Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Three years to 1.5C
‘DOOMED TO BREACH’: At current carbon dioxide (CO2) emission levels, the world is “doomed to breach the symbolic 1.5C warming limit” in as little as three years, according to research by 60 climate scientists covered by BBC News. (Carbon Brief carried a guest post by two scientists involved in the study.) Co-author and Carbon Brief climate science contributor Dr Zeke Hausfather told the Washington Post: “Some reports, there’s a silver lining. I don’t think there really is one in this one.”
FLOODED AFRICA: South Africa declared a national disaster after floods killed more than 90 people in four of the country’s nine provinces, Bloomberg reported. This is the “second time in about seven months” that the government has invoked the measure to “free up funds for relief and reconstruction”, it added. Separately, 29 people were confirmed to have died “after heavy rains at the weekend triggered floods and landslides” in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Associated Press reported.
CHINA DELUGE: Heavy rainfall fuelled by Typhoon Wutip has caused the “worst flood in a century” in China’s southern province of Guangdong, with the Sui river in the Huaiji county swelling to “over five metres above the official danger level…the highest on record”, reported state broadcaster CGTN. Local authorities have declared a “top-level emergency” as economic losses from the floods are estimated at $5.7m, the outlet added.
HURRICANE AND HEAT DOME: In North America, forecasters have warned that parts of the US could see “dangerously high temperatures and extreme humidity” from an incoming heat dome, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Associated Press reported that a “fast-moving brush fire” burned hundreds of acres and forced the evacuation of 50 Maui residents in Hawaii, even as 2023 wildfire survivors struggle with declining health, per the Guardian. Hurricane Erick made landfall on Mexico’s Pacific coast on Thursday “shortly after being downgraded slightly from an ‘extremely dangerous’ category 4” storm, noted BBC News.
Bonn talks turn ‘bitter’
BEGIN AGAIN: The Bonn climate talks – the annual two-week preparatory talks held each June deemed “critical to thrash out differences” before each year’s COP – began on Monday “amid severe geopolitical turmoil and renewed tensions”, the Hindustan Times reported. It added that the meetings are shrouded by a “shadow of failed climate-finance talks” at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan last year and “divergent views” on a roadmap to raise climate finance to $1.3tn.
AGENDA FIGHT: The start of the talks was delayed by an “agenda row”, after Bolivia – on behalf of the Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries (LMDC) – sought to include items on climate finance from developed nations and “climate change-related trade-restrictive unilateral measures”, Climate Home News reported. Donald Trump’s administration “decided…not to send a delegation to the preparatory meetings” – meaning the US was absent in Bonn for the first time ever, it added.
‘BITTER EXCHANGES’: After 30 hours of “bitter exchanges”, the agenda was adopted on Tuesday “to polite applause and a bigger sense of discontent”, another Climate Home News article said. The Bonn chairs agreed to hold “substantive consultations” on climate finance and report back in Belém at COP30, it continued. Negotiators can now “turn their full attention to equally thorny discussions” on climate adaptation indicators and fossil fuels, it added. (Carbon Brief’s Josh Gabbatiss and Molly Lempriere will report live from Bonn next week.)
Around the world
- BRUSSELS BAN: The European Commission tabled a bill that, according to Euractiv, “would phase out the large volumes of Russian gas still flowing into the EU until the end of 2027”, adding that the ban would stand “irrespective of whether there is peace” in Ukraine.
- UK-CHINA MEET: UK officials including energy secretary Ed Miliband, climate envoy Rachel Kyte and nature envoy Ruth Davies sat down with Chinese counterparts, including the head of China’s Ministry of Economy and Environment, in London this week to discuss the “next steps of climate cooperation”, according to Chinese business publication Jiemian News.
- AMAZON OIL BID: Brazil’s national oil agency has “auctioned off” several oil sites near the mouth of the Amazon river and two inland sites near Indigenous territories months before the country is due to host COP30, the Associated Press reported.
- BLACKOUT BLACK BOX: Spain announced the findings of a 49-day probe into the “catastrophic” Iberian blackout, the Financial Times reported, “spread[ing] the blame…between its grid operator and electricity companies”. (See Carbon Brief’s updated Q&A.)
- MISINFORMATION MEASURED: A review of 300 studies found that action on climate change is being “obstructed and delayed by false and misleading information stemming from fossil-fuel companies, rightwing politicians and some nation states”, the Guardian said.
- OIL PEAK EARLY: According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), China’s oil demand will peak in 2027, two years earlier than previously forecast, Bloomberg reported. At the same time, India’s “thirst for oil will rise more than any other country” over the next five years, wrote the Times of India.
120 kcal
The amount of calories the average person could lose per day for every 1C of warming, due to climate change’s impact on six key crops, according to research covered by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- New forests larger than the size of North America would need to be planted to offset the potential CO2 emissions from fossil fuel reserves held by the world’s top 200 fossil fuel companies, found new analysis in Communications Earth & Environment.
- According to new research in Science Advances, human-driven climate change will remove coral habitat faster than corals can expand into higher-latitude, cooler waters. It found that severe coral cover declines will likely occur over the next 40-80 years, while large-scale expansion “requires centuries”.
- New rapid analysis by World Weather Attribution estimated that climate change will make Saturday’s “widespread heat” of 32C in southeast England “about 100 times” more likely.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Carbon Brief charted eight decades of the UK’s nuclear energy fleet – from setting up the world’s first commercial reactor in Cumbria in 1956 to UK chancellor Rachel Reeves greenlighting the Sizewell C reactor last week. The chart 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. It also shows timelines for new planned nuclear capacity yet to come on board, plus known planned closure dates.
Spotlight
Forecasting Mumbai’s fierce monsoon
This week, Carbon Brief visits Mumbai’s official monsoon monitoring centre and “war room” to examine how the city is responding to its earliest downpour on record.
If extreme weather had a poster-child capital, it would be Mumbai. The megacity has it all – catastrophic urban flooding every monsoon, sea level rise, landslides, climate-change induced tropical cyclones, heatwaves across all its seven islands – and, with further climate change, it will only get worse.
Famed for its “spirit”, Mumbai’s 26 million metropolis dwellers have come to loathe the term that valorises their resilience every monsoon, evident from the memes that flooded the internet on 26 May when the monsoon arrived earlier than ever before in the city’s history.
On its first monsoon day of the year, the city received 135.4mm of rainfall rather than its normal of 0.2mm – an excess of 67,600%. Visuals of a flooded metro line that opened only 17 days ago went viral.
Faced with criticism, the state’s deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde equated the rains to a “cloudburst” and admitted that the country’s richest civic body – that he heads in the absence of elected representatives – was caught off-guard this year.
Despite having a year to prepare, Shinde admitted that pumps meant to remove water from a city that is barely above sea level were not working to full capacity. They stand in sharp contrast to the billion-dollar highways that have robbed the city of its natural flood defences and now dominate its skyline and waterfront, but are already being overwhelmed by extreme weather.
In India’s financial capital – where 73% of all offices and commercial establishments are within 500m of a flood hotspot and 69% of all employees experience “hindered access” from waterlogging trying to get to or leave work – forecasting the monsoon is fraught, essential and getting trickier with climate change.
Forecasting the monsoon
Dr Sushma Nair, a meteorologist with the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) regional monitoring centre, has the unenviable job of getting it right.
Nair and her team work out of the Colaba Observatory, at the southernmost tip of the city. Established in 1826 by the East India Company, it is one of world’s longest-running observatories and is older than the IMD itself – as well as many parts of the city that have been reclaimed from the sea.
“As weather-in-charge, it’s a 24/7 job,” Nair told Carbon Brief during a visit to the observatory.
Nair’s day begins at 8:30am, when her team prepares a forecast, checks upper air observations, runs models and decides what colour – yellow, orange or red – to assign the region for the next 24 hours, before hopping on a video call with her regional contemporaries and the IMD HQ.
“No journalist will get a forecast from us before 11:30 or 12:30, because we are discussing the weather,” she said.
Meteorological Centre has a Nowcast that refreshes every three hours, allowing forecasters to account for sudden changes in the weather and upgrade the city to a red alert, based on satellite and radar warnings.
Nair confesses that she “normally” checks the Nowcast at 4am, “because I lose my sleep at 3am”, and has the city’s chief disaster manager on speed dial for a red nowcast, no matter what the hour. “I am an insomniac, so don’t take that as a regular forecaster’s sleep hours,” she joked.
Her biggest source of dread is two-hour intense downpours in which the island city receives more than 150mm of rain, caused by an offshore vortex that is a “very small-scale, sub-grid system” that weather models cannot capture. She said:
“Low-pressure cyclonic systems, we can see coming. [But] this is the goblin that I haven’t seen who rushes in usually at night, creates havoc and leaves. Climate change is already contributing to these types of events: a whole lot of rain in smaller spells.”
As a coastal city, scientists told Carbon Brief that the city should be prepared to soak in 300mm of rain, but, because of choked drains, rivers and built infrastructure, it currently cannot even take in 100mm.
Mumbai’s monsoon ‘war room’
Fifteen minutes away from the observatory, a whiteboard in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) “monsoon war room” shows the state of affairs: rivers that should have been desilted by May are still only 66% done.
In its disaster control room three flights down, the phones will not stop ringing. The city’s residents, police and fire brigades are calling to report waterlogging, fallen branches and landslides.
While one giant screen streams live CCTV footage from 25 of the city’s worst traffic chokepoints, another screen shows live Doppler radar footage – when it is working.
“Whatever resources an emergency needs, we mobilise them from this control room,” a senior BMC disaster management official told Carbon Brief:
“If we get an orange alert from the IMD, all of our agencies, the navy, army: all of them get an alert message from us asking them to stand by.”
Many fault the BMC for delayed alerts, desilting and a city dug up beyond recognition. Officials say they are using all platforms – from X to SMS – to warn people about monsoon impacts. They blame TV channels that have “stopped carrying the news” – and people who have stopped watching it for weather updates – for a lack of awareness. The official told Carbon Brief:
“We have sufficient funds. You can’t reduce natural hazards and, in such a crowded city, to survive, the only thing that can save you is your wits.”
Watch, read, listen
ET TU, PETROSTATE? A Foreign Affairs essay by two US professors argued that, as the US’s energy exports have grown, it has “begun to behave more like a classic petrostate”, less likely to “embrace multilateralism and cooperate on international rules”.
ADRIAN VS ADANI: BBC World Service’s Life at 50C had a new documentary following Indigenous Queenslander Adrian Burragubba’s “battle against Adani[‘s]” coal mine in Australia’s Galilee Basin.
NO SHADE: Adaptation policy researcher Aditya Valiathan Pillai spoke to the Migration Story about heat stress and the “politics of shade”.
Coming up
- 16-26 June: SB42 climate talks, Bonn
- 16-20 June: 79th meeting of the World Meteorological Organization’s Executive Council, Geneva
- 23 June-4 July: International Seabed Authority legal and technical commission meeting (Part II), Kingston
- 23-27 June: States parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, 35th meeting, New York
Pick of the jobs
- Bruegel, energy and climate economist | Salary: Unknown. Location: Brussels
- The Economist, editorial intern for the digital department | Salary: £30,000. Location: London
- Bertha Foundation, fellowship for filmmakers, lawyers and jouranalists | Fellowship: Up to $64,900 for a year. Location: 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 20 June 2025: Three years to ‘keep 1.5C alive’; Bonn talks turn ‘bitter’; Inside Mumbai’s monsoon ‘war room’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Blazing heat hits Europe
FANNING THE FLAMES: Wildfires “fanned by a heatwave and strong winds” caused havoc across southern Europe, Reuters reported. It added: “Fire has affected nearly 440,000 hectares (1,700 square miles) in the eurozone so far in 2025, double the average for the same period of the year since 2006.” Extreme heat is “breaking temperature records across Europe”, the Guardian said, with several countries reporting readings of around 40C.
HUMAN TOLL: At least three people have died in the wildfires erupting across Spain, Turkey and Albania, France24 said, adding that the fires have “displaced thousands in Greece and Albania”. Le Monde reported that a child in Italy “died of heatstroke”, while thousands were evacuated from Spain and firefighters “battled three large wildfires” in Portugal.
UK WILDFIRE RISK: The UK saw temperatures as high as 33.4C this week as England “entered its fourth heatwave”, BBC News said. The high heat is causing “nationally significant” water shortfalls, it added, “hitting farms, damaging wildlife and increasing wildfires”. The Daily Mirror noted that these conditions “could last until mid-autumn”. Scientists warn the UK faces possible “firewaves” due to climate change, BBC News also reported.
Around the world
- GRID PRESSURES: Iraq suffered a “near nationwide blackout” as elevated power demand – due to extreme temperatures of around 50C – triggered a transmission line failure, Bloomberg reported.
- ‘DIRE’ DOWN UNDER: The Australian government is keeping a climate risk assessment that contains “dire” implications for the continent “under wraps”, the Australian Financial Review said.
- EXTREME RAINFALL: Mexico City is “seeing one of its heaviest rainy seasons in years”, the Washington Post said. Downpours in the Japanese island of Kyushu “caused flooding and mudslides”, according to Politico. In Kashmir, flash floods killed 56 and left “scores missing”, the Associated Press said.
- SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION: China and Brazil agreed to “ensure the success” of COP30 in a recent phone call, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.
- PLASTIC ‘DEADLOCK’: Talks on a plastic pollution treaty have failed again at a summit in Geneva, according to the Guardian, with countries “deadlocked” on whether it should include “curbs on production and toxic chemicals”.
15
The number of times by which the most ethnically-diverse areas in England are more likely to experience extreme heat than its “least diverse” areas, according to new analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- As many as 13 minerals critical for low-carbon energy may face shortages under 2C pathways | Nature Climate Change
- A “scoping review” examined the impact of climate change on poor sexual and reproductive health and rights in sub-Saharan Africa | PLOS One
- A UK university cut the carbon footprint of its weekly canteen menu by 31% “without students noticing” | Nature Food
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Factchecking Trump’s climate report
A report commissioned by the US government to justify rolling back climate regulations contains “at least 100 false or misleading statements”, according to a Carbon Brief factcheck involving dozens of leading climate scientists. The report, compiled in two months by five hand-picked researchers, inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed” and misleadingly states that “excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial”80
Spotlight
Does Xi Jinping care about climate change?
This week, Carbon Brief unpacks new research on Chinese president Xi Jinping’s policy priorities.
On this day in 2005, Xi Jinping, a local official in eastern China, made an unplanned speech when touring a small village – a rare occurrence in China’s highly-choreographed political culture.
In it, he observed that “lucid waters and lush mountains are mountains of silver and gold” – that is, the environment cannot be sacrificed for the sake of growth.
(The full text of the speech is not available, although Xi discussed the concept in a brief newspaper column – see below – a few days later.)
In a time where most government officials were laser-focused on delivering economic growth, this message was highly unusual.
Forward-thinking on environment
As a local official in the early 2000s, Xi endorsed the concept of “green GDP”, which integrates the value of natural resources and the environment into GDP calculations.
He also penned a regular newspaper column, 22 of which discussed environmental protection – although “climate change” was never mentioned.
This focus carried over to China’s national agenda when Xi became president.
New research from the Asia Society Policy Institute tracked policies in which Xi is reported by state media to have “personally” taken action.
It found that environmental protection is one of six topics in which he is often said to have directly steered policymaking.
Such policies include guidelines to build a “Beautiful China”, the creation of an environmental protection inspection team and the “three-north shelterbelt” afforestation programme.
“It’s important to know what Xi’s priorities are because the top leader wields outsized influence in the Chinese political system,” Neil Thomas, Asia Society Policy Institute fellow and report co-author, told Carbon Brief.
Local policymakers are “more likely” to invest resources in addressing policies they know have Xi’s attention, to increase their chances for promotion, he added.
What about climate and energy?
However, the research noted, climate and energy policies have not been publicised as bearing Xi’s personal touch.
“I think Xi prioritises environmental protection more than climate change because reducing pollution is an issue of social stability,” Thomas said, noting that “smoggy skies and polluted rivers” were more visible and more likely to trigger civil society pushback than gradual temperature increases.
The paper also said topics might not be linked to Xi personally when they are “too technical” or “politically sensitive”.
For example, Xi’s landmark decision for China to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 is widely reported as having only been made after climate modelling – facilitated by former climate envoy Xie Zhenhua – showed that this goal was achievable.
Prior to this, Xi had never spoken publicly about carbon neutrality.
Prof Alex Wang, a University of California, Los Angeles professor of law not involved in the research, noted that emphasising Xi’s personal attention may signal “top” political priorities, but not necessarily Xi’s “personal interests”.
By not emphasising climate, he said, Xi may be trying to avoid “pushing the system to overprioritise climate to the exclusion of the other priorities”.
There are other ways to know where climate ranks on the policy agenda, Thomas noted:
“Climate watchers should look at what Xi says, what Xi does and what policies Xi authorises in the name of the ‘central committee’. Is Xi talking more about climate? Is Xi establishing institutions and convening meetings that focus on climate? Is climate becoming a more prominent theme in top-level documents?”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP EFFECT: The Columbia Energy Exchange podcast examined how pressure from US tariffs could affect India’s clean energy transition.
NAMIBIAN ‘DESTRUCTION’: The National Observer investigated the failure to address “human rights abuses and environmental destruction” claims against a Canadian oil company in Namibia.
‘RED AI’: The Network for the Digital Economy and the Environment studied the state of current research on “Red AI”, or the “negative environmental implications of AI”.
Coming up
- 17 August: Bolivian general elections
- 18-29 August: Preparatory talks on the entry into force of the “High Seas Treaty”, New York
- 18-22 August: Y20 Summit, Johannesburg
- 21 August: Advancing the “Africa clean air programme” through Africa-Asia collaboration, Yokohama
Pick of the jobs
- Lancaster Environment Centre, senior research associate: JUST Centre | Salary: £39,355-£45,413. Location: Lancaster, UK
- Environmental Justice Foundation, communications and media officer, Francophone Africa | Salary: XOF600,000-XOF800,000. Location: Dakar, Senegal
- Politico, energy & climate editor | Salary: Unknown. Location: Brussels, Belgium
- EnviroCatalysts, meteorologist | Salary: Unknown. Location: New Delhi, India
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 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 15 August 2025: Raging wildfires; Xi’s priorities; Factchecking the Trump climate report
Climate Change
New York Already Denied Permits to These Gas Pipelines. Under Trump, They Could Get Greenlit
The specter of a “gas-for-wind” compromise between the governor and the White House is drawing the ire of residents as a deadline looms.
Hundreds of New Yorkers rallied against new natural gas pipelines in their state as a deadline loomed for the public to comment on a revived proposal to expand the gas pipeline that supplies downstate New York.
New York Already Denied Permits to These Gas Pipelines. Under Trump, They Could Get Greenlit
A “critical assessment” report commissioned by the Trump administration to justify a rollback of US climate regulations contains at least 100 false or misleading statements, according to a Carbon Brief factcheck involving dozens of leading climate scientists.
The report – “A critical review of impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the US climate” – was published by the US Department of Energy (DoE) on 23 July, just days before the government laid out plans to revoke a scientific finding used as the legal basis for emissions regulation.
The executive summary of the controversial report inaccurately claims that “CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed”.
It also states misleadingly that “excessively aggressive [emissions] mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial”.
Compiled in just two months by five “independent” researchers hand-selected by the climate-sceptic US secretary of energy Chris Wright, the document has sparked fierce criticism from climate scientists, who have pointed to factual errors, misrepresentation of research, messy citations and the cherry-picking of data.
Experts have also noted the authors’ track record of promoting views at odds with the mainstream understanding of climate science.
Wright’s department claims the report – which is currently open to public comment as part of a 30-day review – underwent an “internal peer-review period amongst [the] DoE’s scientific research community”.
The report is designed to provide a scientific underpinning to one flank of the Trump administration’s plans to rescind a finding that serves as the legal prerequisite for federal emissions regulation. (The second flank is about legal authority to regulate emissions.)
The “endangerment finding” – enacted by the Obama administration in 2009 – states that six greenhouse gases are contributing to the net-negative impacts of climate change and, thus, put the public in danger.
In a press release on 29 July, the US Environmental Protection Agency said “updated studies and information” set out in the new report would “challenge the assumptions” of the 2009 finding.
Carbon Brief asked a wide range of climate scientists, including those cited in the “critical review” itself, to factcheck the report’s various claims and statements.
The post Factcheck: Trump’s climate report includes more than 100 false or misleading claims appeared first on Carbon Brief.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-trumps-climate-report-includes-more-than-100-false-or-misleading-claims/
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