The Pine Island glacier in West Antarctica is one of the fastest-changing glaciers in the world.
Alongside its neighbour, the Thwaites glacier, it is responsible for almost half the sea level rise caused by melting ice sheets in Antarctica.
Scientists know the West Antarctic ice sheet – which includes Thwaites and Pine Island – is retreating because of warm water eroding the ice sheet from below.
But the extent to which this process has been driven by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, as opposed to natural variations to the Earth’s climate, remains unknown.
Our study, published in the Cryosphere, looks at how human-caused warming has contributed to the retreat of the Pine Island glacier since pre-industrial times.
The research, the first attribution study of glacier retreat on Antarctica, finds that climate change has been responsible for around 4km – roughly a fifth – of the glacier’s retreat.
The West Antarctic ice sheet
Glaciers are frozen rivers of ice and snow that move slowly over land. They are found at high elevations on mountains and on ice sheets.
There are two ice sheets on Earth – covering Antarctica and Greenland. Both were formed over millennia, as layers of snow compressed into dense ice.
Ice sheets grow and shrink depending on temperature and snowfall conditions. In the past, when global temperatures were much colder than present day, vast ice sheets also covered large areas of North America, Scandinavia and Patagonia.
Today, human-driven climate change is accelerating the retreat of ice sheets. This is contributing to sea level rise and altering the Earth’s climate system by pumping vast quantities of fresh melt water into the ocean.
Our research looks at the Pine Island glacier, which is found on the western part of the Antarctic ice sheet.
It is one of the fastest-melting glaciers in the world. Research has shown it has been responsible for a fifth of net ice loss from the West Antarctic ice sheet, which, in turn, has been responsible for almost all ice loss in Antarctica over the past 40 years.
At the coldest point of the last ice age – the “last glacial maximum” period around 20,000 years ago – the West Antarctic ice sheet was much bigger than it is today. Since then, it has retreated by approximately 500km – roughly the distance from Paris to London.
Most of this retreat took place between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. For the past 10,000 years or so, the ice sheet has been about as big as it is today.
Sediment records beneath the Pine Island glacier reveal that, for hundreds of years until the 1940s, the glacier rested on a seabed ridge that is about 30km ahead of where it sits today.
The sediment records also tell us that the Pine Island glacier started to retreat in the 1940s. This coincided with a strong El Niño event, a recurring climate pattern in the tropical Pacific that drives up global temperatures, that brought a large pulse of warm water to the ice sheet.
This is illustrated in the figures below, which shows how the grounding line – the boundary between grounded and floating ice – of the Pine Island glacier shifted between pre-industrial times (red line) and 2015 (bright blue line).
The map on the left shows an aerial view of grounding line retreat from pre-industrial times (red) to 2015 (blue). The graphic on the right illustrates how the grounding line has shifted across a cross-section of the glacier.
Both illustrate how the glacier has contracted.
Climate reconstructions suggest that human-caused climate change only started to increase the amount of warm water reaching the West Antarctic ice sheet in the 1960s.
This indicates that climate change started to affect the melt rate in the region 20 years after the retreat had already been initiated.
In our research, we wanted to find out how important climate change was to the overall retreat since the 1940s.
Attributing ice sheet retreat
Currently, scientists do not know precisely how much of the retreat of the world’s ice sheets – and the associated sea level rise – is due to human-caused global warming.
Through the field of attribution science, the links between climate change and extreme weather and climate events, including heatwaves, wildfires and droughts, are routinely quantified by scientists.
In attribution studies, scientists typically use climate models to simulate the severity or frequency of an event in two worlds. The first is our existing, climate-changed world and the second is a “counterfactual” world that has not been affected by human-caused warming.
By comparing the model runs, scientists can assess how much climate change influenced an event.
To create these two modelled worlds in an Antarctic context, scientists need to run historical models for at least 200 years into the past. This is because ice sheets respond very slowly to changes in the climate, with very small changes year-on-year.
This presents a challenge, given the limited information available about ice sheet change before satellite records began in the 1970s.
To build a picture of the ice sheets prior to this, scientists have to rely on a few, sparse, palaeoclimate records – including sediment records and seafloor imprints – which tell us where ice was present in the past.
Reconstructing Pine Island’s past
To reconstruct the retreat of the Pine Island glacier – and, therefore, determine the role of climate change – we used a combination of physical climate models and machine learning.
First, we ran many simulations of our model under a range of different settings. This included variations in how important processes are represented, such as how the ice moves and interacts with the ocean.
Then, we compared the results of these simulations to modern satellite observations and older sediment records, allowing us to narrow down the settings that were most realistic. This gave us a set of plausible simulations that agreed with the available observational data.
However, to reconstruct the retreat in full, we needed to find all settings of our model that would agree with the observational data.
Because simulations take a lot of time to run, this was not possible.
Therefore, to fill the gaps and find all plausible simulations, we used machine learning to identify relationships between model settings and simulated glacier retreat.
This exercise allowed us to build a good picture of how the glacier actually retreated over the past 250 years. We call this our “reconstructed” scenario.
We then compared the glacier retreat in this reconstructed world with changes that took place in a counterfactual scenario where there had been no human-caused climate change.
In doing so, we were able to quantify the role that warming played in the shrinking of the Pine Island glacier since the 1940s.
Overall, we estimate that warming has been responsible for around 4km – roughly a fifth – of the glacier’s retreat since 1940.
This is shown in the figure below, which shows how grounding line retreat in the reconstructed scenario (blue) is more extreme than projected by the counterfactual scenario (green).
Interpreting the numbers
Our work quantifies, for the first time, the role of climate change in the retreat of a glacier in the world’s ice sheets – directly linking greenhouse gas emissions with glacier decline.
We also find that the Pine Island glacier may have retreated even without climate change, just not as far. This is similar to how extreme weather events, such as drought or extreme rainfall, could still happen without climate change, just with less frequency or intensity.
One of the key challenges in our research arises from not knowing exactly how large the ice sheet was prior to satellite records.
Although the sediment records tell us where the ice was grounded – that is, what its footprint was – they do not tell us exactly how much ice there was.
This means we do not know exactly how to set up our model at the start of the simulations, which leads to uncertainty in our predictions.
Further work is underway to determine exactly how to best set up the simulations for future research.
The post Guest post: Climate change has caused one-fifth of Pine Island glacier retreat appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: Climate change has caused one-fifth of Pine Island glacier retreat
With rich governments and development banks delivering more climate finance as loans, developing countries could be paying back more each year than they receive in new lending by the mid-2030s, new research has found.
CARE Denmark and the CARE Climate Justice Center worked out the repayment schedules of around 17,500 climate loan records reported by developed countries and multilateral lenders between 2011 and 2024, in what the researchers say is the first analysis of its kind.
It estimates that repayments on these public climate loans, including interest and fees, nearly tripled from $6.9 billion in 2020 to $20.1 billion in 2024. That is equivalent to around a fifth of the public climate finance that developed countries reported providing that year.
If climate lending stays at its 2024 level each year and on the same terms, annual repayments on old and new loans would overtake fresh lending in 2036, the researchers found.
“By not making the backflows of climate finance visible, Global North countries cheat their public,” John Nordbo, senior climate adviser at CARE Denmark, told Climate Home News. “They give an impression that they are actually more supportive than they are.”
Finance takes centre stage at COP31
The World Bank is by far the biggest lender in the portfolio, followed by Japan and France. Overall, loans worth $489 billion will cost borrowers an estimated $663 billion over their lifetimes.
Climate finance looks certain to become a central issue at COP31 after developing nations scored an early win by getting a new work programme on climate finance added to the summit’s official agenda.
A key question looming over the talks in Türkiye is how rich countries will make good on their promise to deliver at least $300 billion a year in climate finance by 2035, amid shrinking aid budgets and spending redirected to other priorities, including defence.
-
When the oil companies leave, who pays?
Across the world, communities facing the decline of fossil fuel industries are demanding a Just Transition that gives them a say in what comes next. Establishing a strong mechanism at COP31 could help them secure it -
Governments must embrace Fossil Free Zones as they head to COP31
Colombia and Vanuatu share their experiences of creating new fossil fuel-free zones as a tool to transition away from coal, oil and gas
Nordbo said the delivery of the climate finance goal agreed two years ago in Baku depends heavily on multilateral development banks and the private sector, ushering in the risk of an even larger share of loans.
Loans already make up most public climate finance. Developed countries provided $101.6 billion in public climate finance in 2024, two-thirds of it as loans, according to the OECD.
“That’s the preferred solution to the climate finance issue right now,” he said. “It doesn’t really seem sustainable.”
Debt trap
The repayments add to a wider debt squeeze on the Global South. Developing countries paid a record $1.4 trillion in principal and interest in 2025, a fifth consecutive annual increase, according to the World Bank’s International Debt Report, published last week.
Countries at the frontline of the climate crisis are among the hardest hit. Almost 94% of the most climate-vulnerable countries are in, or at significant risk of, debt distress, and they spend nearly 25 times more on debt repayments than on climate action, according to a September report by ActionAid.
CARE accepts that concessional loans can make sense for climate projects that generate revenue. But it argues they are the wrong tool to fund adaptation measures that protect lives rather than produce income, as well as for countries recovering from climate disasters or already in debt distress.
The post Developing countries face climate finance deficit as loan repayments soar appeared first on Climate Home News.
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/11/10/developing-countries-face-climate-finance-deficit-as-loan-repayments-soar/
Stientje van Veldhoven is Minister of Climate and Green Growth for the Netherlands.
When we co-hosted the first-ever conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels (TAFF) this April, the world was reeling from the volatility in oil and gas prices due to the Hormuz blockade. Fossil fuels moved to the centre of the debate as country leaders scrambled to secure supplies for their people.
We saw the very opposite in Santa Marta. Nearly 60 nations came together with 2,600-plus participants from civil society and community organisations, businesses and scientists to discuss concrete solutions on how governments can shift away from fossil fuels. Together, we defined the ‘Santa Marta process’ to serve as an extra engine for the broader process of the UNFCCC.
The Santa Marta process will see expert groups and committed countries develop national roadmaps, chart pathways to overcome financial constraints, and drive economic transformation. We made a multi-year commitment to take this process forward. With Tuvalu and Ireland taking over as co-chairs for 2027, transitioning away from fossil fuels is now moving from words to action.
European nations signal support for fossil fuel roadmap, says COP30 president
Work gets underway
At the opening of the Santa Marta conference, my co-chair Colombia’s then energy minister Irene Veléz Torres and I repeatedly stressed one thing: that the forum was not a space for negotiations, but a forum for countries and other partners to discuss practical steps to move away from fossil fuels.
Since then, we have seen three roadmaps already submitted: by France, Germany and our own. Pacific Island ministers also recently announced their intention to develop a regional roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. And I called on the European Commission to do the same for the European Union.
On top of this, numerous countries are already working on parts of the transition, such as phasing out coal or ending fossil fuel subsidies. More countries are expected to follow soon.
Workstreams were launched in early August, followed by sign-ups from countries willing to take a larger role and lead on organising different activities. Each workstream has an assigned lead organisation (or madrina). Each has its own working structure.
When the oil companies leave, who pays?
Across the world, communities facing the decline of fossil fuel industries are demanding a Just Transition that gives them a say in what comes next. Establishing a strong mechanism at COP31 could help them secure itCOP31 Bulletin Day 1: Agenda settled as COP urged to “supercharge solutions”
An agenda row is averted at the opening session, where the UN climate chief said strong results are needed from the talks to boost “real-world outcomes”
Workstream 1 focuses on supporting countries in developing and implementing flexible, country-owned national roadmaps. It operates as an open, collaborative hub that coordinates partner institutions to provide tailored technical, financial and policy support directly aligned with each country’s specific needs and existing frameworks. The consortium, which functions as a hub, currently consists of the NDC Partnership, the Powering Past Coal Alliance, the World Resources Institute and the newly established Science Panel on the Global Energy Transition.
Workstream 2 focuses on mobilising collective coalition power to tackle national and international financial constraints, debt-related barriers and macroeconomic dependencies that hinder the transition away from fossil fuels. Starting with a scoping phase, it will deliver transparent, actionable recommendations and reform solutions to support countries’ structural fiscal needs at global fora. Its madrinas are the International Institute for Sustainable Development and Transforma, a Latin American think-and-do-tank.
Workstream 3 focuses on driving economic transformation by mapping green partnership potential, decarbonising trade balances and building competitive, mutually beneficial clean markets. It aims to help countries, especially producers, diversify their economies, scale domestic value creation, and unlock collective trade opportunities. The madrina is the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development working together with the South Centre.
Incorporating Santa Marta into COP
What was abundantly clear in Santa Marta is that our coalition’s efforts are a strong support to, rather than a replacement for, the COP process. Over the past decade or so, the focus at COPs was on setting goals. Now we must focus on implementation. The COP31 presidencies have previously indicated their willingness to incorporate elements of the Santa Marta process into COP31 outcomes. We look forward to seeing how we can achieve this together.
The Brazilian COP30 Presidency delivered its global roadmap on the transition away from fossil fuels – a voluntary toolkit for countries that want to move ahead – just before the COP started in Antalya on Monday. During the coming two weeks, it’s critical that we see more concrete, actionable roadmaps for the fossil fuel phase-out. These documents can be crucial for a strong second Global Stocktake of national climate plans in two years’ time.
Brazil’s fossil fuel roadmap sketches out first global timetable
At COP31, a variety of TAFF-related events will be hosted, focusing on next steps within the Santa Marta workstreams. We welcome any leader and expert from around the world to take part as they work to develop their roadmaps, identify the fossil fuel subsidies they need to phase out, or establish green/clean markets at home.
Only by reducing fossil fuel demand and replacing it with clean electricity to run our economies can we all become more economically resilient and sharply cut the pace of climate change.
The post COP31 outcome needs to prioritise transition away from fossil fuels appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP31 outcome needs to prioritise transition away from fossil fuels
An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same