Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Africa energy summit
CLOSING THE GAP: More than 1,000 people, including heads of state, gathered at the Mission 300 Africa Energy Summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to agree on a road map for providing electricity to 300 million people in Africa by 2030, Nigeria’s Guardian reported. The Mission 300 initiative was launched by the World Bank and the African Development Bank last year, the newspaper said. About 600 million people in Africa “still lack access to reliable and affordable energy”, the Conversation noted.
SETTLING FINANCE: Reuters reported that the initiative aimed to “unlock” at least $90bn from multilateral development banks, development agencies, finance institutions, private businesses and philanthropies. According to Climate Home News, development banks have committed to collectively deliver $40bn under the initiative – a target that was raised this week to more than $50bn by contributions from other financial institutions.
Trump’s climate rollbacks
CONFUSION: Donald Trump’s administration introduced a widespread spending freeze this week, sparking “widespread confusion and frustration”, Politico reported. On Monday, the White House budget office ordered a pause to all grants and loans disbursed by the federal government, with climate mitigation and adaptation programmes likely affected, the outlet said. It added that a federal judge temporarily blocked the freeze on Tuesday, but this has done little to assuage concerns.
ENDANGERMENT: Trump is also making moves to call into question the “legality and applicability” of the “endangerment finding”, a rule that instructs the federal Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions because they pose a danger to human life, the New York Times reported. The New York Times also reported that Trump wants to deploy a rarely used “god-squad” panel to carve out exemptions in the Endangered Species Act.
ALIGNMENT: Meanwhile, La Nación reported that Argentina’s far-right president Javier Milei is still “mulling over” emulating Trump by removing his country from the Paris Agreement. Rumours that Argentina could be the first country to follow the US in leaving the Paris Agreement first began at COP29 in Azerbaijan after Milei withdrew his delegation from the talks. However, the newspaper noted, Argentina is still subject to agreements, such as the EU-Mercosur deal, that mandate it to meet environmental clauses.
UK’s climate plans
CLIMATE PLEDGE: The UK government has formally submitted its international climate pledge, known as a “nationally determined contribution” (NDC), to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), BusinessGreen reported. The UK is one of a handful of countries to have submitted ahead of the 10 February deadline and is pledging to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 81% compared to 1990 levels by 2035, the publication said.
ROSEBANK RULING: The decision by the UK’s previous Conservative government to greenlight two new oilfields in the North Sea has been ruled unlawful by a court in Edinburgh, the Guardian reported, as it does not take into account emissions caused by burning the oil and gas produced. BusinessGreen reported that burning all the oil from the larger project, Rosebank, would emit as much CO2 as running 56 coal-fired power stations for a year.
LAY OF THE LAND: The Guardian reported that UK environment secretary Steve Reed is to announce a consultation for a long-awaited land-use framework for England. As part of the framework, the government hopes to map the areas of England with the best quality farmland and most potential for nature recovery, with ministers “discouraged from planning developments on the areas marked as best for farming and nature”, the Guardian said.
Around the world
- LA ATTRIBUTION: Human-caused climate change increased the likelihood of the wildfires in Los Angeles by 35% and the intensity by 6%, according to a rapid attribution study from World Weather Attribution.
- HACKING RING RULING: ExxonMobil has been linked to a legal case involving hacking attempts aimed at climate activists, after the man charged alleged that the oil giant was involved, E&E News reported. ExxonMobil denied involvement.
- AI DEMANDS LESS: The surprise breakthrough of Chinese start-up DeepSeek suggests that artificial intelligence may require less energy than previously thought, exposing the “guesswork” on AI power demand, the Financial Times reported.
- CHINA’S RECORD: Record amounts of wind and solar were added in China in 2024, the Associated Press reported. It cited new Carbon Brief analysis showing the clean energy surge halted the rise of China’s emissions in the last 10 months of the year.
46%
The share of Australia’s power supply derived from renewables in the final quarter of 2024 – a new record, according to the Guardian.
Latest climate research
- A Science study, covered by Carbon Brief, showed that climate change played a key role in the “catastrophic” 2023 floods in Sikkim in India, when a “glacial lake outburst flood” led to cascading floods that killed 55 people.
- A study in Nature Medicine found that there could be an extra 2.3 million deaths from extreme temperatures in Europe’s main cities by 2099, in a scenario with little action to curb climate change and adapt to its effects.
- The survival rates of certain bird species dropped during “increasingly severe” dry seasons seen in the Amazon rainforest over the past three decades, according to a new study in Science Advances, “challenging the notion that pristine rainforests can fully protect their biodiversity under increasingly severe climate conditions”.
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Analysis by Carbon Brief has found that a forest twice the size of Greater London would need to be planted to offset the additional CO2 emissions from the planned expansion of Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton airports announced by UK chancellor Rachel Reeves this week. Reeves confirmed the government’s support for a third runway at Heathrow airport in order to “unlock further growth” in a speech on Wednesday. Earlier in the week, UK energy security and net-zero secretary Ed Miliband said that any expansion “must be justified within carbon budgets and, if it can’t be justified, it won’t go ahead”. The analysis was twice cited in parliament by MPs and covered by a range of media outlets.
Spotlight
East Africa’s climate refugees
This week, Carbon Brief speaks to a young female journalist from Kenya’s Dadaab refugee complex who is documenting how more people are arriving in her community because of climate change-fuelled drought and famine.
Hosting more than 300,000 people and stretching over 50 square kilometres, Dadaab in eastern Kenya is one of the largest refugee camps in the world.
More than 96% of its residents arrived or are descended from neighbouring Somalia. It has make-shift shops, hospitals and schools, but permanent structures are banned by the Kenyan government.
Fardowsa Sirat Gele is a young female journalist who was born and raised in Dadaab. Her mother – like most of the first wave of residents to arrive in Dadaab – fled to the camp in 1991 due to Somalia’s civil war.
Like many in the camp, Fardowsa is stateless and unable to leave the complex. She explained:
“I can say I’m Somali because of my appearance, my language. But I don’t have the courage to say I have a country, because I’ve never lived there. And I can’t say I’m Kenyan, because Kenya will not allow me a birth certificate. So, that hurts me.”
With an interest in sharing the stories of her fellow refugees, Fardowsa works as a journalist at Radio Gargaar, the camp’s radio station.
“Radio Dadaab”, a new film produced by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), followed Fardowsa as she put together a radio programme exploring a new force driving growing numbers of people to arrive at the camp: climate change.
Drought injustice
In recent years, countries in the Horn of Africa have faced their driest conditions in four decades, with several consecutive rainy seasons failing. Then, when rain finally fell, it brought deadly floods that swept away homes and croplands.
In Radio Dadaab, Fardowsa travels to the outskirts of the Dadaab refugee camp to interview new arrivals, who tell her stories of their entire livestock being wiped out, their crops failing and ensuing starvation due to the drought.
A rapid “attribution” analysis found that this deadly drought was made at least 100 times more likely by human-caused climate change.
Despite facing steep climate impacts, East Africa is responsible for just 1.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Fardowsa found that, despite fleeing starvation and the impacts of climate change, when people arrived at Dadaab they continued to suffer, with no access to toilets, medical care or houses.
Political tensions have caused issues with new arrivals being able to register at the camp, which, in turn, has caused difficulty accessing resources and help, according to Fardowsa’s reporting.
This has resulted in “refugees that were already in the camps and the new arrivals [having to share] the little aid [available],” she told Carbon Brief.
The future
Fardowsa expressed concern about how global politics will affect Dadaab.
When asked about her hopes for her future, Fardowsa said “there is no hope because Trump has come back and the US was the main country helping with aid”.
The US provides more foreign aid globally than any other country and, last week, following several climate policy rollbacks, the Trump administration ordered a “sweeping freeze” on new funding for almost all US foreign assistance.
Yet, Fardowsa is committed to uplifting the voices of refugees for whom climate change is a threat multiplier.
“The main aim [of the film] was to show the world that there are human beings suffering because of environmental problems, like drought and displacement. To show empathy for refugees was the main focus.”
Radio Dadaab is available to watch on YouTube.
Watch, read, listen
RENEWABLE REVEAL: The Financial Times looked at how, despite abundant fossil-fuel reserves, several Middle East countries have huge plans for renewable energy, making the area the fastest growing renewables market outside China.
STORY TIME: Three climate change “storytellers” featured in this week’s BBC Sounds’ Start the Week podcast, discussing writing the new climate talks-themed play Kyoto, Shetland’s windfarms and the art of agreeing.
NET-ZERO DADS: The Economist published a tongue-in-cheek look at how middle-aged men in the UK are becoming the unlikely early adopters of net-zero solutions.
Coming up
- 3-8 February: 78th meeting of the CITES standing committee, Geneva, Switzerland
- 7 February:Turks and Caicos Islands general election
Pick of the jobs
- Green Climate Fund, project officer, private sector facility | Salary: $87,000-$96,200. Location: Incheon, South Korea
- Nattergal, rewilding ecologist | Salary: £30,000-£35,000. Location: Remote with UK travel
- Greenpeace Africa, pan-African political strategist and responsive campaigner | Salary: Unknown. Location: South Africa, Cameroon, Senegal, Kenya or remote in Africa
- City, University of London, research fellow, centre for food policy | Salary: £42,632-£60,321. 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 31 January 2025: Closing Africa’s power gap; UK needs forest ‘twice size of London’ to offset airport plans; Kenya’s climate refugees appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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