Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Broken records
FIRES: Wildfires have burned through more than 1m hectares of land across the EU, making 2025 the worst year on record, the Guardian reported. Blazes in the EU have burned four times as much land this year as the average over the past two decades, according to data from the European Forest Fire Information System, the outlet said. Meanwhile, the UK has “almost certainly” faced its hottest summer on record, according to provisional Met Office data covered by BBC News.
FLOODS: At least 34 people have been killed as heavy rainfall across India and Pakistan continued to cause flash floods and landslides in Indian-controlled Kashmir, the Associated Press reported. Continuing extreme rainfall in China has caused more than $2bn in damages since July, noted Reuters. Typhoon Kajiki has killed at least eight people in Vietnam and Thailand, with more flash floods and mudslides expected, Channel News Asia reported.
Turbine turbulence
POWER SHOCK: Shares in the Danish wind-power developer Ørsted dropped to a record low after the Trump administration ordered the firm to stop work on a near-complete project, the Financial Times reported. The $1.5bn Revolution Wind project is four-fifths complete and was due to power 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut, the newspaper said.
‘WINDFARM WASTE’: In the UK, the energy regulator Ofgem announced that energy bills will rise by 2% for millions of households in October, with the Times reporting that part of the increase is due to the rising cost of “paying wind farms to switch themselves off”. The news sparked a wave of critical editorials and comment pieces in right-leaning and climate-sceptic UK newspapers. A Carbon Brief factcheck previously explained how gas prices, rather than “balancing costs” associated with wind farms, are the largest driver of high electricity prices in the UK.
Around the world
- FORESTS FOREVER: At a summit in Colombia, Brazil won the backing of other Amazon nations for its $125bn “Tropical Forests Forever Facility”, a fund first launched at COP28 in 2023, Bloomberg reported.
- CHINA CAP: China’s cabinet announced that the country will “tighten its carbon trading market by introducing absolute emissions caps in some industries for the first time starting by 2027”, Reuters said.
- RECORD RENEWABLES: Global renewables investment increased by 10% in the first half of the year, when compared to last year, to a record $386bn, according to new data from BloombergNEF covered by BusinessGreen.
- BANKING BREAK: The Net-Zero Banking Alliance has “paused” its activities “after losing top European and Wall Street members amid Trump’s ongoing crusade against climate change”, reported the Financial Times.
- STAFF SUSPENDED: The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) has suspended more than 20 members of staff who signed an open letter warning that Trump’s cuts to the body could risk a “national catastrophe” on the scale of Hurricane Katrina, according to BBC News.
87%
The percentage of new coal-power capacity located in China or India that came online globally in the first half of 2025, as revealed in a guest post for Carbon Brief written by Global Energy Monitor researchers.
Latest climate research
- Exposure to heatwaves may cause people to age faster | Nature Climate Change
- The number of supercell thunderstorms – the “most hazardous thunderstorm category” – could increase by an average of 11% in Europe under 3C of global warming | Science Advances
- Sea level rise projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) second assessment in 1995 were “strikingly close to what transpired over the next 30 years” | Earth’s Future
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Carbon Brief published an in-depth factcheck debunking 16 of the most commonly heard false and misleading myths about solar power. One such claim is that solar power poses “a serious threat to agriculture and food security” by taking up land. The chart above, adapted from the factcheck, puts such a claim in perspective using the land-use of golf courses as a comparison.
Spotlight
How to reform the UN’s climate COPs
This week, Carbon Brief highlights a short extract from a new autobiography written by the late Peter Betts, who was the UK and EU lead negotiator at various COPs, including 2015’s pivotal COP21 in Paris. Betts, who died of brain cancer in October 2023, used his book to lay out his views on how to reform COPs – a topic Carbon Brief recently asked a range of experts about, too.
Of course, the UNFCCC and COP process has its shortcomings. For example, I would be the first to acknowledge that progress on finance, adaptation and loss and damage has been too slow. But I would argue that it would not have happened at all without the central global discussion afforded by the COPs, at which vulnerable countries always have a strong voice.
The alternative to COPs – often put forward by big and powerful countries – is to do everything within the G20, perhaps complemented by plurilateral cooperation between big states. No one would be more pleased to see the end of the COP process than big oil and gas interests in the US who sought to undermine COPs throughout my decade or more in negotiations.
My experience was that excluding the vulnerable countries led to lower-ambition outcomes which the US and emerging economies were comfortable with. The vast bulk of vulnerable countries would be horrified to lose the COPs, since it guarantees them a voice.
Overall, then, I believe that the case for keeping a global forum, where all have a seat at the table and, therefore, the most vulnerable have a voice, is overwhelming, and this is the UNFCCC. It is an indispensable political moment every year to rally the forces of ambition for climate change (and, to paraphrase Voltaire, if we didn’t have it, we would need to invent it). There are, however, two improvements that could be made to the way COPs operate.
1: The second stocktake
Formal stocktakes occur every five years, at a point two years before the next five-yearly ambition cycles of the COPs (such as Paris and Glasgow). But there is almost no focus by the media or NGOs on the announcements of NDCs [nationally determined contributions], especially those of “developing countries”, despite the importance of NDCs’ impact on climate goals.
In the run-up to the five-yearly stocktakes there should be a moment, perhaps a third of the way through the year, where we can see where we stand, individually and collectively, following the NDCs that have been announced. If some countries’ proposals are weak, those countries should be pressured to do more; if some have not submitted a proposal at all, then that should be highlighted.
It seems unlikely that the big economies would agree a formal process change, as when I have suggested such a second stocktake “moment” to various partners they have expressed concerns that it would be controversial. However, civil society should look to create this moment outside the formal process with analysis and media-friendly events which would provide an opportunity to assess (and put pressure on) relative, proposed contributions.
2: Annex membership
Second, we should review membership of the annexes to the convention, which set out who is “developed” and who is a “developing” country. We need a step change in support for emerging economies to help them make the transition to low carbon, which is increasingly affordable and will bring them other benefits. This means much more finance from Annex II countries, complemented by finance from China (the world’s biggest sovereign investor) and from Gulf states, who have grown rich on selling fossil fuels.
Sadly, however, I doubt whether it will be possible to negotiate changes to membership of the annexes, even though that was required by the convention to happen by 1998. But could countries such as China and the Gulf states not voluntarily step into Annex I and/or even Annex II?
Non-Annex I countries now constitute nearly two-thirds of global emissions and are likely to be a far higher proportion of emissions growth. So, if we want to limit climate change, it is these emissions we need above all to target. Of course, we must complement this by quicker action by Annex I countries, perhaps alongside negative emissions, and we must provide much more serious help to some non-Annex I countries.
Adapted from The Climate Diplomat: A Personal History of the COP Conferences by Peter Betts, published by Profile on 28 August and available now.
Watch, read, listen
KATRINA: Twenty years on from the category-five hurricane that devastated New Orleans, the Times had a lengthy feature about the “flood, failures and chilling aftermath”. Netflix also released a three-part series about the disaster.
SLOP: DeSmog investigated the websites using AI-generated content citing non-existent climate experts and institutions.
FAILED MODEL: Pakistani journalist Arifa Noor lamented in Dawn the “development model” being adopted by the nation’s “ruling elite” amid the “rage of climate change”.
Coming up
- 31 August-5 September: Africa Food Systems Summit, Dakar, Senegal
- 1 September: Guyana elections
- 3 September: Jamaica general election
- 5-10 September: Africa Climate Summit 2, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Pick of the jobs
- World Weather Attribution, media relations manager | Salary: £46,614-£56,345. Location: London/hybrid
- Wood Mackenzie, research analyst – solar supply chain, power & renewables | Salary: Unknown. Location: Shanghai
- Conservation Law Foundation, vice president for clean energy and climate change | Salary: $136,000-$175,000. Location: Boston, US
- London School of Economics, head of Climate and Growth Initiative | Salary: £53,949-£62,160. 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 29 August 2025: Record wildfires; Solar myths factchecked; Climate veteran on COP reform appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 29 August 2025: Record wildfires; Solar myths factchecked; Climate veteran on COP reform
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.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 6 March 2026: Iran energy crisis | China climate plan | Bristol’s ‘pioneering’ wind turbine
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Energy crisis
ENERGY SPIKE: US-Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent counterattacks across the Middle East have sent energy prices “soaring”, according to Reuters. The newswire reported that the region “accounts for just under a third of global oil production and almost a fifth of gas”. The Guardian noted that shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz, which normally ferries 20% of the world’s oil, “all but ground to a halt”. The Financial Times reported that attacks by Iran on Middle East energy facilities – notably in Qatar – triggered the “biggest rise in gas prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine”.
‘RISK’ AND ‘BENEFITS’: Bloomberg reported on increases in diesel prices in Europe and the US, speculating that rising fuel costs could be “a risk for president Donald Trump”. US gas producers are “poised to benefit from the big disruption in global supply”, according to CNBC. Indian government sources told the Economic Times that Russia is prepared to “fulfil India’s energy demands”. China Daily quoted experts who said “China’s energy security remains fundamentally unshaken”, thanks to “e