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Marking the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, COP30 is seen as a crucial test of the world’s resolve to tackle climate change. At a time of faltering multilateralism, worsening climate-related destruction and a lack of ambition in national pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the stakes for the UN climate summit in Belèm are higher than ever.

We take a look at the big questions facing this Amazon COP – from efforts to raise weak national climate targets and transition away from fossil fuels, to long-overdue action on adaptation and forest finance.

How will COP30 address the global ambition shortfall?

In the year leading up to COP30, the global climate community watched closely for countries’ new national targets, a key gauge of the world’s commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. As the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) belatedly trickled in, a clear picture emerged: the plans fall far short of what is needed to avoid the worst climate impacts.

If those commitments are turned into action, global emissions are still only expected to fall about 10% below 2019 levels by 2035, a preliminary UN climate assessment found – far short of the roughly 60% cut IPCC scientists say is needed to limit global warming to 1.5C.

“Current commitments still point to climate breakdown,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres, indicating that a temporary overshoot of the more ambitious Paris temperature goal is now “inevitable”.

Heading into COP30, he called on world leaders to deliver “a bold and credible response plan” to close the gap. This leaves the Brazilian COP30 presidency with the unenviable task of trying to push countries to ramp up their ambition and go beyond the NDCs that they have just submitted.

How – or even whether – that will happen is still unclear.

    A round of informal consultations in September brought a clash of views into public view. Large emerging economies, including China, Saudi Arabia and India, pushed back on the need to discuss climate plans – arguing the topic is not on the summit’s agenda and will be taken up in the next Global Stocktake. But rich nations, least-developed countries (LDCs), small island states and Latin American nations want a COP30 decision that lays out a pathway for accelerating climate action in the years ahead.

    If countries were to ultimately agree on a collective response, a negotiated cover decision could be a natural home for it. Brazil professed its strong opposition to that option for months, but it recently warmed up to the idea of producing an “omnibus” decision that could incorporate all the main outcomes of the summit, including those not covered by the formal agenda.

    But some seasoned COP participants want Brazil to take a radically different approach. That could mean, for example, producing an “Implementation Plan“, that, instead of listing vague promises, provides detailed guidance on the way forward while trying to connect the negotiations to the real world.

    What’s next for the fossil fuel transition?

    At COP28 in Dubai, countries reached a landmark agreement to transition away from fossil fuels in their energy systems in a historic first for a UN climate summit. Yet, nearly two years later, those words have not been matched by meaningful action.

    According to the latest Production Gap Report, governments are collectively planning even higher levels of fossil fuel production than they were at the time of the Dubai deal. By 2030, planned production is projected to exceed levels consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5C by more than 120%.

    And in their latest national climate plans submitted this year, only about a third of countries express some form of support for the transition away from fossil fuels, an analysis by Carbon Brief found.

    Leo Roberts, a programme lead on energy transitions at think-tank E3G, said there needs to be a high-level visible signal emerging from this COP, but that is unlikely to come from the formal negotiations. Oil-producing nations have blocked any progress on the fossil fuel transition at COP29 last year and at last June’s mid-year session in Bonn.

    “What we need to see is some process that can act as a bridge between the real world and negotiations,” added Roberts, “a dialogue space that can ultimately produce some form of roadmap on the transition away from fossil fuels”.

    Brazil’s environment minister Marina Silva at a COP30 presidency consultation event. (Photo: Felipe Werneck/COP30 presidency)

    Brazil’s environment minister Marina Silva at a COP30 presidency consultation event. (Photo: Felipe Werneck/COP30 presidency)

    This idea should count on political backing from Brazil, despite the country’s plans to expand oil and gas production. The need for a roadmap was first floated in the country’s NDC last year and Environment Minister Marina Silvia has been publicly championing it in the run-up to COP30.

    Last week, she called on world leaders to send a clear message on the need for a “just, planned, gradual and long-term decommissioning of fossil fuels” as they take to the stage in Belém this week.

    Several other nations should be getting behind this push. Ministers from 23 countries, including the UK, Germany, France and small-island nations, said “international cooperation and global tracking” are needed to make sure the transition happens fast enough in a joint statement published on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

    The European Union wants the COP30 outcome to ask all nations, and particularly major emitters, “to operationalise their contribution” to the global call to transition away from fossil fuels. Colombia is set to host the first international conference on phasing out fossil fuels in April 2026, aiming to give countries a global platform for co-operating on the transition away from coal, oil and fossil gas.

    Big banks’ lending to coal backers undermines Indonesia’s green plans

    In the formal negotiations, Brazil has made advancing the just transition work programme one of its top priorities, after countries failed at COP29 to agree on a deal to support workers and communities affected by the shift to cleaner energy.

    Civil society groups are pushing the idea of a new “Belém Action Mechanism” under the programme, an initiative aimed at unifying and strengthening global efforts to ensure that the shift away from fossil fuels is fair, inclusive, and equitable. The idea is to identify barriers, opportunities and international support by providing countries with global coordination.

    Will adaptation take centre stage?

    As the world fails to limit global warming to agreed levels, climate impacts are expected to grow even more intense and frequent. This grim outlook translates into an increasingly urgent need to strengthen countries’ ability to withstand worsening floods, deadlier heatwaves and more prolonged droughts.

    But adaptation – often described as the “Cinderella” of climate action – remains largely overlooked and severely underfunded. Brazil has pledged to change that, putting adaptation at the centre of this year’s UN climate summit.

    “Climate adaptation is no longer a choice that follows mitigation – it is the first half of our survival,” COP30 president André Aranha Corrêa do Lago said in a recent letter calling for “urgent and tangible” outcomes in Belém.

    In the formal negotiations, the big-ticket item will be the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). Governments should agree on a set of indicators that can be used to measure progress towards the GGA’s broad targets on areas including sanitation, food, health and infrastructure.

    Technical experts have whittled down thousands of proposed indicators to a more manageable list of 100, which will serve as the basis of discussions in Belèm.

    Natalie Unterstell, president of Brazil’s Instituto Talanoa, told a Climate Home briefing that would “really help us to start having a common language to measure progress on resilience” – comparing it to the Paris temperature goals.

    Vulnerable countries also hope that clearer parameters will help unlock more funding for adaptation efforts.

    Sounding the alarm over a “yawning gap” in adaptation finance, the UN Environment Programme estimates that developing countries will need to spend between $310 billion and $365 billion a year on resilience measures by 2035 — about 12 times current international public funding levels.

    But the outlook for adaptation finance is growing increasingly bleak. The COP26 pledge by developed nations to double funding for developing countries by 2025 appears likely to have been missed, as governments cut overseas spending amid mounting geopolitical tensions and domestic fiscal pressures.

      While an official assessment will not be available until 2027, the LDCs are pushing for a new goal to be set at COP30 to boost adaptation finance to about $120 billion a year by 2030. Manjeet Dhakal, a Nepalese negotiator for the group, said that would be the “bare minimum, or otherwise it will be very difficult for us”.

      Where those resources could come from remains to be seen. But Corrêa do Lago told Reuters he hoped to produce a “package of resources” for adaptation with rich countries, multilateral development banks and philanthropic organisations all contributing.

      How will fractured geopolitics influence discussions?

      Geopolitical tensions linked to wars and growing trade rivalries are inevitably casting a long shadow over the climate agenda and hampering multilateral cooperation.

      The most disruptive force – US President Donald Trump’s administration – will not be present on the ground in Belèm, barring a last-minute U-turn. The White House told several media outlets that no high-level officials will be sent to the talks, which come a month before the US will officially leave the Paris Agreement.

      Many diplomats are likely breathing a sigh of relief after seeing the US use what some observers described as “bully-boy tactics” to sink a landmark deal to cut emissions in the shipping sector last month.

        The Trump administration may not be in the room in Belém, but its shadow is likely to hang over the summit. Laurence Tubiana, a key architect of the Paris Agreement, warned that she has never seen such an aggressive stance against climate policy as that emanating from Washington. “We are really confronted with an ideological battle where climate change is in the package the US government wants to defeat,” she told reporters.

        Tubiana added that other countries need to stand up and make COP “a turning point”.

        The spotlight is expected to fall primarily on the EU, which will carry the torch for rich countries, and large emerging economies, including China, India and COP30 host Brazil.

        For Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, this year’s summit could mark a “collective graduation ceremony” for Global South countries fast-tracked by the retreat of the US.

        “When I look at that part of the world, I’m seeing stronger alignment among many countries between their economic growth and the decarbonisation agenda,” he said.

        Wopke Hoekstra, European Commissioner for Climate, Net Zero and Clean Growth and Lars Aagard, Denmark’s Minister for Climate, Energy and Utilities, at a meeting of the EU Council where the bloc’s new climate targets were agreed. Photo: European Union

        Wopke Hoekstra, European Commissioner for Climate, Net Zero and Clean Growth and Lars Aagard, Denmark’s Minister for Climate, Energy and Utilities, at a meeting of the EU Council where the bloc’s new climate targets were agreed. Photo: European Union

        The EU has been walking a tightrope between trying to reaffirm its climate leadership and grappling with internal discord that has threatened to undermine its credibility.

        Tubiana said Europe “must stop patronising” and recognise that “we are all interdependent”. “We cannot execute the green transition without cooperation and help from other countries,” she added. “That means we have to propose ways of working, investing and trading that are truly equitable.”

        Echoing her words, Arunabha Ghosh, CEO of the Delhi-based Council on Energy, Environment and Water, said countries need to show a different level of solidarity across the [Global] North and the South.

        “We are all under collective siege, and when you are under siege, the more you hunker down together, the better chances you have to survive the real and metaphorical hurricanes,” he told reporters.

        Will an Amazon COP turn the tide on deforestation?

        When Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva picked the Amazon city of Belèm as the venue for COP30, he wanted to make sure that, for the first time, forests would be literally at the heart of the talks as their crucial role in storing carbon and regulating the climate comes under growing threat.

        Global deforestation has not slowed significantly in the four years since countries committed at COP26 to halt and reverse forest loss and degradation by 2030.

        Last year, the world lost 8.1 million hectares of forest – an area the size of England – leaving the world 63% off track from meeting that pledge, according to the annual Forest Declaration Assessment. Fires and land clearing for agriculture and other commodities remain the leading causes of deforestation.

        How could COP30 start turning this negative trend around? The most highly anticipated initiative falls outside of the negotiations, but is being billed as potentially one of Brazil’s biggest legacies as COP host: the launch of the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF).

        World failing on goal to halt deforestation by 2030, raising stakes for Amazon COP

        Acting as an investment fund, the mechanism would invest in financial markets and use some of the expected returns to reward forest-rich nations that manage to keep trees standing. It aims to receive an initial capital of $25 billion from governments, which would then be used to attract $100 billion from private investors.

        “Think of a bank that runs normal market operations but that directs its profits not to shareholders but to forests,” said João Paulo de Resende, undersecretary for economic and fiscal affairs at Brazil’s Finance Ministry.

        The TFFF’s main strategy is to get cheap money from investors and lend money to emerging economies at much higher interest rates. Emerging market bonds would account for as much as 80% of its investments. Exploiting this arbitrage opportunity should guarantee enough returns to pay back investors and channel cash into forest protection, according to its proponents.

        But the mechanics of the fund have come in for criticism, with some analysts saying the fund rests on “a fragile illusion” of free revenues to be harvested from the bond market, where higher yields represent bigger real risks.

        Potential donors have also been asking “very tough questions” about the fund’s configuration, one of its promoters told Climate Home’s webinar last month. The UK government was reportedly divided over whether to offer cash for the initiative with the Treasury questioning its costs, Politico reported.

        So far, only Brazil and Indonesia have committed money to the TFFF, with each pledging $1 billion. But Lula, who has personally championed the initiative, will be hoping to announce more contributions at the flagship launch event on Thursday.

        The post Five big questions hanging over COP30 appeared first on Climate Home News.

        Five big questions hanging over COP30

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        What Is the Economic Impact of Data Centers? It’s a Secret.

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        N.C. Gov. Josh Stein wants state lawmakers to rethink tax breaks for data centers. The industry’s opacity makes it difficult to evaluate costs and benefits.

        Tax breaks for data centers in North Carolina keep as much as $57 million each year into from state and local government coffers, state figures show, an amount that could balloon to billions of dollars if all the proposed projects are built.

        What Is the Economic Impact of Data Centers? It’s a Secret.

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        GEF raises $3.9bn ahead of funding deadline, $1bn below previous budget

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        The Global Environment Facility (GEF), a multilateral fund that provides climate and nature finance to developing countries, has raised $3.9 billion from donor governments in its last pledging session ahead of a key fundraising deadline at the end of May.

        The amount, which is meant to cover the fund’s activities for the next four years (July 2026-June 2030), falls significantly short of the previous four-year cycle for which the GEF managed to raise $5.3bn from governments. Since then, military and other political priorities have squeezed rich nations’ budgets for climate and development aid.

        The facility said in a statement that it expects more pledges ahead of the final replenishment package, which is set for approval at the next GEF Council meeting from May 31 to June 3.

        Claude Gascon, interim CEO of the GEF, said that “donor countries have risen to the challenge and made bold commitments towards a more positive future for the planet”. He added that the pledges send a message that “the world is not giving up on nature even in a time of competing priorities”.

          Donors under pressure

          But Brian O’Donnell, director of the environmental non-profit Campaign for Nature, said the announcement shows “an alarming trend” of donor governments cutting public finance for climate and nature.

          “Wealthy nations pledged to increase international nature finance, and yet we are seeing cuts and lower contributions. Investing in nature prevents extinctions and supports livelihoods, security, health, food, clean water and climate,” he said. “Failing to safeguard nature now will result in much larger costs later.”

          At COP29 in Baku, developed countries pledged to mobilise $300bn a year in public climate finance by 2035, while at UN biodiversity talks they have also pledged to raise $30bn per year by 2030. Yet several wealthy governments have announced cuts to green finance to increase defense spending, among them most recently the UK.

          As for the US, despite Trump’s cuts to international climate finance, Congress approved a $150 million increase in its contribution to the GEF after what was described as the organisation’s “refocus on non-climate priorities like biodiversity, plastics and ocean ecosystems, per US Treasury guidance”.

          The facility will only reveal how much each country has pledged when its assembly of 186 member countries meets in early June. The last period’s largest donors were Germany ($575 million), Japan ($451 million), and the US ($425 million).

          The GEF has also gone through a change in leadership halfway through its fundraising cycle. Last December, the GEF Council asked former CEO Carlos Manuel Rodriguez to step down effective immediately and appointed Gascon as interim CEO.

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          New guidelines

          As part of the upcoming funding cycle, the GEF has approved a set of guidelines for spending the $3.9bn raised so far, which include allocating 35% of resources for least developed countries and small island states, as well as 20% of the money going to Indigenous people and communities.

          Its programs will help countries shift five key systems – nature, food, urban, energy and health – from models that drive degradation to alternatives that protect the planet and support human well-being by integrating the value of nature into production and consumption systems.

          The new priorities also include a target to allocate 25% of the GEF’s budget for mobilising private funds through blended finance. This aligns with efforts by wealthy countries to increase contributions from the private sector to international climate finance.

          Niels Annen, Germany’s State Secretary for Economic Cooperation and Development, said in a statement that the country’s priorities are “very well reflected” in the GEF’s new spending guidelines, including on “innovative finance for nature and people, better cooperation with the private sector, and stable resources for the most vulnerable countries”.

          Aliou Mustafa, of the GEF Indigenous Peoples Advisory Group (IPAG), also welcomed the announcement, adding that “the GEF is strengthening trust and meaningful partnerships with Indigenous Peoples and local communities” by placing them at the “centre of decision-making”.

          The post GEF raises $3.9bn ahead of funding deadline, $1bn below previous budget appeared first on Climate Home News.

          GEF raises $3.9bn ahead of funding deadline, $1bn below previous budget

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          Marine heatwaves ‘nearly double’ the economic damage caused by tropical cyclones

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          Tropical cyclones that rapidly intensify when passing over marine heatwaves can become “supercharged”, increasing the likelihood of high economic losses, a new study finds.

          Such storms also have higher rates of rainfall and higher maximum windspeeds, according to the research.

          The study, published in Science Advances, looks at the economic damages caused by nearly 800 tropical cyclones that occurred around the world between 1981 and 2023.

          It finds that rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones that pass near abnormally warm parts of the ocean produce nearly double – 93% – the economic damages as storms that do not, even when levels of coastal development are taken into account.

          One researcher, who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that the new analysis is a “step forward in understanding how we can better refine our predictions of what might happen in the future” in an increasingly warm world.

          As marine heatwaves are projected to become more frequent under future climate change, the authors say that the interactions between storms and these heatwaves “should be given greater consideration in future strategies for climate adaptation and climate preparedness”.

          ‘Rapid intensification’

          Tropical cyclones are rapidly rotating storm systems that form over warm ocean waters, characterised by low pressure at their cores and sustained winds that can reach more than 120 kilometres per hour.

          The term “tropical cyclones” encompasses hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons, which are named as such depending on which ocean basin they occur in.

          When they make landfall, these storms can cause major damage. They accounted for six of the top 10 disasters between 1900 and 2024 in terms of economic loss, according to the insurance company Aon’s 2025 climate catastrophe insight report.

          These economic losses are largely caused by high wind speeds, large amounts of rainfall and damaging storm surges.

          Storms can become particularly dangerous through a process called “rapid intensification”.

          Rapid intensification is when a storm strengthens considerably in a short period of time. It is defined as an increase in sustained wind speed of at least 30 knots (around 55 kilometres per hour) in a 24-hour period.

          There are several factors that can lead to rapid intensification, including warm ocean temperatures, high humidity and low vertical “wind shear” – meaning that the wind speeds higher up in the atmosphere are very similar to the wind speeds near the surface.

          Rapid intensification has become more common since the 1980s and is projected to become even more frequent in the future with continued warming. (Although there is uncertainty as to how climate change will impact the frequency of tropical cyclones, the increase in strength and intensification is more clear.)

          Marine heatwaves are another type of extreme event that are becoming more frequent due to recent warming. Like their atmospheric counterparts, marine heatwaves are periods of abnormally high ocean temperatures.

          Previous research has shown that these marine heatwaves can contribute to a cyclone undergoing rapid intensification. This is because the warm ocean water acts as a “fuel” for a storm, says Dr Hamed Moftakhari, an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Alabama who was one of the authors of the new study. He explains:

          “The entire strength of the tropical cyclone [depends on] how hot the [ocean] surface is. Marine heatwave means we have an abundance of hot water that is like a gas [petrol] station. As you move over that, it’s going to supercharge you.”

          However, the authors say, there is no global assessment of how rapid intensification and marine heatwaves interact – or how they contribute to economic damages.

          Using the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) – a database of tropical cyclone paths and intensities – the researchers identify 1,600 storms that made landfall during the 1981-2023 period, out of a total of 3,464 events.

          Of these 1,600 storms, they were able to match 789 individual, land-falling cyclones with economic loss data from the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) and other official sources.

          Then, using the IBTrACS storm data and ocean-temperature data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, the researchers classify each cyclone by whether or not it underwent rapid intensification and if it passed near a recent marine heatwave event before making landfall.

          The researchers find that there is a “modest” rise in the number of marine heatwave-influenced tropical cyclones globally since 1981, but with significant regional variations. In particular, they say, there are “clear” upward trends in the north Atlantic Ocean, the north Indian Ocean and the northern hemisphere basin of the eastern Pacific Ocean.

          ‘Storm characteristics’

          The researchers find substantial differences in the characteristics of tropical cyclones that experience rapid intensification and those that do not, as well as between rapidly intensifying storms that occur with marine heatwaves and those that occur without them.

          For example, tropical cyclones that do not experience rapid intensification have, on average, maximum wind speeds of around 40 knots (74km/hr), whereas storms that rapidly intensify have an average maximum wind speed of nearly 80 knots (148km/hr).

          Of the rapidly intensifying storms, those that are influenced by marine heatwaves maintain higher wind speeds during the days leading up to landfall.

          Although the wind speeds are very similar between the two groups once the storms make landfall, the pre-landfall difference still has an impact on a storm’s destructiveness, says Dr Soheil Radfar, a hurricane-hazard modeller at Princeton University. Radfar, who is the lead author of the new study, tells Carbon Brief:

          “Hurricane damage starts days before the landfall…Four or five days before a hurricane making landfall, we expect to have high wind speeds and, because of that high wind speed, we expect to have storm surges that impact coastal communities.”

          They also find that rapidly intensifying storms have higher peak rainfall than non-rapidly intensifying storms, with marine heatwave-influenced, rapidly intensifying storms exhibiting the highest average rainfall at landfall.

          The charts below show the mean sustained wind speed in knots (top) and the mean rainfall in millimetres per hour (bottom) for the tropical cyclones analysed in the study in the five days leading up to and two days following a storm making landfall.

          The four lines show storms that: rapidly intensified with the influence of marine heatwaves (red); those that rapidly intensified without marine heatwaves (purple); those that experienced marine heatwaves, but did not rapidly intensify (orange); and those that neither rapidly intensified nor experienced a marine heatwave (blue).

          Average maximum sustained wind speed (top) and rate of rainfall (bottom) for tropical cyclones in the period leading up to and following landfall. Storms are categorised as: rapidly intensifying with marine heatwaves (red); rapidly intensifying without marine heatwaves (purple); not rapidly intensifying with marine heatwaves (orange); and not rapidly intensifying, without marine heatwaves (blue). Source: Radfar et al. (2026)
          Average maximum sustained wind speed (top) and rate of rainfall (bottom) for tropical cyclones in the period leading up to and following landfall. Storms are categorised as: rapidly intensifying with marine heatwaves (red); rapidly intensifying without marine heatwaves (purple); not rapidly intensifying with marine heatwaves (orange); and not rapidly intensifying, without marine heatwaves (blue). Source: Radfar et al. (2026)

          Dr Daneeja Mawren, an ocean and climate consultant at the Mauritius-based Mascarene Environmental Consulting who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that the new study “helps clarify how marine heatwaves amplify storm characteristics”, such as stronger winds and heavier rainfall. She notes that this “has not been done on a global scale before”.

          However, Mawren adds that other factors not considered in the analysis can “make a huge difference” in the rapid intensification of tropical cyclones, including subsurface marine heatwaves and eddies – circular, spinning ocean currents that can trap warm water.

          Dr Jonathan Lin, an atmospheric scientist at Cornell University who was also not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that, while the intensification found by the study “makes physical sense”, it is inherently limited by the relatively small number of storms that occur. He adds:

          “There’s not that many storms, to tease out the physical mechanisms and observational data. So being able to reproduce this kind of work in a physical model would be really important.”

          Economic costs

          Storm intensity is not the only factor that determines how destructive a given cyclone can be – the economic damages also depend strongly on the population density and the amount of infrastructure development where a storm hits. The study explains:

          “A high storm surge in a sparsely populated area may cause less economic damage than a smaller surge in a densely populated, economically important region.”

          To account for the differences in development, the researchers use a type of data called “built-up volume”, from the Global Human Settlement Layer. Built-up volume is a quantity derived from satellite data and other high-resolution imagery that combines measurements of building area and average building height in a given area. This can be used as a proxy for the level of development, the authors explain.

          By comparing different cyclones that impacted areas with similar built-up volumes, the researchers can analyse how rapid intensification and marine heatwaves contribute to the overall economic damages of a storm.

          They find that, even when controlling for levels of coastal development, storms that pass through a marine heatwave during their rapid intensification cause 93% higher economic damages than storms that do not.

          They identify 71 marine heatwave-influenced storms that cause more than $1bn (inflation-adjusted across the dataset) in damages, compared to 45 storms that cause those levels of damage without the influence of marine heatwaves.

          This quantification of the cyclones’ economic impact is one of the study’s most “important contributions”, says Mawren.

          The authors also note that the continued development in coastal regions may increase the likelihood of tropical cyclone damages over time.

          Towards forecasting

          The study notes that the increased damages caused by marine heatwave-influenced tropical cyclones, along with the projected increases in marine heatwaves, means such storms “should be given greater consideration” in planning for future climate change.

          For Radfar and Moftakhari, the new study emphasises the importance of understanding the interactions between extreme events, such as tropical cyclones and marine heatwaves.

          Moftakhari notes that extreme events in the future are expected to become both more intense and more complex. This becomes a problem for climate resilience because “we basically design in the future based on what we’ve observed in the past”, he says. This may lead to underestimating potential hazards, he adds.

          Mawren agrees, telling Carbon Brief that, in order to “fully capture the intensification potential”, future forecasts and risk assessments must account for marine heatwaves and other ocean phenomena, such as subsurface heat.

          Lin adds that the actions needed to reduce storm damages “take on the order of decades to do right”. He tells Carbon Brief:

          “All these [planning] decisions have to come by understanding the future uncertainty and so this research is a step forward in understanding how we can better refine our predictions of what might happen in the future.”

          The post Marine heatwaves ‘nearly double’ the economic damage caused by tropical cyclones appeared first on Carbon Brief.

          Marine heatwaves ‘nearly double’ the economic damage caused by tropical cyclones

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