Estimating Earth’s climate sensitivity, the global average warming from doubling CO2 above pre-industrial levels, is an urgent task as it governs how much the world will warm from fossil-fuel emissions.
Recent work has essentially ruled out low values of climate sensitivity below about 2C, but how much do we know about high values of climate sensitivity?
There is an active debate about the likely upper bound of climate sensitivity, which informs the worst-case projections of warming over the coming decades.
One way to narrow this down is to study the major climate changes of Earth’s past seen in palaeoclimate “proxy data”. These records are scattered across the planet, found in everything from ice cores and ocean sediments to tree rings and coral reefs.
Combining proxy data with climate models helps scientists understand what past changes were caused by natural fluctuations in CO2 and what changes we can expect from human-caused CO2 increases in the future.
In our new study, published in Science Advances, we find that the Last Glacial Maximum – a period of extensive ice cover about 21,000 years ago – provides even stronger evidence for modern-day climate sensitivity than previously thought.
Our estimates suggest a central estimate of “equilibrium” climate sensitivity of 2.9C, with a very likely range of 2.1-4.1C.
This is around a 30% narrowing of the 2.0-5.0C range in the latest assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Our findings give us more confidence that very high climate sensitivity is unlikely. They also support the IPCC’s central estimate for climate sensitivity of around 3.0C and lower estimate of 2.0C, confirming that warming would still be severe if we do not reduce fossil-fuel emissions.
Progress in climate sensitivity
For many years, the estimated range for equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) remained stubbornly wide.
After the landmark Charney report established a “consensus” position from a study group convened by the US National Research Council back in 1979, many IPCC assessments over several decades were unable to narrow it further.
This is illustrated in the chart below, which shows the Charney report estimated range for ECS (grey bar) on the left, followed by each IPCC report in sequence, from the first in 1990 (“FAR”, light blue) through to the most recent AR6 range on the right (red). Central estimates are shown with a dot, where available. The coloured bars indicate the estimated likely range for ECS and very likely ranges are marked with whiskers.

Estimates of ECS published in successive IPCC assessments since the Charney report in 1979. Dots show central estimates. The coloured bars show the likely range and the very likely range is given by whiskers. Chart by Carbon Brief
Ahead of the IPCC’s sixth assessment report (AR6), a four-year project from an international team of scientists made a significant advance.
The resulting paper by Prof Steven Sherwood, Dr Mark Webb and colleagues, published in the Review of Geophysics in 2020, formally combined multiple lines of evidence from observed data to improve understanding of the climate “feedbacks” that can amplify or dampen surface warming. The paper played a key role in the narrower ECS range in AR6 (red bar in chart above) – particularly in raising the lower bound to 2.0C and setting the upper bound at 5.0C.
However, observed data from recent warming are not as useful for constraining the upper end of ECS estimates. This is because climate feedbacks – especially how warming affects cloud properties that either enhance or reduce their overall cooling effect – depend on spatial patterns of temperature change. Climate scientists have dubbed this phenomenon the “pattern effect”.
Pattern effects
Temperature patterns over recent decades differ substantially from what we expect in the long-term. This means that climate feedbacks are likely to change in the future too, making observed warming a relatively poor predictor of how high climate sensitivity could be.
This is where palaeoclimate data comes in. The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) has been touted as the best evidence for or against high values of climate sensitivity. By estimating how much colder the Earth was when CO2 levels were so much lower during the LGM, scientists can predict how much warmer the Earth would be with higher CO2 levels decades from now.
However, doing so requires isolating how much of the LGM cooling came from lower CO2 and correcting for how the climate’s sensitivity to CO2 differs between the cold LGM and the warm modern-day climate. Prior to our study, no one had quantified the impact of temperature patterns on climate sensitivity in the palaeoclimate record.
Traditionally, the additional cooling effect of the vast LGM ice sheets, which covered much of Canada and northern Eurasia, has been estimated from the amount of sunlight they directly reflect. But the ice sheets also caused the nearby northern Pacific and Atlantic oceans to cool and produce more low clouds, amplifying global cooling by reflecting even more sunlight. This ocean cooling is illustrated by the dark blue shading in the left-hand map below.
By linking these adjacent cloud changes to the ice sheets, we found that relatively more of the LGM cooling was caused by the ice sheets and relatively less came from the lowered CO2.

Importantly, these amplifying cloud feedbacks are unique to the climate during the ice age and, therefore, do not apply to modern CO2-driven warming that will not have similarly large ice-sheet changes.
As a result, the amount of cooling from lower CO2 at the LGM is not consistent with very high values of modern-day climate sensitivity above around 4C.
Accounting for differences between the LGM and modern climates allows us to lower the upper end of climate sensitivity estimates, representing a major shift in how palaeoclimate data is used to inform our future.
Combining palaeoclimate data with climate models
Quantifying the climate differences mentioned above for the LGM requires estimating temperature patterns and climate feedbacks from 21,000 years ago.
An obvious challenge is that our instrumental temperature records span only centuries and our satellite observations of clouds span only decades. Fortunately, there have been two major advances in recent years that allowed us to quantify the pattern effects from the distant past.
First, palaeoclimate data assimilation is a recently developed method that combines climate model simulations with proxy data, producing globally complete reconstructions of surface temperatures during the LGM. However, there are still major uncertainties in this method. Various groups have recently reconstructed the ice age, finding somewhat different temperature patterns. To assess this uncertainty, we use four available reconstructions.
Second, we use these reconstructed surface temperatures in global atmosphere models to estimate climate feedbacks during the LGM and compare them to feedbacks expected from CO2 doubling. Because different models produce different climate feedbacks – even when given the same reconstructed surface temperatures – we assess this feedback uncertainty using five different atmosphere models.
Despite the uncertainties, a consistent story emerged. Climate feedbacks strongly amplified LGM temperature changes, much more so than climate feedbacks under modern-day warming from CO2 alone. We traced these differences primarily to cloud feedbacks in the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans where the patterns of temperature change strongly differ between the LGM – due to the presence of large ice sheets – and future warming from CO2.
At first glance, the extra amplifying feedbacks of the LGM could appear to suggest that climate sensitivity is higher than we thought. A recent study led by Dr James Hansen, former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, reported that some of the same reconstructions used here are consistent with a modern-day climate sensitivity of around 4.8C.
However, that interpretation is reversed when we recognise that those amplifying feedbacks are unique to the ice age climate and do not apply to the modern-day climate.
The result is that modern-day climate sensitivity, as estimated from the LGM, is actually lower than has been reported by studies such as Hansen’s that have not accounted for the unique effect of ice sheets on climate feedbacks.
Our findings also challenge a common assumption that warmer climates are more sensitive than colder climates. While that assumption appears likely to be true for climates warmer than today, it appears to be false for climates colder than today when the effect of ice sheets on temperature patterns and feedbacks is included.
Implications for future warming
The LGM, after accounting for how temperature patterns impact climate feedbacks, ends up being an even stronger constraint on modern-day climate sensitivity – especially the upper bound.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that considering pattern effects has helped constrain climate sensitivity instead of adding to its uncertainty for modern-day climate.
Given the importance of combining multiple lines of evidence, we use the community framework from the Sherwood, Webb et al (2020) study, updated to include our estimate of how climate feedbacks differ between the LGM and modern-day warming.
As the chart below shows, our revised best estimate of climate sensitivity (blue) becomes 2.9C with a very likely range of 2.1-4.1C, a substantial narrowing of uncertainty by reducing the upper bound.
In contrast, the IPCC AR6 very likely range was 2.0-5.0C with a best estimate of 3C (red), while the Sherwood, Webb et al (2020) study reported 2.3-4.7C and central estimate of 3.1C (yellow).

Modern-day ECS estimates from recent assessments, including the Sherwood, Webb et al (2020 study (yellow), IPCC AR6 (red) and this study (blue). Dots show central estimates. The coloured bars show the likely range and the very likely range is given by whiskers. Chart by Carbon Brief based on data provided by V Cooper and K Armour
While the lower bound and central estimates are mostly unchanged, our findings reduce the upper bound by approximately 1C.
Based on the modelled relationship between climate sensitivity and future warming, lowering the upper bound on climate sensitivity from 5C to 4.1C translates to a reduction of 0.4-0.8C in the upper end of global warming estimates by 2100 (the range reflects uncertainty in future emissions). In other words, this is a substantial reduction in the likelihood of extremely high warming.
Our results for the LGM show that temperature patterns and their effects on climate feedbacks must be accounted for when using past climates to estimate modern-day climate sensitivity.
Spatial reconstructions of past climates are a necessity and there are opportunities for further progress in constraining climate sensitivity by analysing temperature patterns and feedbacks in other past climates.
The post Guest post: Ice-age analysis suggests worst-case global warming is less likely appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: Ice-age analysis suggests worst-case global warming is less likely
Climate Change
Scientists Outplant Experimental ‘Flonduran’ Corals in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park
Researchers are testing whether cross-breeding elkhorn corals from Florida and Honduras can help restore lost genetic diversity and improve the threatened species’ ability to withstand warmer waters.
Nearly three dozen young lab-grown elkhorn corals were outplanted onto reefs in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park this spring, including a group of “Flondurans,” marking the first time this experimental cross-breed of Florida and Honduran elkhorn corals was introduced to the remote park about 70 miles from Key West.
Scientists Outplant Experimental ‘Flonduran’ Corals in Florida’s Dry Tortugas National Park
Climate Change
DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
UK, Europe and India battle heatwaves
‘MIND-BOGGLING’ MAY: The UK and continental Europe have set “mind-boggingly crazy” temperature records for May amid a deadly heatwave, reported the Financial Times. According to the Associated Press, the UK “smashed a century-old temperature record for the second time in 24 hours on Tuesday”. The newswire added that records “also fell in France, where temperatures reached 36C on Monday in the country’s south-west”. On Wednesday, Portugal hit a record May temperature of 40.3C, said BBC News.
‘BRUTAL REMINDER’: In parts of Italy, the heatwave triggered blackouts, reported Reuters. The heatwave has also been linked to more than a dozen deaths in the UK and France, including from people drowning and suffering heat-related deaths while competing in sporting events, said ABC News. Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of UN Climate Change, said the intense heatwaves were a “brutal reminder” of the cost of global warming, reported Politico. Carbon Brief has in-depth coverage of the record-shattering heatwave.
INDIA’S DEADLY HEAT: In the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, more than 100 people died within three days following an intense heatwave, reported the Khaleej Times. The publication noted that authorities urged people to stay indoors and avoid direct exposure to the heat. Meanwhile, some parts of India are “grappling with power cuts as record-breaking heat has pushed electricity demand to an all-time high”, reported Reuters.
Around the world
- CRUDE DIPS: The International Energy Agency (IEA) said global investments in oil projects will fall below $500bn in 2026, continuing a three-year decline, reported Bloomberg. Carbon Brief’s analysis of the data shows the US’s “data-centre boom” means it is now investing more in fossil-fuel power than China.
- DODGING NET-ZERO: The world’s biggest miner, Australian giant BHP, has backtracked on climate action by halting or delaying projects to cut “vast” amounts of emissions, according to a Guardian investigation.
- SOLAR SLIP: China’s new solar installations dropped for a fourth straight month, reflecting weakening domestic demand, said Bloomberg.
- NO LOGGING: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell last year to its lowest level since 2019, according to a new report, said Agence France-Presse.
- EXECUTIVE ACTION: Puerto Rico’s governor announced a state of emergency to fight a surge in coastal erosion, citing the need to protect natural resources and vulnerable communities, reported the Associated Press.
Four million
The number of homes in the UK with air conditioning, double the figure from three years ago, reported the Guardian. There are 29m households in the UK.
Latest climate research
- Carbon Brief will soon be launching a new fortnightly newsletter focused on climate research. Sign up for free today.
- LGBTQ+ households in the US are “significantly more likely” to face energy poverty and insecurity than the general population | Energy Research & Social Science
- Global rice-paddy greenhouse gas emissions have doubled over the past six decades | Nature Food
- Vegetation greening and human-caused warming are the “main drivers” of a surge in flash floods over the last decade | Science Advances
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured

A Carbon Brief investigation has shed light on the impact of weather-related flooding on National Health Service (NHS) facilities across the UK. At least 67 NHS hospital wards, departments and other sites have been forced to temporarily close or relocate due to weather-related flooding. The chart above shows sites of weather-related flooding incidents at NHS facilities. The size of the circles indicates the number of incidents reported at each site.
Spotlight
How solar mini-grids can ‘help boost’ Nigeria’s economy
This week, Carbon Brief covers a new report on Nigeria’s solar mini-grid industry.
Amid the impact of the US-Iran war on the Nigerian economy, a new report has argued that solar-mini grids can help to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and create more than 200,000 jobs.
In Nigeria, Africa’s third-largest economy, the war has led to an increase in energy prices and a decrease in petrol consumption. Petrol is one of the country’s main sources of transport and household fuel. According to one estimate, prices have surged by up to 40% since the conflict commenced in February.
Although the Nigerian treasury has benefited from rising crude oil prices – the country is a major exporter of oil and gas – the impact has been most visible on the wider population.
Rising energy prices “have affected the purchasing power of workers”, Agnes Funmi Sessi, a labour union leader in Lagos, told Carbon Brief.
However, scaling the deployment of solar “mini-grids” could help the country move away from fossil fuels, stimulate rural economies and improve livelihoods, according to the new report authored by the thinktank, the Africa Policy Research Institute.
“We estimate that, by deploying over 10,000 mini-grids, the sector could create 212,688 direct full-time informal and productive-use jobs across the off-grid and under-grid market segments,” the report said.
A nascent industry
Solar “mini-grids” are small-scale, localised electricity generation and distribution systems powered by solar panels.
The report positioned Nigeria’s mini-grid sector as one of the fastest-growing in Africa, with the country having just 11 mini-grids in 2015 and 155 by 2024, along with at least 42 active developers.
Many of the companies within the sector are young and apply novel local techniques in their deployment of solar technology, the report said.
However, access to finance remains a huge barrier. According to the report, the sector may require up to $8bn to connect 35.4 million people to mini-grids.
“Most Nigerians want solar power in their homes, but it is a capital intensive business for vendors and customers,” Dr Ben Iheagwara, a renewable energy entrepreneur and policy analyst, told Carbon Brief.
The report urged the Nigerian government and its international partners to “attract private capital by de-risking investments and ensuring regulatory clarity and long-term planning”.
Other key recommendations for policymakers and stakeholders include investment in skills development and paying attention to the gender gap.
Powering rural communities
Many rural communities, which make up about 37% of the country, are disconnected from the national grid system, so often have to generate their own electricity through mini-grid systems.
According to Nigeria’s electricity regulator, NERC, a mini-grid is defined as a power generating system with an installed capacity of up to 10 megawatts.
A mini-grid can be powered by fossil fuels such as diesel or petrol, but solar power is now considered a cheaper and cleaner source.
With more than 80 million people lacking access to electricity in Nigeria, solar mini-grids are increasingly viewed as the lowest-cost electrification solution, the report said.
Watch, read, listen
MOVING FORWARD: The Energy Transition Show dug into electricity reform in South Africa, discussing the country’s coal legacy and the role of renewables.
ENERGY POVERTY: In an opinion article for Project Syndicate, executive director of the African Climate Foundation, Saliem Fakir, argued that the energy transition in emerging and developing economies is driven by economics and security rather than emissions targets.
VANISHING CITY: BBC News reported on a coastal community in Nigeria where the ocean has “already swallowed more than half of the town”.
Coming up
- 31 May: Colombia presidential elections
- 31 May-5 June: Global Environment Facility council meeting, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
- 2-5 June: The Venice Agreement for Peatlands workshop, Kisumu, Kenya
Pick of the jobs
- National Oceanography Centre, engagement assistant (external communications) | Salary: £28,254. Location: Southampton, UK
- Dangote Industries, decarbonisation specialist | Salary: Unknown. Location: Lagos, Nigeria
- City of New York, chief decarbonization officer | Salary: $261,469. Location: New York City
- Climate Central, writer and associate editor | Salary: $72,000-$75,000. Location: US (Remote)
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 29 May 2026: Europe’s ‘mind-boggling’ May | Indian heat deaths | Nigeria’s solar mini-grids appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Climate Change
Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs?
At the African Development Bank (AfDB) annual meetings this week, several African leaders called for investments in electricity infrastructure which go beyond lighting homes to powering economies.
Applauding the AfDB for its energy programmes like Mission 300 – which aims to provide electricity access to 300 million Africans by 2030 – the Central African Republic’s President Faustin-Archange Touadera said that without power supply “we will not be able to achieve development”.
Speaking alongside him, the Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso echoed this, saying that “as we need to help our people to turn towards agriculture, to turn towards livestock rearing, we also need to provide power to them.”
As the Mission 300 initiative advances, attention is increasingly shifting from simply connecting households to ensuring that electricity access translates into economic opportunities and livelihoods. That shift is driving the launch of a new Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy being developed under Mission 300 by the philanthropically funded Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP).
In an interview with Climate Home News, Carol Koech, GEAPP’s vice president for Africa, said the initiative is designed to ensure that electrification supports income generation, agriculture and local economic development rather than only basic household access.
Q: What is the Centre of Excellence for Productive Use of Energy aiming to achieve with Mission 300?
A: Mission 300 is increasingly being seen as a job platform and so the role of the Centre of Excellence in translating those electricity connections to jobs. So we want the centre to do four things. First, as a delivery engine, which enables countries to embed a cross-institutional advisor that supports the electrification components, but also other components that are happening in the country.
Second, we want the centre to be an innovation and strategy hub. Today, there’s really no place where you can go to find the state of the industry for productive use of energy across the globe, and we want to make the centre of excellence the place where you can go and get information about what technologies are available, where deployment is happening and how much is being deployed.

(Photo: Lighting Global/SunCulture/World Bank)
The third pillar is to coordinate and mobilise capital. We anticipate the centre coordinating internally within the ecosystem but also mobilising additional financing to help productivity. The last piece is how to scale businesses, enterprises and partnerships around this centre because we anticipate that as we grow this space, new industries will emerge and those industries will need to be supported.
Q: Why is productive use of energy becoming important under Mission 300?
A: Mission 300 gave us a bigger platform to demonstrate that energy is truly an enabler for economic development. It’s not sufficient to just provide a connection, but it is required that that connection truly translates to economic development for the communities that benefit.
We shouldn’t bring electricity and then start thinking about what people can do with it. We need to think about both at the same time and ensure electricity arrives together with the things that will make a difference in people’s lives. Historically, we’ve brought electricity and imagined a miracle would happen, but we know that hasn’t been the case.
The question is how to ensure universal access in the cheapest way while still transforming communities. Some mini-grids have been deployed in places where demand is extremely low, making them too expensive to sustain. But when mini-grids are paired with productive uses, the economics start to change. If businesses currently running on fossil fuel generators move to solar or renewable energy, operating costs fall and the business case for mini-grids becomes much stronger.
Q: How could this work in practice for agriculture and rural communities?
A: I’ll give you a practical example in our pilot country Zambia. Zambia has two programmes, they have the ASCENT programme for energy access and they also have the Zambia agribusiness and trade platform (ZATP). Some of the components of the ZATP programme – which is an agri-business program to help farmers to be productive – have a productive use component but don’t have an energy supply component. So we’re offering things like mills, processing facilities, irrigation and others. In some parts of Zambia, these productive use equipment has been supplied but has not been powered, so communities are not benefiting from that.
So the whole point is if we coordinate where the agribusiness programme is deployed together with where the energy access programme is deployed and layer those two programmes together in one place, then you could solve the energy access problem and solve productive use together and therefore have really meaningful outcomes for communities.
Q: How will the centre help both households and small businesses use electricity productively?
A: The question on whether we should electrify households or businesses is neither here nor there. We need to electrify all. The argument is really once we electrify businesses, the owners of those businesses will be able to pay what they need for their households as well as increase production for their businesses.
Electricity consumption is usually an indicator of economic development and by pushing productive use into households, especially where households are also smallholder farmers, the question becomes: how can electricity access translate to additional economic development for them? If you are connected onto a mini-grid, then you can actually use that connection to run irrigation, put in a dryer, or a cold storage system, whatever you require to improve your income but the fact that you have energy means that you can access productive use. Now, we need to ask ourselves how do these farmers or these households then get access to these appliances, because that’s another barrier.
Q&A: Will subsidy cuts for Chinese clean-tech exports hurt Africa’s solar boom?
The cost of these appliances is usually extremely high, and when you have programmes such as the ZATP running in Zambia, that’s already a public funding approach to making these appliances available and potentially reachable for farmers, either at household level, at farm level or at community level.
Q: How does this complement the already existing Mission 300 national energy compacts designed by countries?
A: Each of the national energy compacts have a productive use component, a pillar that talks about distributed renewable energy, productive use, and clean cooking. This is actually complementing the work of the countries, and this centre is like an available support, back office for countries to tap into as they implement their national energy compacts, if they have specific requirements and support for that pillar three.
So the advisers that will be embedded into countries, their role is to coordinate within country programs that are running where energy could make a difference. The advisers will be sourced from the country and so they will make sure that the donor money is coordinated to benefit the country fully. Their role will include going to ministries of agriculture or any related ministries and understanding where they are prioritising programmes that require electrification. In many cases, programmes and money have already been allocated, but this component is about how do we deploy it in a way that it actually truly brings a difference, so those advisers will do that.
Q: How will the centre address financing and private sector investment challenges?
A: What we’re really looking at is different financing mechanisms. In the past, we have provided subsidies and results-based financing to suppliers, distributors and manufacturers to help create markets for productive-use appliances. I see this as one mechanism the centre could use, but the bigger opportunity is aligning public funding across different programmes so that more of it can support productive uses, either through direct funding or subsidies.
Nigerians bet on solar as global oil shock hits wallets and power supplies
When it comes to private sector investment, the reality is that Africa’s energy sector still faces serious constraints. Most private investment has gone into power generation, particularly through independent power producers, and even then that has only been possible in places where the off-takers, usually utilities, are bankable.
To unlock more private capital, countries need the right policies, reforms and regulations, but even more importantly, utilities must become financially viable. If the off-taker is not bankable, then the project is not bankable.
Another major question is how to attract private investment into transmission infrastructure. There are different models being explored, but the reality is that public funding alone is not sufficient to achieve Mission 300, so finding new ways to mobilise private capital will be critical.
The post Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs? appeared first on Climate Home News.
Q&A: How can African electricity access power jobs not just lightbulbs?
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