
FUTURE FURNACE: A Guardian video explored the “unbearable experience of walking in a heatwave in the future”.
THE FUN SIDE: A Channel 4 News video covered a new wave of climate comedians who are using digital platforms such as TikTok to entertain and raise awareness.
ICE SECRETS: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast explored how scientists study ice cores to understand what the climate was like in ancient times and how to use them to inform climate projections.
Coming up
- 22-27 February: Ocean Sciences Meeting, Glasgow
- 24-26 February: Methane Mitigation Europe Summit 2026, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 25-27 February: World Sustainable Development Summit 2026, New Delhi, India
Pick of the jobs
- The Climate Reality Project, digital specialist | Salary: $60,000-$61,200. Location: Washington DC
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), science officer in the IPCC Working Group I Technical Support Unit | Salary: Unknown. Location: Gif-sur-Yvette, France
- Energy Transition Partnership, programme management intern | Salary: Unknown. Location: Bangkok, Thailand
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 20 February 2026: EU’s ‘3C’ warning | Endangerment repeal’s impact on US emissions | ‘Tree invasion’ fuelled South America’s fires appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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