Published

2 months ago

July 31, 2025

Alice Rush

“Unprecedented” ocean warming could make key habitats “inhospitable” for critically endangered angelsharks, according to new research.

The study, published in Global Change Biology, finds an “abnormal absence” of female sharks in a marine reserve near the Canary Islands throughout the 2022 breeding season.

This occurred during “unusually high” sea surface temperatures across the north-east Atlantic Ocean.

The study notes that the number of days with sea surface temperatures above 22.5C in the reserve nearly tripled over 2018-23.

This is significant, the authors say, because 22.5C is a “possible upper thermal threshold” for female angelsharks to tolerate.

The authors warn that ocean warming has “already altered” angelshark breeding behaviour, adding that the findings show that the species is “more acutely vulnerable” to climate change than previously thought.

Ocean warming

Angelsharks are flat-bodied, ray-like predators that can grow up to 2.4 metres in length.

They are typically found submerged in sandy habitats in the coastal waters of the north-east Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.

They are listed as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) red list of threatened species.

The authors note that the angelshark population has “declined substantially” due to “overexploitation” and “coastal habitat degradation”.

In the study, the researchers focus on the La Gaciosa Marine Reserve in the Canary Islands – Spain’s largest marine reserve.

The study notes that the Canary Islands are an “especially important region” for the angelshark and are at the “southernmost” boundary of the species’ distribution. As a result, angelshark populations around the islands have a “possibly lower tolerance for environmental change”, it states.

The researchers add that the north-east Atlantic Ocean is “undergoing rapid warming, characterised by exceptionally high temperatures and record-breaking marine heatwaves”.
As the climate continues to warm, extreme conditions are expected to occur more frequently and for longer, causing disruption to marine life.

The map below shows the historic and existing range of angelshark populations, as well as the locations of the acoustic receivers used to detect angelsharks in the study area.

Angelshark population distribution across the north-east Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Source: Adapted from Morey et al (2019) and Mead et al (2025). Graphic: Carbon Brief.

To explore how climate change in the region is impacting the angelsharks, the researchers focus on “range shift”.

Range shift is when a species migrates to either remain in ideal conditions or avoid sub-optimal environments, according to what they can withstand as the climate changes.

It is one of the most “pervasive” consequences of ocean warming, the study authors say.

Tracking angelsharks

To track the movements of angelsharks, the researchers tagged the fins of 112 animals – 38 males and 74 females – over 2018-22.

These “acoustic tags” emit sound that enabled the researchers to remotely track angelshark locations.

The researchers then used this acoustic data to investigate seasonal and annual changes to angelshark presence at the study site, taking into account the contrast between male and female behaviours.

The researchers also modelled changes to the environment over 2021-23 using a range of variables. These included sea surface temperature (SST), salinity, surface wind speed and SST anomaly – a measure of how temperatures differ from the long-term average.

They also looked at concentrations of chlorophyll a and dissolved oxygen, as well as two variables that act as an indicator for levels of desert dust in the air.

The latter were used to incorporate into their model the effect of Calima events – hot and dusty winds that reach the Canary Islands from the Sahara Desert, which raise overall air temperatures.

This “environmental model” allowed the authors to investigate the relationship between angelshark presence within the reserve and changing environmental conditions.

‘Marked absence’

Previous research has linked seasonal angelshark behaviours – such as movement and presence in a certain habitat – to the breeding cycle and, sometimes, environmental factors.

The new study finds that angelshark presence in the study area varies seasonally for both sexes, peaking in November and December. It notes an additional peak in June for female angelsharks, which were also more “consistently present” in the study area throughout the year than males.
Author Dr David Jacoby is a lecturer in zoology at Lancaster University. He explains to Carbon Brief:

“Females will often avoid males outside of the breeding season as mating is pretty violent and energy expensive in sharks. Females consequently are more likely to occur in shallow water [since] males [are more likely to be found] in deeper water.”

The charts below show the relative influence of different environmental variables on predicting male and female shark presence in the study area.

The chart on the left shows how the day of the year has the biggest influence on male angelshark presence, followed by salinity. The chart on the right shows that for female angelsharks, SST – followed by SST anomaly – was the most significant predictor.

Relative influence of different variables for predicting male and female angelshark presence in the study area. These variables are: day of year, SST, SST anomaly, ocean salinity, concentration of dissolved oxygen and chlorophyll a, windspeed, Calima PM10 and aerosols of Calima dust. Source: Mead et al (2025).

The “crux” of the study, according to Jacoby, is that in 2022 – when peak SSTs were higher and those conditions lasted longer – female angelshark numbers were “consistently low”. He tells Carbon Brief:

“The fact that there was this significant warming event in the north-east Atlantic was opportunistic from a research perspective at least, because it provided a natural experiment in which to directly compare behaviour under ‘normal’ versus ‘extreme’ conditions.”

This “marked absence” was especially noticeable during the angelshark breeding season in mid-to-late autumn, the data shows. In contrast, the behaviour of the male sharks did not change.

The charts below illustrate how, in 2022, daily counts of female angelsharks (orange bars in the middle panel) dropped in the unusually warm conditions, while daily counts of male angelsharks (turquoise bars in the bottom panel) remained consistent with previous years.

In the top panel, orange regions indicate periods in which SSTs are between 20.7C and 22.5C and red regions show periods of SSTs above 22.5C.

According to the authors, the presence of female sharks in the study site decreases “rapidly” at SSTs above 20.7C, while the “probability of female presence” is below zero above around 22.5C.

The dotted line at 19.6C shows the temperature of peak female angelshark presence.

Daily average SSTs (top panel) against female (middle panel) and male (bottom panel) angelshark count in the study area throughout the study period 2019-23. Source: Mead et al. (2025).

The researchers say their findings “strongly” indicate that the low numbers of females during the breeding season in 2022 were linked to the “thermal extremes” that year.

They point to an “upward trend” in peak temperatures and longer duration of hotter periods in their dataset, noting that the number of days where SSTs reached 22.5C more than doubled over the study period.

As a result, the authors identify 22.5C as the “possible upper thermal threshold” for female angelsharks – meaning that the animals will not move into an area at this point.

They warn that regular temperatures of 22.5C could “disrupt” the timing of “key biological events”, such as breeding.

The “unusual” findings, recorded as “disrupted” thermal cues, may be a “window into future climate change impacts”, suggest the authors.

Conservation measures

The authors highlight the need to prioritise further “species-specific” studies that incorporate “real-time environmental and behavioural data” and explore climate impacts by sex.

Improving scientific understanding and prediction of how marine species and ecosystems respond to climate change are “urgent priorities”, they say.

Jacoby adds:

“Angelsharks [are among] the most threatened fishes in the world. Because they rely on the ocean floor to rest and hunt, they are extremely attuned to their local environment. [Ocean warming] could lead to the [local extinction] of this species from the archipelago in a very worst case due to the fact that they are already at their thermal extreme in this location…

“We still don’t really know how warming could impact the complex web of interactions within these coastal ecosystems. It is so hard to engage with a problem if you can’t see it for yourself.”

Dr Hollie Booth is a postdoctoral researcher in the department of biology at the University of Oxford and was not involved in the study. She tells Carbon Brief that although the negative impacts of climate change are “concerning”, overfishing remains “the greatest direct threat” to angelshark populations.

She adds:

“It is good to see empirical evidence of the impacts of climate change on threatened marine species. [The study] indicates how we need to make sure that contributors to climate change are also held accountable for mitigating [these] impacts.”

The post Endangered angelshark faces ‘inhospitable’ breeding sites as ocean warms appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Endangered angelshark faces ‘inhospitable’ breeding sites as ocean warms

Greenhouse Gases

Guest post: How adaptation has cut flood deaths and losses in Europe

Published

5 hours ago

September 17, 2025

Alice Rush

When flooding strikes, it can devastate vast areas, taking lives, homes and possessions with it.

Multiple factors affect the scale of the social and economic damage that flooding causes, such as climate change, land-use change and the flood protection measures in place.

In a new study, published in Science Advances, my colleagues and I attempt to disentangle the factors contributing to more than 1,700 floods in Europe over 1950-2020.

Our findings show that there has been an overall reduction in deaths and economic damage over this 70-year period – even though population and economic growth means the maximum value of possible losses has increased.

This is linked to the extent to which society has adapted to climate change.

Our study finds that – in most regions – flood impacts have been affected primarily by direct human actions, such as land-use change, vulnerability reduction and catchment alteration, rather than long-term changes to river levels or sea levels.

Other factors, including climate change and alterations to river catchments, had an important role in certain places, but were not a factor on a continent-wide scale.

What influences flood losses?

Dozens of floods occur in Europe every year, though the magnitude of the socioeconomic impacts they cause varies considerably from year to year.

Floods can happen in any country, though they are less common in north-eastern Europe, especially since climate change has reduced snow cover and, hence, reduced spring snowmelt. In the hot and mountainous south of Europe, flash floods are a major risk, causing most fatalities in Europe. In north-western Europe the risk of coastal flooding, increased by global sea level rise, is higher than in other parts of the continent.

Our study looks at 1,729 floods that took place across Europe over a 70 year-period, drawn from the Historical Analysis of Natural Hazards in Europe (HANZE) database. We estimate that this list covers the vast majority of all flood impacts in Europe since 1950.

Aerial view of a flooding in inner city Hitzacker, River Elbe, Lower Saxony, Germany. Credit: Cornelius Paas / Alamy Stock Photo

We find that, in absolute terms, direct economic damage from floods in Europe has increased considerably, from an estimated €37bn in the 1950s (at 2020 prices) to €92bn in the 2000s and €71bn in 2010s.

Yet, in relative terms, the annual losses from floods have fallen. Direct economic damage from floods fell to 0.04% of Europe’s gross domestic product (GDP) in the 2010s, down from 0.11% in the 1950s.

Meanwhile, the risk of dying in a flood has also declined more than six-fold since the 1950s.

Six long-term drivers

First, it is worth noting that each of the 1,729 events in our study were the result of a unique combination of natural and socioeconomic factors under various flood management regimes.

However, we can explore how trends in economic and social damages from floods across Europe have been influenced by different drivers. For this, we turn to the evolving science of attribution research.

Extreme weather attribution research covers a diverse set of qualitative and quantitative approaches to estimate the contribution of individual drivers – such as climate change or socioeconomic factors – to observed impacts. Most studies focus on attribution to climate change, but such approaches are often insufficient to explain the magnitude of flood losses.

Our study investigates six long-term drivers that could have explained the trends in flood impacts in Europe over a 70-year period. These are:

Long-term climate change
Human interventions in river catchments
Population and economic growth
Land-use change
Flood protection levels
Flood vulnerability

To do so, we use hydrological and socioeconomic models driven by observations of climate, economic and other trends.

In all cases, we evaluate the drivers against the climate and socioeconomic conditions of the year 1950 to capture how their importance might have changed over time.

The first driver we look at – and the one that is typically of most interest in attribution studies – is long-term changes to the climate. This includes changes in the probability of extreme river discharges, storm surges, wave heights and global sea level rise.

The study looks at both the fingerprint of human-caused climate change – the 1950-2020 period is when most of global warming has occurred – but also incorporates natural variations of the climate.

Here, we find climate change has mostly worsened flood impacts, especially for levels of economic damage.

However, there is strong variation in Europe. While climate change has led to more substantial flood impacts in north-west Europe, the inverse was true for several countries in southern Europe. This is largely due to an increase in the dryness of the climate.

Human factors

Next we look at human interventions in river catchments, such as reservoir construction and land-use change, which alter the movement and distribution of water across large areas.

Here, we find that these interventions had opposite effects.

Across Europe, land-use change contributed to larger flood impacts over the study period. This was largely due to a rapid increase in “soil sealing” – the covering of soil for housing, roads or other construction work.

However, the construction of large reservoirs – most of which were built after 1950 – has reduced flood volumes, helping to reduce flood impacts, particularly in central Europe.

Population growth has increased flood impacts in almost all countries (with the main exception being Germany because of population decline in the east of the country). In addition, economic growth means the maximum value of possible losses to floods – or “flood exposure” – has increased across the continent.

That said, when considering losses relative to the size of the economy or population, the change in spatial distribution of people becomes more important.

For example, there has been more development in floodplains than outside of them, which – when combined with structural factors, such as the shift from agriculture to industry and from industry to services – has contributed to an overall increase in flood impacts.

However, this did not occur in all countries and did not apply to fatalities, which narrowly reduced across Europe over the study period due to changes in population distribution.

Adaptation

The final two drivers investigated were related to how society has adapted to flood risks.

One method is improving structural flood protection through dykes and reservoirs. (In a 2024 study, we estimated that flood protection has improved in Europe since 1950, even if more for coastal than river floods.)

We also see this effect in this study, though it is not as pronounced. This is because we only look at floods that did occur – meaning that protection measures were not sufficient to prevent them.

Nonetheless, we find that better protection has reduced the extent and, therefore, the impact of floods in most European countries, except some in central and northern Europe.

Our final driver was vulnerability to floods, defined as the relative impact of flooding on population and assets at a given hydrological intensity.

This factor heavily depends on the level of preparedness and adaptation as well as the capacity to respond to a flood. For instance, small adaptations of buildings that prevent water from flowing into it could substantially reduce the share of the building value that is lost in the flood.

In the most recent decade, floods caused an estimated 74-75% fewer fatalities and smaller economic loss than if they happened in 1950 at the same level of exposure – thanks to lower vulnerability. This reduction was found across the continent – indicating that certain universal changes were responsible for this process.

Our study was not able to link this progress to individual measures, but obvious candidates are creation of early warning systems, more capable emergency services, improved disaster response and uptake of private precautionary measures by households and companies after previous experiences of flooding.

The figure below shows the contribution of the six drivers (from left to right) for three types of impacts: fatalities (top), population affected (middle) and economic losses (bottom) to all floods that have occurred in each country between 1950 and 2020.

The shading indicates whether the driver increased (red) or decreased (blue) impacts.

Attribution of contribution to impacts (in rows) of different drivers (A to F), by country, expressed as percent change, relative to the counterfactual scenario of no change in the individual driver since 1950. Source: Paprotny, D et al. (2025)

Solutions reaching their limit?

Our findings indicate the crucial role that adaptation has had on containing growth in flood losses that could have been induced by a larger population and economy.

Still, this positive development should not be taken for granted. Our results show a considerable slowdown in the reduction of losses from better flood protection or lower levels of vulnerability in the most recent two decades. This could indicate that existing solutions are reaching their limits.

However, we find that southern and eastern Europe still has higher vulnerability compared with western Europe – showing potential for further improvements in those regions.

Recent major floods, such as the 2021 event in western Europe, have raised questions about existing levels of preparedness, while highlighting the role of climate change in increasing the impacts of those events.

Our study shows that adaptation works in Europe, but that greater efforts will be needed to ensure it continues to do so.

The post Guest post: How adaptation has cut flood deaths and losses in Europe appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Guest post: How adaptation has cut flood deaths and losses in Europe

Greenhouse Gases

Cropped 27 August 2025: ‘Frustrating’ Amazon summit; Workplace heat hazards; Record European wildfires

Published

5 hours ago

September 17, 2025

Alice Rush

We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

Key developments

Amazon summit leaves observers ‘frustrated’

MISSING THE TARGET: The fifth summit of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) took place last Friday, with the release of the Bogotá Declaration coming the next day, Agência Brasil reported. The meeting was a “platform to update the commitments of the countries” that share the Amazon rainforest, the outlet said. The declaration “emphasised the urgency of coordinated action against deforestation and biodiversity loss”, but there was an “absence of clearer targets”, which “frustrated” observers and civil-society groups. Agência Brasil also said that the “issue of energy transition and fossil-fuel exploration” was divisive at the summit.

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INDIGENOUS INCLUSION: Ahead of the meeting, Indigenous groups were “demanding that oil be left underground…[and] that the Amazon be declared the world’s first no-go zone for fossil-fuel exploration and exploitation”, EFE Verde reported. According to Stand.earth, the summit “strengthen[ed] Indigenous participation” despite “fail[ing]” to meet the fossil-fuel demands. The summit resulted in the creation of the Amazonian Indigenous Peoples Mechanism (MAPI), which Stand.earth explained “establishes a co-governance structure” for ACTO where each country is represented by both a government and an Indigenous delegate.

FUND THE FACILITY: Another element of the Bogotá Declaration was a pledge to support the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), Climate Home News reported. The outlet added that the declaration “invites” countries to “announce substantial contributions” in order to “guarantee the fund’s quick activation”. Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said: “We’re fed up with promises…I want to see who’s going to put up the money to keep the forest standing.” Meanwhile, ((o))eco reported that Brazil saw an 84% increase in international climate finance from 2019-20 to 2021-22, but forests received just 2%.

Wildfires continue to burn

NEW EU RECORD: Wildfires have ravaged more than 1m hectares in the EU in 2025, the largest area since records began in 2006, according to an analysis by Agence France-Presse. The news agency analysed data from the European Forest Fire Information System and found that Spain, Cyprus, Germany and Slovakia have been the hardest hit over the past two decades. Additionally, satellites revealed that wildfires across the Iberian peninsula released 13m tonnes of carbon dioxide this year – six times larger than 2022 levels, El Periódico reported.

HARDEST HIT: Six firefighters died while combatting “devastating wildfires exacerbated by an enduring heatwave” in Spain and Portugal, according to France24. More than 343,000 hectares were “ravage[d]” this year in Spain, setting a new national record, the outlet said. Scientists identified the primary cause of the fires in both countries as an “overabundance of flammable vegetation on abandoned land and authorities’ failure to take preventive measures,” which prompted Spain’s environmental prosecutor to initiate an “investigation into the lack of prevention plans”, Politico added.

US FIRES: Wildfires in California and Oregon led to the evacuation of thousands of homes, the Associated Press reported. In Oregon, the fire began Thursday and “grew quickly amid hot, gusty conditions”, the newswire said. A “sweltering” heatwave has hospitalised people in the western US, it added. Mongabay covered the “scientific standoff” surrounding the “active management” of forests, which consists of using controlled burning and thinning of forests to promote regeneration and resilience. It added that forest managers are “grappl[ing] with the growing effects of climate change”.

News and views

PRIVATE SECTOR CALL: Nature loss will reduce UK GDP by 5% without a “greater effort” from the private sector to halt the decline, the Guardian said. A report from the Green Finance Institute and WWF said that companies in many sectors can receive economic returns from investment in nature. The outlet noted that some businesses “are failing to reform or are unaware of the impact of their actions on nature and the climate”. The report listed suggestions for companies to take action on nature decline.

SOLAR SLOWDOWN: The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced it will “heighten scrutiny of some solar and wind projects” on farmland across the country, reported Reuters. The agency said it will stop funding larger renewable energy facilities and will not allow the use of foreign-made solar panels. Inside Climate News said the agency had expressed concern about the possible expansion of wind and solar facilities on productive farmland. However, the outlet cited a 2024 USDA analysis finding that renewables occupy 0.05% of the 897m acres of pasture and cropland in the country.

FISHERY REFORM: Ghanaian president John Dramani Mahama signed a “sweeping” fisheries and aquaculture reform act into law last week that the government believes will “ensure sustainability…and better protection for the country’s fishing communities”, according to Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. One provision in the bill is an expansion of the country’s inshore exclusion zone, which prevents industrial trawling ships from encroaching on artisanal fishing grounds. News Ghana reported that the law is “designed to address EU trade sanctions”, which threaten the country’s $425m annual seafood exports.

POLARISED POLICY: A new forest land policy in the Philippines has been touted by officials as a “major shift in forest governance”, but has been questioned by civil society organisations, Mongabay reported. Under the policy, farmers are able to carry out multiple different land uses – including reforestation, ecotourism, conservation and commercial use – in designated forest areas. The secretary of the Philippines’s environment department said the reform is an attempt to “unlock the economic potential” of the country’s forests and scale up sustainable investment. The outlet said that environmental groups warned of the policy resulting in forest degradation, the displacement of Indigenous peoples and greenwashing.

PARAGUAYAN PLANTATIONS: Apple purchased carbon credits associated with the use of agrochemicals harmful to communities on eucalyptus plantations in Paraguay, a joint investigation for Consenso and Climate Tracker revealed. The investigation used documents, field visits and satellite images to show that the forestry company selling these carbon credits does not “comply with agrochemical regulations”. It added that eucalyptus monocultures cover more than 300,000 hectares in Paraguay. Residents have pointed out the risks of wildfire due to “persistent drought” conditions in the country over the past five years. Apple had not responded to the allegations at the time of the investigation’s publication.

Spotlight

Extreme heat could triple lost work hours by century’s end

This week, Carbon Brief covers a new UN-backed report that examines the impacts of climate change on labour productivity and health.

Manual labourers, such as farmworkers and fisherfolk, are “already” being impacted by rising temperatures, according to two UN agencies.

A new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) examined the effects of climate change on heat stress in the workplace and offered technical guidance for employers, workers and policymakers.

The report called occupational heat stress a “global societal challenge”.

It also noted that both the direct and indirect impacts of environmental heat stress will worsen and spread geographically as the world continues to warm.

In a press conference prior to the release of the report, Dr Rüdiger Krech, interim director of the WHO’s environment, climate change and migration programme, said the report offered the “most comprehensive evidence yet on how rising temperatures are harming workers”.

‘Adverse consequences’

In 1969, the WHO published a technical report on the potential health threats of working under environmental heat stress. The report concluded that “knowledge relating to occupational heat exposures is inadequate in many respects”. It recommended several priorities for further research.

The new report updated the 1969 report with decades’ worth of research showing that workplace heat stress “directly threatens workers’ ability to live healthy and productive lives and leads subsequently to worsening poverty and socioeconomic inequality”.

It found that around half of the global population currently experiences “adverse consequences of high environmental temperatures”. Agricultural work is “often regarded as [one of] the highest-risk occupations” for work-related heat illness, it said.

Farmworkers typically work with little or no shade during the hottest hours of the day. Some groups of agricultural workers – such as those who manually spray pesticides or other agrochemicals – face added risk of heat stress due to the protective gear that they must wear.

The report warned that, while several early warning systems are in place to protect people during heatwaves, these systems may not be adequate to protect workers, who differ in their exposure to heat and their ability to adapt.

Raising the risk

The new report also examined the changing risks of occupational heat exposure in the context of climate change.

Citing the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it noted that each additional 0.5C of warming “significantly raises the risk of longer and more severe heatwaves”. The largest relative shifts will take place in the temperate mid-latitudes, but the frequency of dangerous events will also increase in the tropics, which have the “greatest workplace heat stress problems at present”.

Under the emissions scenario that aligns with current national climate policies, the worst-affected countries will face annual work hour losses of up to 11% by the end of the century – up from 2-4% today, the report said.

Previous research has found that 3C of warming could reduce global labour capacity by up to 50%, driving up food prices and requiring higher levels of agricultural employment to make up the shortfall.

Krech told the press conference:

“Protecting workers from extreme heat is not only a health priority, it is essential to building resilient, equal and sustainable societies in a warming world.”

Watch, read, listen

ACCESS ISSUES: Civil Eats covered a group in northern California that works to bridge the gap between emergency-relief organisations and local food-systems workers during emergencies.

DELVING INTO THE DEPTHS: NPR Shortwave addressed the importance of mapping the entire seafloor for “improving human life”, from tsunami alerts through to renewable energy.

CONSEQUENCES IN CALIFORNIA: A California state legislator and the president of the California Farm Bureau wrote in the New York Times how immigration raids on farmworkers increase food waste and drive up prices.
‘MESSY GARDENS’: A CBC News video explored how having a “messy garden” can bring benefits for biodiversity and contribute to mitigating climate change.

New science

A study published in One Earth found that the “planetary boundary” of ecosystem integrity may have already been breached on up to 60% of the Earth’s land surface. Researchers modelled ecological disruption and found that 38% of the Earth is “already at high risk of degradation”.
Research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that if global temperatures rise 2.3C above pre-industrial temperatures, soil bacterial and fungal diversity would be reduced by 16 and 19%, respectively. It also found that soil organic carbon would drop by 18% under that level of warming.
Eating a diet of biodiverse, plant-based foods can have “modest benefits” for both sufficient nutrition and environmental health, according to new research published in Nature Food. The study found that diversity of animal-sourced foods was inversely associated with both greenhouse gas emissions and land use.

In the diary

18-29 August: Second session of the preparatory commission for the Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction | New York
31 August-5 September: Africa Food Systems Summit | Dakar, Senegal
2-5 September: Subregional dialogue on biodiversity monitoring and reporting | Bangkok, Thailand
14-18 September: International Mountain Conference | Innsbruck, Austria

Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne, Orla Dwyer and Yanine Quiroz. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org

The post Cropped 27 August 2025: ‘Frustrating’ Amazon summit; Workplace heat hazards; Record European wildfires appeared first on Carbon Brief.

Cropped 27 August 2025: ‘Frustrating’ Amazon summit; Workplace heat hazards; Record European wildfires

Greenhouse Gases

China Briefing 4 September 2025: Shanghai cooperation summit; ETS ‘absolute emissions cap’; China’s heatwave adaptation

Published

6 hours ago

September 17, 2025

Alice Rush

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.

China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.

Key developments

Shanghai cooperation summit

SUSTAINABLE COOPERATION: A “final declaration” from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin this week included a pledge to “strengthen cooperation on sustainable development issues”, said Russian news agency Tass. The SCO grouping, which includes China, India, Russia and others, adopted a “statement on sustainable energy development and approved a roadmap for implementing the strategy for energy cooperation” out to 2030, according to the full text of the declaration published by the Hindustan Times.

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‘GREEN INDUSTRY’: In his speech at the summit, Chinese president Xi Jinping said that “China will establish three major platforms” for cooperation with other SCO members, covering “energy, green industry and the digital economy”, according to a transcript released by state news agency Xinhua. Xi committed to host the “SCO green and sustainable development forum” and to “work with” SCO countries to increase the installed capacity of solar and wind each by 10 gigawatts (GW) in the next five years. Xi added that SCO members “have rich energy resources” and “should seek integration, not decoupling”, according to the transcript. The Associated Press said that Xi was “attempting to expand the scope of the SCO”, originally a security forum. It added that his plans included a “development bank run by the organisation” and $1.4bn in loans over the next three years to member states.

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POWER OF SIBERIA 2: Meanwhile, Russia announced that it had signed a deal with China to build the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline linking the two countries, the Financial Times reported. Bloomberg cited Alexey Miller, CEO of Russian energy company Gazprom, saying the long-anticipated scheme could send as much as 50bn cubic metres of gas a year to China via Mongolia for 30 years. It noted that China had “yet to confirm the detail” of the deal. The flow of pipeline gas to China could “extend the oversupply period [of liquefied natural gas (LNG)] beyond the late 2020s”, according to a LinkedIn post by Anne-Sophie Corbeau, global research scholar at Center on Global Energy Policy. In another LinkedIn post, Michal Meidan, director of China energy programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, called the announcement a “huge turning point in the geopolitics of energy”. She said that China is “hedging against over reliance on US LNG” and that the project would “increase China’s reliance on Russian gas considerably”.

‘Absolute’ carbon market caps from 2027

ETS CAP: From 2027, China will begin introducing “absolute emissions caps in some industries for the first time” under its national carbon market, the emissions trading scheme (ETS), reported Reuters, citing a statement from the State Council. The newswire added that, according to this statement, the cap will be implemented with a combination of “free and paid carbon emissions allowances”. Bloomberg explained: “The plan also calls for setting absolute limits on emissions, a tougher standard than the current system, which imposes caps based on carbon intensity and allows emissions to rise over time.” The outlet quoted the official statement saying China is aiming to have a “transparent, standardised and internationally aligned voluntary reduction market” in place by 2030. State broadcaster CCTV reported the news in its morning bulletin, available online in three videos.

N2O ACTION PLAN: Meanwhile, China has published an action plan for controlling industrial emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), industry news outlet BJX News reported. N2O is a powerful greenhouse gas with 273-times the warming impact of carbon dioxide (CO2). The plan called for the emissions of N2O, per unit of production for specific chemicals, to decrease to a “world-leading level” by 2030. A government official said that N2O accounted for 4.3% of China’s total greenhouse gas emissions in 2021, according to energy news outlet International Energy Net, with industrial processes accounting for 28% of N2O emissions overall.

MARKET INCENTIVES: The plan’s key measures include finance and market incentives and technology development, as well as monitoring and reporting, according to a summary published by the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. Dr Jiang Lin from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab said in a LinkedIn post that the “successful implementation” of this plan could “reduce emissions by about 120m tonnes of CO2 [carbon dioxide] equivalent a year”. China has pledged that its next 2035 “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) under the Paris Agreement will cover all greenhouse gases, whereas it previously only targeted CO2. It also discussed controls on N2O – and on methane – in talks with the outgoing Biden administration of the US late last year.

‘GREEN’ CITIES: China has also announced a policy for the construction of “high-quality urban development”, reported Xinhua. The headline of the report called the policy – issued by the Central Committee of the Communist party of China and the State Council – a “roadmap” (路线图) for China’s urban development, referring to a comment from Yang Baojun, chairman of the Urban Planning Society of China. The “main goal”, according to the policy, is to make “significant progress”, including cities’ “green and low-carbon” transitions, by 2030, and establishing “modern people’s cities” by 2035, added Xinhua.

Wind and solar capacity ‘tripled since 2020’

ENERGY ‘ACHIEVEMENTS’: At a press conference on China’s energy “achievements” during the 14th “five-year plan” period (2020-25), China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) said the capacity of wind and solar has more than tripled since the end of 2020, with the total hitting 1,680GW as of the end of July, reported finance news outlet Caixin. The head of the NEA said China was on track to achieve its “key” energy goals for the 14th five-year plan period “on schedule”, Xinhua reported, citing the agency’s head Wang Hongzhi. Wang stated that China’s wind and solar exports in the same period have allowed other countries to cut carbon emissions by 4bn tonnes, said another Xinhua article. CCTV said that, according to Wang, China’s “newly increased” electricity consumption between 2020-25 will exceed the “annual electricity consumption of the EU”.

‘SURGING’ POWER DEMAND: Electricity consumption growth over the next 10 years will ease from 5.6% per year out to 2030 to 4.3% a year to 2035, predicted Ouyang Changyu, deputy chief engineer of State Grid Corporation of China, according to financial outlet Yicai. He said China will “increasingly look” at its west and north regions of Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet – which are rich in renewable energy resources such as solar, wind and hydropower – to meet this “surging” demand, added the outlet. Meanwhile, top economic planner the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) released new draft regulations on rules for the “medium- and long-term electricity market”, according to BJX News.

Solar and steel face ‘overcapacity’ controls

TACKLING ‘OVERCAPACITY’: The Chinese government has been continuing in its efforts to curb overcapacity of the solar industry, with Bloomberg reporting “signs of progress”. The Financial Times reported: “China has ordered the solar sector to rein in overcapacity and cut-throat pricing as the biggest manufacturers suffer billions of dollars in losses.” The steel industry, which has also been “tackl[ing] overcapacity”, will face a production cut between 2025 and 2026, Reuters reported, citing an “official document reviewed by Reuters and a source with knowledge of the matter”. A new steel policy will tighten controls on the production capacity and output of the sector, said Xinyi Shen, China team lead at thinktank the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), on LinkedIn.

EXPORTS TO AFRICA: Meanwhile, China exported more than 15GW in solar equipment to Africa over the past 12 months, Bloomberg reported, citing analysis of customs data by thinktank Ember. The New York Times, covering the same report, said Africa offered “huge” markets to Chinese solar panels when domestic prices had “fallen sharply” due to “overproduction”. Wired wrote that while solar sales remain small in Africa, the “global south appears to be at a turning point in how it thinks about energy”, with solar “emerging as the cheaper and greener way forward” for the first time. A Wall Street Journal newsletter also noted the African solar figures and the debate around “overcapacity”, adding: “There’s a novel dimension to China’s clean-tech boom. It’s possible, in the context of climate change, to estimate the ‘correct’ production volume – not based on current levels of supply and demand, but on what’s required to limit global warming.”

Captured

Spotlight

China’s adaptation to ‘more frequent and intense’ heat extremes

China has seen a series of temperature records broken this summer. The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) says that “extreme high temperatures” have shown an “increasing trend” in China since its records began in 1961.

In this issue, Carbon Brief looks into the heat extremes in China and how the country is adapting to the impacts. The full article is available on Carbon Brief’s website.

How are heat extremes changing in China?

China’s average annual temperature is rising, according to data from the CMA’s Climate Bulletins, with 2024 being the hottest year on record.

Moreover, as the global climate has warmed, the number of “hot days” that China is experiencing has been on the rise.

The CMA defines a “hot day” or “high temperature day” as one that reaches or exceeds 35C. It adds that “high temperatures for several consecutive days constitute a heatwave”.

Prof Wenjia Cai, from the department of earth system science of Tsinghua University, told Carbon Brief that there are more ways to define heatwaves than CMA’s absolute threshold of 35C.

However, regardless of the definition used, the “number of heatwave days is definitely increasing as a result of climate change”, she added.

What role does human-caused climate change play?

A field of climate science called “attribution” has emerged over the past two decades to establish the role that human-caused warming plays in individual extreme weather events.

Some 114 extremes and trends in China have been the subject of an attribution study, including more than 20 relating specifically to extreme heat.

One study found that “more intense and more frequent warm extremes” were observed across “most regions” in China during 1951-2018 and that “greenhouse gas forcing plays a dominant role” in this.

What impact are these heatwaves having?

Heatwaves have a wide variety of impacts on human activities, such as public health, crop yields and economic output.

In 2023, more than 30,000 deaths were related to heatwaves in China – 1.9 times higher than the average over 1986-2005, according to a report by Cai and her colleagues.

Another profound impact of heatwaves is that they can exacerbate droughts, with knock-on impacts for agriculture.

Droughts in 2024 hit more than 11 million people in China, with more than 1.2m hectares of affected crops and direct economic losses topping nearly 8.4bn yuan ($1.2bn), the Ministry of Emergency Management said in early 2025.

Heat-related economic losses could reach nearly 5% of China’s GDP by 2060, according to a recent guest post for Carbon Brief.

Other than manufacturing, electricity supplies in China have also been frequently reported to be affected by hot days.

Dr Muyi Yang, senior energy analyst at thinktank Ember, told Carbon Brief that “when temperatures soar, electricity demand spikes – mainly due to air conditioning – and that can stretch the grid, especially in already tight systems”.

How is China adapting to heatwaves?

In recent years, China has implemented more and more policies aimed at adapting to heatwaves. For example, weather forecasts and heatwave alerts have been provided.

Central and local governments have also issued labour policies aimed at protecting workers against extreme heat.

Last year, China published the “national climate change health adaptation action plan (2024-30)”. This followed the 2022 publication of a national adaptation strategy for 2035, which mentions heatwaves in relation to the power sector, agriculture and health.

Ember’s Yang says that in terms of the electricity system, the old “planning psychology” needs to shift towards a more coordinated strategy, so that it can better cope with extreme heat:

“For example, during extreme heat, instead of just ramping up supply, we should also be encouraging users to reduce or shift their electricity use during peak hours, using price signals or incentives.”

Watch, read, listen

HONG KONG ROOF: Climate outlet Xylom published an article exploring why rooftop solar panels have not been rolled out at scale in Hong Kong.

GRID REFORM: In an article for China Electricity Power News shared by Xinhua, Prof Xia Qing of Tsinghua University and Chen Yuguo, director of Qingneng Interconnection Consulting, discussed how developing “new energy market entry and trading mechanisms” will help China’s grid reforms.

ENERGY AND TECHNOLOGY: Dan Wang, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover History Lab, talked to Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast about China’s “breakneck economic growth”, as well as developments in energy, industry and technology.
AMAZON REPORTING: Greenpeace East Asia interviewed Liu Min, one of only three independent Chinese journalists who reported from the COP16 biodiversity summit last November in Colombia, finding out her reporting journeys in the Amazon.

52.2 billion yuan

The value of “direct economic losses” in China – equivalent to $7.3bn in July 2025 alone – due to flooding, landslides, earthquakes and drought, according to a Reuters report citing China’s Ministry of Emergency Management. The newswire said “road damages” since 1 July amounted to 16bn yuan ($2.2bn), according to the Ministry of Transport.

New science

Climate impacts and future trends of hailstorms in China based on millennial records

Nature Communications

The number of “hailstorm days” in China “increased significantly” after 1850 due to global warming, according to a new study. The authors combined hail damage records from Chinese historical books, governmental hail damage records and hailstorm observations from more than 2,000 meteorological stations around China to analyse the variation in hailstorm days over the past 2,890 years. They also developed a model, which suggests a further increase in the number of hailstorm days as the planet continues to warm.

The 2021 Henan flood increased citizen demand for government-led climate change adaptation in China

Communications earth and environment

The 2021 flood in Henan – one of the deadliest floods in China’s history – led to a “sharp increase” in petitions for drainage, neighborhood safety and flood prevention, according to new research. The authors analysed “citizen engagement” on a government-run petition platform to “examine how residents communicate demands for public safety and infrastructure”. The study showed that “climate risk can catalyse political engagement in non-democratic settings, highlighting the value of citizen input in adaptation planning”, according to the authors.

China Briefing is compiled by Wanyuan Song and Anika Patel. It is edited by Wanyuan Song and Dr Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org