Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Asian extreme weather
SWELTERING: An intense heatwave is sweeping across south and eastern Asia. The Dhaka Tribune said temperatures in Bangladesh have surpassed 40C in many regions and the Daily Star reported that the country recorded at least 23 days “heatwave days” in April. Agence France-Presse reported that Thailand’s capital, Bangkok, reached 40.1C on Wednesday. The Bangkok Post added that temperatures could reach 43C in northern Thailand next week. (See Carbon Brief’s recent on-the-ground reporting on the impacts of climate change on human migration in Thailand.) Schools across the Philippines, Bangladesh and India have been forced to close due to the heat, according to BBC News.
ELECTION HEAT: In India, the heatwave coincides with the country’s six-week general election, in which nearly one billion people are eligible to vote, the New York Times reported. India’s election authorities have set up a taskforce “to review the impact of heatwave[s]” on the election after a significant decrease in voter turnout, the Indian Express said. India’s Economic Times added that temperatures in the country will peak on 27-28 April.
FLOODING: More than 110,000 people have been evacuated from China’s Guangdong province after record-breaking rainfall caused widespread flooding, state news agency Xinhua reported. China Daily said that southern China has experienced more than double the typical rainfall for April. The flooding has caused economic losses exceeding 140m yuan ($19.8m), according to the People’s Daily Online. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported that the World Meteorological Organization has published a report warning that climate change “is causing major repercussions across Asia”.
Legal action
HISTORIC ENQUIRY: The Inter-American Court on Human Rights in Barbados is hearing the first part of a “historic” inquiry this week, the Guardian said. The New Humanitarian reported that Colombia and Chile are “asking the hearing to define states’ legal responsibility to combat climate change and prevent it from violating people’s human rights”. It added that the court will hear from Julian Medina, a Colombian fisherman, among others.
HEALTH FAILURE: A group of South Koreans is suing their government for failing to protect 200 people, including young environmental activists and children, by not tackling climate change, Reuters reported. “The proceeding is Asia’s first such climate-related litigation,” the newswire added. Meanwhile, BBC News reported that an Iraqi man is taking legal action against BP, alleging that his late-son’s leukaemia was caused by the oil company’s flaring practices.
SUSPENDED: Meanwhile in the UK, Dr Sarah Benn, a retired GP in Birmingham, has had her medical licence suspended for five months following her involvement with Just Stop Oil protests and risks being stuck off permanently, the Guardian reported. According to the Times, the 57-year-old was previously jailed for 31 days after taking part in three climate protests at an oil terminal in Kingsbury in 2022. There has been backlash to the ruling, which the British Medical Association called “very concerning”, the paper added.
Around the world
- EARTH DAY: US president Joe Biden marked “Earth Day” on Monday by announcing $7bn of investment into solar energy projects, the New York Times reported.
- CONTROVERSIAL TREATY: EU lawmakers have voted “overwhelmingly” for the bloc to leave the international energy charter treaty, according to the Financial Times. The paper called the ruling a “victory for climate advocates”, adding that many think the treaty protects fossil fuels.
- UNHELPFUL SLOGAN: Chris Stark, the outgoing chief executive of the UK’s Climate Change Committee, told the Guardian that “net-zero” has become an “unhelpful” slogan, which is often “associated with the campaigns against it”.
- MEXICAN DROUGHT: Nearly 80% of Mexico’s territory is now under drought conditions, Excélsior reported. EuroNews added that drought, combined with a surge in water demand to grow crops such as avocados, is causing rivers and lakes to dry up in the “once green and lush” state of Michoacan.
- DEADLY FLOODS: Countries across east Africa have been “lashed by relentless downpours in recent weeks”, Al Jazeera reported. The outlet warned that “deadly floods” are sweeping through Kenya’s capital Nairobi.
- CLIMATE RISK: The World Bank is advising South Africa’s national treasury on climate risk strategies, such as taking out climate insurance or setting up contingency funds, following floods which have caused billions of dollars of damage in recent years, reported Bloomberg.
2.4 billion
The number of workers globally expected to face “excessive heat conditions” at some point during their careers, according to an International Labor Organization report covered in the Associated Press.
Latest climate research
- A study in Nature Climate Change found that meteorological definitions for extreme weather events do not fully capture the negative impacts experienced by women in informal settlements.
- The area of land in east Africa affected by combined heatwaves and wildfires could increase by 940% by the end of the century, according to new research in Earth System Dynamics.
- New analysis by the World Weather Attribution service found that the heavy rainfall that hit Oman and the United Arab Emirates recently was 10-40% heavier than it would have been in an El Niño year without climate 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
The past 10 months have all set new all-time monthly global temperature records, with April 2024 on track to extend this streak to 11, wrote Dr Zeke Hausfather in his latest quarterly “state of the climate” report for Carbon Brief. The graph shows monthly temperatures over 1940-2024, plotted with respect to a 1850-1900 baseline. Based on the year so far and the current El Niño forecast, Carbon Brief estimates that global temperatures in 2024 are likely to average out at around 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Spotlight
Climate science in the courtroom
Last week, a group of 2,000 Swiss women won a landmark case in the European Court of Human Rights. The women, mostly in their 70s, said that their age and gender made them particularly vulnerable to heatwaves linked to climate change. The court ruled that Switzerland’s efforts to meet its emissions targets had been “woefully inadequate”.
At the annual European Geosciences Union (EGU) general assembly in Vienna, Carbon Brief interviews Prof Wim Thiery – a scientist who was involved in multiple conference sessions on climate change and litigation. This interview was edited for length.
Carbon Brief: What types of climate science are used in litigation?
Prof Wim Thiery: Just like how there’s a range of different subfields in climate science, we have a range of different climate cases. For example, there’s attribution science which supports reparation cases. We are seeing carbon budget research and fair-share emission pathways research supporting cases on climate policies. And we’re also seeing future climate impact projections supporting cases that are started by young people around the world.
CB: What science was used in the recent European case?
WT: Impact attribution research played a key role. Recent studies by [Oxford University researcher] Dr Rupert Stewart-Smith and [Swiss epidemiologist] Dr Anna Vicedo-Cabrera, for example, showed that all women in Switzerland are disproportionately at risk of heat-related mortality in Switzerland. So, these are recent scientific publications that were directly mentioned in court and that played an influence on the final court ruling.
CB: Do you think the methods used in attribution science are changing to better support litigation?
WT: We are seeing an evolution in attribution science, whereby we move from the traditional science of long-term trends in climate variables, to the operational ability to – in almost real time – establish the link of climate change with the occurrence of individual extreme events. And we’re seeing a new evolution whereby communities are increasingly looking at impact-relevant variables. Think about inundated areas, lake levels, heatwave mortalities. These are the new target variables of attribution science. This is a new frontier and we are seeing that those studies are directly usable in court cases.
CB: Do you ever worry about your research, or that of your colleagues, becoming ‘too political’?
WT: We are used to, in climate science, working with policymakers and with society. Our research is of direct societal relevance and this is just a new example. For me, this is just another example of working with stakeholders – lawyers are a new group of stakeholders for our community.
There is a very direct and tangible impact when you see that an attribution study or a particular scientific publication is used in a court case and has a direct effect on its evolution. It’s very tangible, the outcomes, and I think that’s something which motivates climate scientists in engaging in this community.
Watch, read, listen
FAKE MEAT: Climate YouTuber Simon Clark has published a video asking: “How green is fake meat, really?” To answer the question, he compared the carbon and land footprints of beef, chicken, pork and mutton with those of major meat substitutes.
GROWING GULLIES: A multimedia-rich BBC News article explained how soil erosion is causing vast gullies and chasms to open up around Latin America and Africa, destroying tens of thousands of homes.
GREENWASHING ADS: The Financial Times and Reuters have taken down “advertorials” paid for by oil giant Saudi Aramco, following allegations of greenwashing and disinformation, DeSmog reported.
Coming up
- 28-30 April: G7 ministers’ meeting on climate, energy and environment, Piemonte, Italy
- 29 April: Parliamentary election, Togo
- 30 April: UN General Assembly thematic event on “the El Niño Phenomenon”, New York, US
- 4 May: Local elections, UK
Pick of the jobs
- Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, head of Asia campaigns and advocacy | Salary: $60,000-80,000. Location: Fully remote (Asia)
- UK Met Office, land observations manager | Salary: £41,725. Location: Exeter, Edinburgh or Watnall
- International Institute for Environment and Development, urban climate resilience lead and principal researcher | Salary: £64,814-80,654. Location: Hybrid within or outside the UK, with occasional travel to the UK offices.
- Climate Analytics, deputy head of climate policy and senior climate science data analyst | Salary: €54,348-84,495 and €64,348-70,944, respectively. Location: Berlin
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 26 April 2024: Extremes grip Asia; Human rights inquiry; Using climate science in court appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 26 April 2024: Extremes grip Asia; Human rights inquiry; Using climate science in court
Climate Change
Threads of Earth’s Underground Fungal Networks Are Long Enough to Reach Beyond the Solar System
For the first time ever, researchers have quantified the length and mass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks globally and mapped the ecosystems where they are densest.
Hidden underground around the world lie 110 quadrillion kilometers of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks—webs of ultra-thin threads that, if connected in a single line, would stretch almost a billion times thge distance between the Earth and the sun, according to new research published in Science on Thursday.
Threads of Earth’s Underground Fungal Networks Are Long Enough to Reach Beyond the Solar System
The number of journalists registered to attend the annual climate negotiations in Bonn has declined this year, as climate reporters have been let go and media coverage of climate issues falls around the world.
Data from UN Climate Change, which runs the two weeks of talks, shows that just 135 media representatives have signed up to attend. Climate Home News analysis of previous data shows this is the lowest figure since 2021, when COVID-19 restrictions limited travel and the Bonn talks were held in a hybrid format to enable online participation.
The number of journalists that actually attend the talks will not be known until later this month but is typically significantly less than are registered. Press conferences, held back-to-back each day by campaign groups, have been sparsely attended in the first few days and often filled mainly with climate campaigners and researchers rather than journalists.
Alexandra Endres, a reporter for German-language website Table Briefings, told Climate Home News in Bonn there are fewer German journalists covering the conference in-person. “I think it is important to have more journalists covering the negotiations because when the climate coverage increases, the interest of the public grows,” she said.
Media outlets that have registered fewer journalists than previous years, or no journalists, include global heavyweights like Reuters, Bloomberg and the BBC, as well as German outlets like Deutsche Welle and ZDF television, and specialist publications like business information service Argus and climate broadcaster We Don’t Have Time.
Activist Harjeet Singh, who is in Bonn advising the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, said that “the empty press seats here in Bonn are a warning signal. While the world’s gaze is often fixed on the annual COP summits, the real-world consequences of the climate crisis—from financing the fossil fuel transition to protecting vulnerable populations—are being shaped, or ignored, in these mid-year negotiations right now.”
“Journalists are the essential eyes and ears of the public,” he said. “We need them to shine a light on these rooms: hold negotiators accountable, defend the principles of equity and historical responsibility, and ensure that ‘technical’ negotiations do not become an excuse for delay.”
UN Climate Change said they could not comment on the situation at this point in the Bonn talks.
Climate coverage is falling
Outside of Bonn and the official UN climate negotiations, coverage of climate change is falling to lows not seen since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to analysis of newspapers and television reporting conducted by the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MECCO).
MECCO’s head Max Boykoff told Climate Home News that climate coverage in the first five months of 2025 was 35% down on the same period of 2025 and 41% less than in 2021. New analysis by the Yale Programme on Climate Change Communication found a similar fall in climate coverage in 2026.
Boykoff said media attention has been drawn away from climate change to issues like the Iran war and now the World Cup getting underway in North America.
While both stories have climate implications, he said, the media have “failed to connect the dots” on the conflict in the Middle East, with coverage focusing on the politics, air strikes and violence of the war. “Reporters have been pulling up short,” he said.
He added that since 2025 there have been cuts to climate teams at US outlets like the Washington Post, CBS, National Public Radio and the Los Angeles Times. On top of this, the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s Context website has been shut down and Politico recently folded specialist environmental outlet E&E News into its broader energy coverage.
Mark Hertsgaard, head of global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now, also said that fewer reporters at Bonn is “part of a larger pattern”. He said no US television network sent reporters to the recent Santa Marta conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels “and as a result they missed covering what turned out to be a landmark development in the climate story”.
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“No one can know if the Bonn talks will yield something similar until the [they] actually take place and conclude. But the fewer journalists that are on the scene, the less the world’s people and policymakers will know about that. And that’s a problem,” he said.
Media may also have been put off from attending by a new registration system which is more complicated, especially for freelance journalists. In addition, the rise in jet fuel prices has made travelling by plane to Bonn much more expensive than last year and reporters from many developing countries continue to face hurdles getting visas to enter the Schengen area, of which Germany is part.
Diego Arguedas Ortiz, who led the Oxford Climate Journalism Network from 2022 until it was shut down by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in 2025, said journalists can’t cover the talks so well remotely.
While press conferences, plenaries and open negotiating sessions are broadcast for the public to watch on the UNFCCC’s website, Ortiz said relying solely on this means “you miss the interviews in the hall”.
“You can´t catch scientists and ministers as they leave the rooms. And the audience is back home suffering. Because audiences are relying on reporters and editors to explain how these seemingly abstract negotiations have daily implications for them,” he explained.
The post Fewer journalists register for Bonn talks, as cuts to climate reporting bite appeared first on Climate Home News.
Fewer journalists register for Bonn talks, as cuts to climate reporting bite
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