The city’s pending budget is expected to unlock more assistance for West Side residents, more than two years after summer flooding damaged their homes.

By Leigh Giangreco

CHICAGO—Two-and-a-half years after Dorothy Rosenthal’s home on the West Side flooded, she is still dealing with financial pain.

A Long Wait for Flooding Help in Chicago May Be Nearing an End

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week

EU easing up

HITTING THE BREAKS: The EU “walked back” its target to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2035, “permitting some new combustion engine cars”, reported Agence-France Presse. Under the original plan, the bloc would have had to cut emissions entirely by 2035 on new vehicles, but will now only have to cut emissions by 90% by that date, compared to 2021 levels. However, according to the Financial Times, some car manufacturers have “soured” on the reversal.

ADJUSTING CBAM: Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported that the EU is making plans to “close loopholes” in the bloc’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) before it goes into effect in January. CBAM is set to be the world’s first carbon border tax and has drawn ire from key trading partners. The EU has also finalised a plan to delay its anti-deforestation legislation for another year, according to Carbon Pulse.

Around the world

• NCAR NO MORE: The Trump administration is moving to “dismantle” the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, said USA Today, describing it as “one of the world’s leading climate research labs”.
• DEADLY FLOODS: The deadliest flash flooding in Morocco in a decade killed “at least” 37 people, while residents accused the government of “ignoring known flood risks and failing to maintain basic infrastructure”, reported Radio France Internationale.
• FAILING GRADE: The past year was the “warmest and wettest” ever recorded in the Arctic, with implications for “global sea level rise, weather patterns and commercial fisheries”, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 2025 Arctic report card, covered by NPR.
• POWER TO THE PEOPLE: Reuters reported that Kenya signed a $311m agreement with an African infrastructure fund and India’s Power Grid Corporation for the “construction of two high-voltage electricity transmission lines” that could provide power for millions of people.
• BP’S NEW EXEC: BP has appointed Woodside Energy Group’s Meg O’Neill as its new chief executive amid a “renewed push to…double down on oil and gas after retreating from an ambitious renewables strategy”, said Reuters.

29

The number of consecutive years in which the Greenland ice sheet has experienced “continuous annual ice loss”, according to a Carbon Brief guest post.

Latest climate research

• Up to 4,000 glaciers could “disappear” per year during “peak glacier extinction”, projected to occur sometime between 2041 and 2055 | Nature Climate Change
• The rate of sea level rise across the coastal US doubled over the past century | AGU Advances
• Repression and criminalisation of climate and environmentally focused protests are a “global phenomena”, according to an analysis of 14 countries | Environmental Politics

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

The latest coal market report from the International Energy Agency said that global coal use will reach record levels in 2025, but will decline by the end of the decade. Carbon Brief analysis of the report found that projected coal use in China for 2027 has been revised downwards by 127m tonnes, compared to the projection from the 2024 report – “more than cancelling out the effects of the Trump administration’s coal-friendly policies in the US”. 

Spotlight

What climate scientists are curious about

This week, Carbon Brief spoke to climate scientists attending the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans, Louisiana, about the most interesting research papers they read this year.

Their answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Dr Christopher Callahan, assistant professor at Indiana University Bloomington

The most interesting research paper I read was a simple thought experiment asking when we would have known humans were changing the climate if we had always had perfect observations. The authors show that we could have detected a human influence on the climate as early as the 1880s, since we have a strong physical understanding of how those changes should look. This paper both highlights that we have been discernibly changing the climate for centuries and emphasises the importance of the modern climate observing network – a network that is currently threatened by budget cuts and staff shortages.

Prof Lucy Hutyra, distinguished professor at Boston University

The most interesting paper I read was in Nature Climate Change, where the researchers looked at how much mortality was associated with cold weather versus hot weather events and found that many more people died during cold weather events. Then, they estimated how much of a protective factor in the urban heat island is on those winter deaths and suggested that the winter benefits exceed the summer risks of mitigating extreme heat, so perhaps we shouldn’t mitigate extreme heat in cities. 

This paper got me in a tizzy…It spurred an exciting new line of research. We’ll be publishing a response to this paper in 2026. I’m not sure their conclusion was correct, but it raised really excellent questions.

Dr Kristina Dahl, vice president for science at Climate Central

This year was when we saw source attribution studies, such as Chris Callahan‘s, really start to break through and be able to connect the emissions of specific emitters…to the impact of those emissions through heat or some other sort of damage function. [This] is really game-changing.

What [Callahan’s] paper showed is that the emissions of individual companies have an impact on extreme heat, which then has an impact on the GDP of the countries experiencing that extreme heat. And so, for the first time, you can really say: “Company X caused this condition which then led to this economic damage.”

Dr Antonia Hadjimichael, assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University

It was about interdisciplinary work – not that anything in it is ground-shakingly new, but it was a good conversation around interdisciplinary teams and what makes them work and what doesn’t make them work. And what I really liked about it is that they really emphasise the role of a connector – the scientist that navigates this space in between and makes sure that the things kind of glue together…The reason I really like this paper is that we don’t value those scientists in academia, in traditional metrics that we have.

Dr Santiago Botía, researcher at Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry

The most interesting paper I’ve read this year was about how soil fertility and water table depth control the response to drought in the Amazon. They found very nicely how the proximity to soil water controls the anomalies in gross primary productivity in the Amazon. And, with that methodology, they could explain the response of recent droughts and the “greening” of the forest during drought, which is kind of a counterintuitive [phenomenon], but it was very interesting.

Dr Gregory Johnson, affiliate professor at the University of Washington

This article explores the response of a fairly coarse spatial resolution climate model…to a scenario in which atmospheric CO2 is increased at 1% a year to doubling and then CO2 is more gradually removed from the atmosphere…[It finds] a large release of heat from the Southern Ocean, with substantial regional – and even global – climate impacts. I find this work interesting because it reminds us of the important – and potentially nonlinear – roles that changing ocean circulation and water properties play in modulating our climate.

Cecilia Keating also contributed to this spotlight.

Watch, read, listen

METHANE MATTERS: In the Guardian, Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley wrote that the world must “urgently target methane” to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

CLIMATE WRAPPED: Grist summarised the major stories for Earth’s climate in 2025 – “the good, the bad and the ugly”.

COASTING: On the Coastal Call podcast, a biogeochemist spoke about “coastal change and community resilience” in the eastern US’s Long Island Sound.

Coming up

• 27 December: Cote D’Ivoire parliamentary elections
• 28 December: Central African Republic presidential and parliamentary elections
• 28 December: Guinean presidential election

Pick of the jobs

• BirdLife International, forest programme administrator | Salary: £28,000-£30,000. Location: Cambridge, UK
• World Resources Institute, power-sector transition senior manager | Salary: $116,000-$139,000. Location: Washington DC
• Fauna & Flora, operations lead for Liberia | Salary: $61,910. Location: Monrovia, Liberia

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.

DeBriefed 12 December: EU under ‘pressure’; ‘Unusual warmth’ explained; Rise of climate boardgames

DeBriefed

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12.12.25

DeBriefed 5 December: Deadly Asia floods; Adaptation finance target examined; Global south IPCC scientists speak out

DeBriefed

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05.12.25

DeBriefed 28 November 2025: COP30’s ‘frustrating’ end; Asia floods; UK ‘emergency’ climate event

DeBriefed

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28.11.25

COP30 DeBriefed 21 November 2025: ‘Mutirão’ text latest; ‘Roadmaps’ explained; COP finish times plotted

COP30 Belém

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21.11.25

The post DeBriefed 19 December 2025:  EU’s petrol car U-turn; Trump to axe ‘leading’ research lab; What climate scientists are reading appeared first on Carbon Brief.

DeBriefed 19 December 2025:  EU’s petrol car U-turn; Trump to axe ‘leading’ research lab; What climate scientists are reading

As countries come under growing pressure to tackle planet-heating methane emissions from the fossil fuel sector, oil and gas producers in COP host nations Brazil and Azerbaijan are struggling to prevent large leaks of methane, data shared with Climate Home News shows.

Satellite observations detected “super-emitting” methane plumes in the two countries this year that were visible from space and linked to state oil companies in both cases. Brazil presided over this year’s COP30 climate talks, while COP29 was in Azerbaijan.

Methane is a greenhouse gas that traps about 80 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide but has a shorter life span. If global warming is to stay below 1.5C, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that methane emissions from fossil fuels would need to fall by 75% by 2030.

At COP26 in 2021, a group of more than 100 countries announced their intention to cut methane emissions across all sectors by 30% from 2020 levels by the end of this decade. But a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) assessment shows they are instead set to rise 5% by 2030.

At COP30 this November, Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva said that reducing methane emissions “gives us an opportunity to keep the planet’s average temperature [rise] within 1.5C, decreasing the frequency, intensity and impact of extreme weather events and protecting lives”.

And last year, Rovshan Najaf, president of Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR, promised that the firm would achieve near-zero methane emissions in its oil and gas production by 2035.

However, the latest data available from Azerbaijan’s SOCAR shows that the company’s methane emissions more than tripled from 2023 to 2024, when the country hosted COP29. SOCAR identified about 200,000 tonnes of methane emissions from its business activities in 2024.

Brazilian state-oil company Petrobras, meanwhile, did manage to reduce its methane emissions by more than half between 2015 and 2022, but they have since stayed stagnant, at about a million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emitted per year, the company’s annual sustainability data shows.

“Reducing methane has significant impacts on a country’s ability to meet its climate commitments,” said Tengi George-Ikoli, a methane expert with the National Resource Governance Institute (NRGI).

“Countries like Brazil and Azerbaijan, who have hosted COPs, should be seen to commit to those efforts more so than others,” she emphasised.

In 2025, UNEP’s International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) alerted countries globally – including Brazil and Azerbaijan – to around 2,200 instances linking their oil and gas production to super-emitting events.

Both Brazil and Azerbaijan have focal points that receive these IMEO alerts. But a recent report shows that 90% of the notifications did not even receive a response, and neither Brazil nor Azerbaijan are listed in the 25 successful cases that managed to reduce emissions thanks to this system.

Big plumes in Azerbaijan’s southern oil & gas hub

In Azerbaijan, persistent large-scale methane emissions have been detected over its southern coast – a hub for its oil and gas industry – during the past two years, according to satellite data from online monitoring platform Carbon Mapper.

When satellites passed over the region in mid-2024, as Azerbaijan prepared to host the COP29 climate summit, they spotted a handful of massive methane plumes, each releasing between 2,000 and 4,000 kilogrammes of methane per hour, dozens of times above the threshold for a “super-emitting” event.

According to Carbon Mapper’s data, methane emissions from the same locations still persisted a year later at comparable or even higher levels.

It is impossible to pinpoint precisely the source of those emissions without ground-level monitoring. But satellite data suggests that methane was released both from pipelines – which may be leaking – and compressor stations, which are facilities that help keep fossil gas flowing by boosting its pressure.

Throughout this year, large methane plumes have been observed by satellites emanating from a facility run by SOCAR in one of the world’s oldest oil fields, located just a few miles from Baku’s swanky waterfront boulevard.

In its 2025 sustainability report, SOCAR said it had expanded its methane emissions monitoring by using “leak detection AI tools”, drones and satellite technologies that “enabled more targeted, data-driven responses and supported the development of effective mitigation measures across operational sites”.

State oil firm in COP30 host nation linked to leaks

In Brazil, state-oil company Petrobras has been linked to three methane “super-emitting events” detected by satellites this year, which raises questions about emissions from its offshore oil and gas production facilities.

Three large methane plumes were detected in the Santos basin off the coast of Rio de Janeiro – which holds several of Brazil’s largest oil and gas fields – by Carbon Mapper on April 23.

Further analysis by environmental nonprofit SkyTruth, which specialises in satellite observations, revealed the plumes came from vessels in the Tupi field, which is majority-owned by Petrobras. Two of the vessels are operated by Dutch company SBM and the other by Petrobras.

US set to push fossil fuels under its G20 presidency

The plumes in the Santos basin were large enough to be considered “super-emitting” methane events, on a scale similar to leaks in the same category detected in other parts of the world.

The US Environmental Protection Agency defines these as events with a rate of emissions of 100 kg of methane per hour. Two of the plumes detected in Brazil were above 300 and one was above 700 kg of methane per hour.

The events in Brazil are “particularly stunning” and could point to a more persistent issue, SkyTruth’s CEO John Amos told Climate Home, because the three plumes were detected during just one observation by a satellite orbiting the area.

“For one attempt to produce three positive plumes suggests that this could be a systematic problem offshore,” he said.

Petrobras says mitigation measures in place

Asked about these cases, Petrobras told Climate Home in a statement that the company is committed to reducing methane emissions as part of its decarbonisation strategy. It added that, because the plumes were detected by a single satellite observation, “the ability to draw broader conclusions about the consistency and magnitude of emissions over time is limited”.

The company also highlighted that its assets in the Santos basin perform “within the industry’s first quartile” for emissions per barrel of oil and noted that “initiatives such as recovering flare gas and performing leak detection and repair campaigns have helped to mitigate methane emissions”.

Petrobras also said that “during the period in question, operational conditions were under normal circumstances”.

Amos argued that if the sector considers such super-emitter plumes of methane – observable from space – “to be a consequence of ‘normal operating conditions’, then the offshore methane problem may be far worse than we anticipated”.

Just days before COP30, Petrobras executives co-chaired an offshore oil and gas conference in Rio de Janeiro. The discussions, the organisers wrote in a welcome letter, would focus on “traditional oil and gas technologies while highlighting the innovations essential for a more sustainable future” and would be “strategically positioned amid the ongoing energy transition”.

Barbados PM proposes binding methane pact

As global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise, with the United Nations admitting in November that an overshoot of the 1.5C warming limit is now inevitable, action on methane garnered growing attention at COP30.

New initiatives were launched at the climate summit in Belém to tackle methane emissions from the production of fossil fuels, which accounts for about a third of global emissions from this “super pollutant”, with other key sources being agriculture and waste management.

The UK launched a declaration to “drastically reduce” methane from the fossil fuel sector, which was endorsed by 11 countries including major oil and gas producers Canada, Norway and Kazakhstan. The actions it supports include more transparent monitoring, eliminating routine flaring and venting, and tracking progress towards near-zero methane emissions per unit of production.

The UK and Brazil also launched a three-year $25-million funding package to help developing countries tackle methane, among other “super pollutant” gases, which will benefit a first cohort of mostly fossil fuel-producing countries – among them Brazil, Kazakhstan, Mexico and Nigeria.

At last year’s COP29, the European Union championed an initiative that encouraged fossil fuel-producing countries to create roadmaps towards abating methane emissions from coal, oil and gas, including timelines, investment needs and the amount of emissions to be abated.

But, as a growing clutch of voluntary initiatives has failed to produce results at the scale and speed needed to rein in global warming in the short term, pressure is rising for a more accountable and comprehensive approach to the problem.

At COP30, Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley renewed her call for a legally binding methane pact to “pull the methane emergency brake” and “buy us some time”, starting with actions in the oil and gas industry.

NRGI’s George-Ikoli said the oil and gas sector could lead on cutting methane emissions because measures like zero flaring and venting, and eliminating leaks could bring in revenues for companies by enabling them to use or sell currently wasted gas.

Mottley wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian this month that the next step would be to convene heads of state from willing nations to develop “a roadmap in 2026 for binding measures for the oil and gas industry”. Negotiations could start by 2027, with a deal adopted “as soon as possible thereafter”, she proposed.

The post Recent COP hosts Brazil and Azerbaijan linked to “super-emitting” methane plumes appeared first on Climate Home News.

Recent COP hosts Brazil and Azerbaijan linked to “super-emitting” methane plumes