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.
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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
A Data Center Could Be Coming to an Upstate New York Town, and Residents Are Speaking Out
The town board in Lansing is considering a temporary ban on large-scale development that could delay construction.
Residents in an upstate New York community are trying to prevent construction of a planned data center by approving a year-long ban on large-scale development.
A Data Center Could Be Coming to an Upstate New York Town, and Residents Are Speaking Out
Bill Gates’ foundation has promised to invest $1.4 billion over four years to help smallholder farmers adapt to the worsening effects of climate change – a commitment that comes just a week after a new memo from the tech billionaire drew sharp criticism from the climate community.
The funding from the Gates Foundation will help expand access for farmers across sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia to innovations that strengthen rural livelihoods and food systems, it said in a statement. These include mobile apps offering tailored weather information for planting decisions, drought and heat-resistant crops and livestock, and efforts to restore degraded land.
The pledge announced on Friday builds on a previous $1.4-billion commitment announced three years ago at COP27 that, the foundation says, is already helping “millions” of farmers.
“Smallholder farmers are feeding their communities under the toughest conditions imaginable,” said Bill Gates, who chairs the foundation. “We’re supporting their ingenuity with the tools and resources to help them thrive – because investing in their resilience is one of the smartest, most impactful things we can do for people and the planet.”
Shift from focus on “near-term” emission goals
The investment supports Bill Gates’ vision of “prioritizing climate investments for maximum human impact”, as the Microsoft co-founder outlined in a 17-page memo he published last week, according to the foundation.
In his missive, Gates acknowledged that climate change is “a very important problem”, but called for a “strategic pivot” away from focusing too much on “near-term emission goals” – something that, he argued, is diverting funds away from efforts to eradicate poverty.
“Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world’s poorest countries,” he wrote.
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Norway pledges $3bn in boost for Brazil-led tropical forest fund
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Five big questions hanging over COP30
From insufficient ambition on cutting emissions to gaps in adaptation finance, here’s a look at some of the thorny issues facing the pivotal UN climate summit in Belém
The memo has drawn ire from many climate scientists who, while agreeing with some of Gates’ central observations, have condemned his overall framing.
Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, said the world has ample resources to both reduce planet-heating emissions and help people adapt to climate change – if the political will exists.
“We don’t necessarily live in a zero-sum world,” he said in a webinar organised by Covering Climate Now, which supports media coverage of climate change. “It’s a policy problem, not a resource problem”.
Hausfather added that when climate finance is directed toward helping the world’s poorest countries curb their emissions, it might be better spent on adaptation or disease eradication instead. “But that’s not the fundamental thing standing in the way of solving climate change,” he said. “That is emissions mostly coming from the rich countries.”
“Straw man” argument criticised
Experts have also expressed frustration over Gates’ perceived “black-and-white” approach to climate impacts, which has been seized upon by notable climate deniers.
In his memo, the billionaire wrote that “although climate change will have serious consequences – particularly for people in the poorest countries – it will not lead to humanity’s demise”.
Picking up on Gates’ words – and misrepresenting them – US President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social: “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue.”
Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, said Gates’ framing relied on a “straw man” argument.
“I’ve not seen a single scientific paper that ever posited the human race will become extinct due to climate change,” she said. But Gates “is speaking about it as if scientists are saying that,” she added. “What we are saying is that suffering increases with each tenth of a degree of warming.”
The post After climate memo row, Gates gives $1.4bn to help farmers cope with a hotter world appeared first on Climate Home News.
After climate memo row, Gates gives $1.4bn to help farmers cope with a hotter world
To many people, Brazil conjures up images of the endless Amazon River, lush tropical rainforest and breathtaking wildlife. In a country of its size, this picture can remain true while also containing a more complex and changing set of realities.
For example, climate change, high water demand and human activity are also leading to increased desert-like conditions. One recent study found that in the past 30 years, there has been a 30% expansion in dryland habitat across Brazil. One of the most affected areas includes the state of Pará, a major part of the Amazon rainforest and home to Belém, which is hosting this year’s UN climate summit.
Water shortages
Brazil’s northeast region is particularly noted for its semi-arid landscape and water scarcity.
Pernambuco, a small state by Brazilian standards, extends from the eastern Atlantic coast into the region’s interior for around 450 miles. Water availability is a constant concern for many communities across the state, especially family farms which are significant contributors to the regional economy.
“One of the main problems people are facing here is the growing frequency of droughts and the irregularity of rainfall. As a result, producing food has become extremely difficult,” said Carlos Magno, a coordinator at Centro Sabiá, a non-profit organisation in the area.
“We’re also experiencing stronger heatwaves, which have been causing the death of many trees and affecting the local environment even more,” Magno added.
He went on to describe how family farming in the region is almost entirely dependent on rain to grow food. There are no irrigation systems or wells to support communities so when the rains fail, it means less food on the table.
Addressing these concerns is a key objective of an ongoing project supported by the Adaptation Fund’s Climate Innovation Accelerator (AFCIA), administered by the UN Development Programme and carried out by Centro Sabiá.
Transforming lives
Centro Sabiá has an intimate knowledge of how family farming operates in the region. It spent time consulting with communities to better understand their concerns, and hearing their ideas on how to combat water scarcity.
The project is implementing simple, yet affordable, climate solutions which are improving the livelihoods of local people. One intervention being explored is to recycle wastewater to help with the growth of new agroforestry plots. The water – taken from washing or cleaning – is filtered and then redirected for use on plots that combine crop farming with tree planting. The technique is designed to improve soil health, cut pollution and improve biodiversity.
“The water that used to pollute the soil now nourishes crops and trees,” added Magno. “When people realise that their available water is limited, but they can reuse it to grow food, it changes everything.”
On the project, 130 families, totalling over 31,000 people, introduced greywater reuse across 30 new agroforestry plots. The systems are low-cost and simple to implement within a farm’s existing infrastructure. They can be used for years with the initial access to technical support, and, as a result, are now treating millions of litres of water each year.
The impacts in Pernambuco have been immediate. Each family is estimated to be saving US$350 a year on water, and earning over US$300 a month from selling agroforestry products.
Making farming greener
Agroforestry has been identified as a sustainable alternative to industrial farming.
According to some scientists, the Amazon rainforest is able to recycle up to 5 litres of water per square metre a day. By contrast, land used for pasture is only able to recycle 1.5 litres. This helps to explain why some previously biodiverse areas that have been converted for cattle ranching and farming are now becoming drier.
Agroforestry seeks to redress the balance by including trees in the agricultural process, bringing more moisture – and carbon – back into the soil. The response to these techniques from people across Pernambuco has so far been overwhelmingly positive.
“Nature is doing really well for us,” reported Cilene, a local participant in the project. In a recent interview with the Adaptation Fund, she explained how in the past, “we bought things with pesticides. Now with this project we are learning to have better, healthier food.”
“Compared to how we were living before, we see better results and sustainable benefits,” she added.
Francisca Ferraz de Aquino Silva, a farmer in Calumbi, agrees. “This project was a real turning point in my life,” she said.
“After the technology arrived, I realised it was possible to make better use of water, without waste, and to produce food while improving the soil. It was a new opportunity in my life,” she told Centro Sabiá.
“Agroforestry reduces the need for heavy labour. You work without much effort, it brings economic return, and nature works in your favour…I saw that it was possible to live in semi-arid conditions with dignity and prosperity – planting biodiversity and working with agroforestry systems,” she added.
What this means for COP30
As heads of state discuss the state of the planet in Belém, they only need look around at the surrounding rainforest to see how vital a role it plays.
Human development and extreme weather are putting significant pressure on nature and people’s livelihoods. If these drier conditions persist, the rainforest could be turned into savannah, which some scientists believe will create further dry weather and drought.
But the lessons from Belém’s southerly neighbour over in Pernambuco could provide an answer.
“Policymakers and delegates attending COP30 have a lot to learn from the project,” commented Magno. “It was built with civil society. It was carried out with the contribution of organisations and people who work every day with local communities.”
“By the end of the [climate] conference, the decisions and commitments must truly guarantee that adaptation resources reach the communities that are struggling every day to adapt to climate change,” he continued.
“It is crucial for funds from international climate agreements and adaptation policies to reach the local level, where they are needed the most.”
Adam Wentworth is a freelance writer based in Brighton, UK
The post COP30: Brazil is drying up despite its rich natural resources appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP30: Brazil is drying up despite its rich natural resources
A Data Center Could Be Coming to an Upstate New York Town, and Residents Are Speaking Out
After climate memo row, Gates gives $1.4bn to help farmers cope with a hotter world
COP30: Brazil is drying up despite its rich natural resources
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