Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Climate chaos
DEADLY DISASTER: Devastating landslides have killed 167 people, with another 191 missing, in the Wayanad district in Kerala, India, reported the Indian Express. Prime minister Narendra Modi announced compensation of 200,000 Indian rupees (about $2,390) per person for the families of the deceased and 50,000 rupees (about $600) for those injured, the newspaper said.
CLIMATE FACTOR: The Hindustan Times noted that scientists have attributed the landslide to a “combination of climate change, excessive mining and loss of forest cover in the region”. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi called for “mapping of landslide-prone areas and…an action plan to address the growing frequency of natural calamities in the ecologically fragile region”, reported the Independent.
FLASH FLOODS: More than 10,000 people displaced from conflict in Sudan’s Sennar state – alongside other refugee and host communities – have been severely impacted by extreme rainfall and flash floods in Kassala state, reported the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. At least five people have reportedly died, including a child, the report said. Other affected areas include Aj Jazirah, East Darfur and North Kordofan, according to ReliefWeb.
Sizzling Olympics
HEATWAVE GAMES: A rapid attribution analysis found that the “heat dome” striking the Paris Olympics and the “scorching temperatures” across western Europe and North Africa this week would have been “impossible” without the “fossil-fuelled climate crisis”, reported the Guardian. Scientists at the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group said human-caused global warming made the heatwave “2.5C to 3.3C hotter”. Leading climate scientist Dr Friederike Otto told reporters: “Climate change crashed the Olympics on Tuesday.”.
KEEPING COOL: BBC Sport said that organisers used hoses and misters to keep spectators cool at the Paris Olympics. In Marseille, where temperatures reached around 40C, athletes taking part in sailing events wore “ice vests” to try to counteract the heat, the broadcaster added.
TRIATHLON TIMEOUT: The men’s triathlon was postponed due to “unsafe pollution levels” in the Seine following heavy rainfall in the French capital, reported Sky Sports. The organisers blamed the postponement on climate change, with Aurélie Merle – the Paris 2024 director of sports – saying: “We are living in the 21st century where, unfortunately, there are far more meteorological events…which are beyond the control of the organisers.”
Around the world
- UK RENEWABLES: UK energy secretary Ed Miliband announced an increase to this year’s renewable energy auction budget to a record £1.56bn on Wednesday, reported BBC News.
- HARRIS APPROVED: Inside Climate News reported that Kamala Harris has clinched an endorsement from the Green New Deal Network – “a key coalition of progressive, youth-led and environmental justice-focused climate advocates” – which had previously held back its endorsement for president Joe Biden.
- FUND FIGHT: The EU is gearing up to pressure wealthier “emerging” economies, such as China, to pay into the climate fund at the COP29 climate summit, reported Politico. Currently, only countries categorised as “industrialised” under the 1992 UN climate treaty contribute climate finance under the Paris Agreement.
- OFFSETS BLOW: A review by the Science Based Targets initiative, a global auditor of corporate climate targets, has concluded that “various types of carbon credits are ineffective”, reported Bloomberg.
- COP16 SAFE: Reuters reported that “Colombian rebel group” Estado Mayor Central has withdrawn its threat, issued earlier this month, to disrupt the UN biodiversity summit COP16 taking place in October in the Colombian city Cali – as a “gesture of [their] will for peace”.
7,500,000
The methane emissions, in tonnes, from US oil and gas facilities – four times more than the estimates of regulators – which is equivalent to the annual energy needs of over half of US homes, reported the Financial Times.
Latest climate research
- A new research paper published in Nature Communications found that current policies put the world on a trajectory with a 45% chance of crossing tipping points in the Earth system by 2300, even if the global average temperature is brought back to 1.5C later on. Carbon Brief had all the details.
- The UK would gain “benefits” worth £164bn if it meets its 2033-2037 climate targets, said a study published in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences covered by Carbon Brief.
- A new study in BioScience proposed a way to preserve the Earth’s “increasingly threatened” biodiversity on the moon through the creation of a lunar biorepository – a storage facility for biosamples – by developing a system using cryopreserved fish fins.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Deep-sea mining mapped
Carbon Brief published an in-depth explainer this week into what the emerging field of deep-sea mining means for climate change and biodiversity. The map, taken from the article, shows the current designated areas for deep-sea mining exploration, with each of the orange dots representing exploration contracts within four significant zones: Clarion-Clipperton Zone, Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Indian Ocean and Northwest Pacific Ocean. The colours indicate the types of deep-sea mineral resources targeted. Polymetallic nodules – formed of iron and manganese silicates and hydroxides – are in green. Polymetallic sulphides – with copper, zinc, lead, iron, silver and gold – are in blue. Cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts – with high cobalt concentration and other rare elements – are in pink.
Spotlight
Tuvalu’s plan to be first ‘digital nation’
This week, Carbon Brief reports on how the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu is aiming to become the world’s first digital nation in response to climate change.
Tuvalu, a small nation comprising a group of nine islands in the South Pacific, is among the most vulnerable to climate change. The Guardian has reported that rising sea levels are an “existential threat” for island nations such as Tuvalu. In 2023, a NASA report indicated that sea levels in Tuvalu had risen nearly six inches (15cm) over the past 30 years.
Estimates show that, by 2050, more than half of the land area of Funafuti – the capital – could be flooded.
According to the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, less than 0.03% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the Pacific Island region.
Yet, as Tuvaluan minister Simon Kofe noted in his address to the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021 while standing knee-deep in the sea, “Tuvalu is sinking”. Invoking the issue of climate justice, he said:
“In Tuvalu, we are living with the realities of climate change and sea level rise.”
Rising sea levels in Tuvalu are already “leaching soil, killing crops and spoiling drinking water”. A recent National Geographic article also underscored food security challenges, with cultivating staple crops such as taro, breadfruit and coconut becoming difficult due to seawater infiltration. Flooding has become routine, with intense tides sweeping over the sole airstrip and homes monthly.
Facing the possibility of becoming entirely submerged and uninhabitable, Tuvalu has developed the Future Now project and aims to become the world’s “first digital nation”, existing in the “metaverse”, a virtual reality project started by Facebook.
Digital replicas
Addressing delegates in his COP27 speech, Kofe, standing in front of a digital replica of Te Afualiku, the first island in Tuvalu to be digitised, said:
“As our land disappears, we have no choice but to become the world’s first digital nation.”
This serves as the model for the digital recreation of all Tuvalu’s islands and its landscape, including “the coral atolls and reefs, the lagoon, the porous sandy soil, the palm trees and what is left of the pandanus, breadfruit and taro” – before it potentially physically disappears, he said.
The plan includes using satellite imagery, photographs and drone footage capable of capturing details as fine as grains of sand on the beach and the direction of ocean currents.
Tuvalu has completed a thorough three-dimensional LIDAR scan of all 124 islands and islets and began enhancing its national communications network – laying the groundwork for its digital nation, Kofe told delegates at COP28.
It has also started exploring a digital ID system using blockchain technology to connect the Tuvaluan diaspora, enabling their participation from across the world, the project developers said. This digital platform will allow Tuvaluans to connect, explore their heritage and engage in new business opportunities across various sectors, they added.
Additionally, the project has begun the development of a digital archive of Tuvaluan culture, with contributions from citizens who were encouraged to preserve their most valued personal items to create an evolving record of their heritage.
‘Digital sovereignty’
If Tuvalu’s physical land becomes uninhabitable, it also prompts a discussion of statehood and sovereignty. Under current international law, a defined physical territory is a prerequisite for statehood.
In order to become the first digital nation, Tuvalu – recognising the evolving notion of state sovereignty – redefined statehood through a constitutional amendment in 2022 to say:
“The State of Tuvalu within its historical, cultural and legal framework shall remain in perpetuity in the future, notwithstanding the impacts of climate change or other causes resulting in loss to the physical territory of Tuvalu.”
Tuvalu’s permanent and digital sovereignty is now recognised by 25 countries, with the Pacific Island Forum also redefining its territory, maintaining that its statehood would continue regardless of the impacts of climate change.
Watch, read, listen
GLACIAL MELT: Tortoise Media’s Slow Newscast podcast talked about the “unlikely” climate activists in Switzerland who won a key climate change case, but now face backlash.
SOLARE CANTARE: The Volts podcast spoke with Joel Jean, co-founder and CEO of Swift Solar, to explain all about perovskite solar.
NIGERIA’S ‘OIL CURSE’: A new FT Film explored the challenges facing Nigeria’s oil sector and whether ending fuel subsidies could help to break the “oil curse”.
Coming up
- 6 August: G20 fourth energy transition working group, virtual
- 9 August: International day of the world’s Indigenous peoples
Pick of the jobs
- Harris for President, climate engagement director | Salary: $90,000-$110,000. Location: Wilmington, US
- Ember, climate policy analyst I Salary: AU$78,246. Location: Remote
- Carbon Brief, section editor (science) I Salary: £47,000. Location: UK/hybrid
- Reuters, senior energy correspondent I Salary: Unknown. Location: London
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 2 August 2024: Deadly rains from India to Sudan; ‘Fossil-fuelled’ heat hits Olympics; Tuvalu’s plan to be first ‘digital nation’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
American farmers are drowning in health insurance costs, while their German counterparts never worry about medical bills. The difference may help determine which country’s small farms are better prepared for a changing climate.
Samantha Kemnah looked out the foggy window of her home in New Berlin, New York, at the 150-acre dairy farm she and her husband, Chris, bought last year. This winter, an unprecedented cold front brought snowstorms and ice to the region.
On the Farm, the Hidden Climate Cost of the Broken U.S. Health Care System
Climate Change
A Little-Used Maneuver Could Mean More Drilling and Mining in Southern Utah’s Redrock Country
Two Utah Congress members have introduced a resolution that could end protections for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Conservation groups worry similar maneuvers on other federal lands will follow.
Lawmakers from Utah have commandeered an obscure law to unravel protections for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, potentially delivering on a Trump administration goal of undoing protections for public conservation lands across the country.
A Little-Used Maneuver Could Mean More Drilling and Mining in Southern Utah’s Redrock Country
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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