Since she was a child, Argentine park ranger Natay Collet can remember seeing trucks rolling through her hometown, throwing up dust clouds and piled high with the reddish-brown trunks of the Chaco’s famed quebracho tree.
“You used to know people who lived in the forest. Now, the land belongs to big business owners who come to exploit it,” said Collet, 40, gesturing towards a dusty plain that was once covered by forest in Argentina’s northern province of Chaco.
Collet’s determination to do what she could to save Gran Chaco – the second-biggest forest biome in South America after the Amazon – led her to become a park ranger as the region’s dry, scrubby forest comes under intense pressure from agricultural expansion and illegal logging.
Chaco province alone has lost 1 million hectares (2.47 million acres) of tree cover since 2001, equivalent to 18% of the area covered by trees in 2000, according to Global Forest Watch. As a whole, the country has lost about 7 million hectares (17.3 million acres) of tree cover over the same period, in tandem with rising output of grains – especially soybeans.
Argentina’s native forests are protected by law – and it backed a commitment by countries at the Glasgow COP26 climate summit to halt forest loss by 2030.
Lula says he is “optimistic” about US support for new rainforest fund
But two years since pro-business libertarian President Javier Milei was elected on pledges to get the country’s unruly finances in order, environmentalists and climate campaigners fear the country’s forests are in growing danger because of sweeping spending cuts for forest protection – including park rangers like Collet.
“It’s getting worse and worse,” she told Climate Home News, describing increasingly precarious working conditions, with rangers’ contracts renewed every three months, low pay and no money for new equipment or repairs.
The budget of the National Parks Administration (APN) fell 34% in real terms between 2023 and 2024, according to a report published by the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (FARN), an Argentine NGO.
The APN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
-
In new forest finance plan, 34 nations endorse Brazil’s rainforest fund
The Forest & Climate Leaders’ Partnership of forest-rich and donor countries backs Brazil’s Tropical Forest Forever Facility, set to be launched at COP30 -
Russia justifies fossil gas use by citing contentious COP28 loophole
In Dubai two years ago, Russia pushed for a clause on “transitional fuels” which its new UN climate plan uses to justify gas consumption -
Zimbabwe forest carbon megaproject generated millions of junk credits
Verra is seeking compensation for offsets issued “in excess” by the controversial Kariba REDD+ scheme. But the registry’s track record in obtaining remedies raises concerns
Deforestation jumps under Milei
Milei, an ideological ally of US President Donald Trump who took office in December 2023, faces a crucial midterm election this month that could make it even easier for him to push environmental protection cutbacks through by bolstering his support in Congress, where his government currently holds a minority.
Environmentalists say the impact of his government’s spending cuts and other policies is already becoming evident, contributing to an increase in deforestation across the country last year, including in the northern provinces that straddle the Gran Chaco region, which covers about 1 million square km (386,000 square miles) in total across Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia.
Argentine government data indicates a loss of around 254,000 hectares nationwide in 2024, up 34% from 2023, despite a court injunction completely banning deforestation in Chaco since August 2024. Neighbouring northern provinces are also deforestation hotspots.
Milei has in the past called climate change a hoax and earlier this year he expressed interest in withdrawing Argentina from the Paris Agreement. Officials from his government, however, have said his administration will honour its environmental agreements and its commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
The Subsecretariat of the Environment did not reply to a request for comment.
Milei scrapped the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, downgrading it to the Secretariat of Tourism, Environment and Sports. That move led to a decrease of almost 80%, in real terms, in the environmental budget between 2023 and 2024, according to FARN.
And in an October 2024 decree, Milei eliminated the national Fund for the Environmental Protection of Native Forests, making less funding available for conservation, sustainable use and forest restoration projects.
International credibility at risk
Under Milei, the “dismantling” of the state apparatus has “encouraged institutional permissiveness over deforestation”, said Ana di Pangracio, interim executive director of FARN.
“The failure to comply with international commitments and national laws affects Argentina’s international credibility, hinders access to climate and biodiversity financing, and affects the conditions for entering international markets that are of interest to Argentina,” Di Pangracio added.
Last year, Milei attempted to modify the country’s Forest Law as part of a broader reform bill, seeking to loosen the legislation’s controls on deforestation on certain land, but eventually dropped the plan in order to garner sufficient support from opposition lawmakers to pass the wider measures.
Explainer: Brazil’s “right answer” to forest finance turns to markets to keep rainforest standing
“Axe-breaker” tree no match for chainsaws
The biggest driver of deforestation in northern Argentina is agriculture: mainly soy farming and cattle grazing, which has been pushed northwards as the best arable land is used up further south.
Decades of “systematic clearing” have taken a heavy toll on Chaco’s emblematic quebracho tree – meaning axe-breaker due to its hard wood, said Collet, the park ranger. Along with its wood, the tree is exploited for its tannins, which are used for curing leather products such as luxury handbags and car upholstery.
Despite the 2024 deforestation ban, there are signs that trees continue to be cut down in Chaco.
During a July visit to the town of Juan José Castelli, which lies just outside the El Impenetrable national park, a large truck loaded with tree trunks was parked up in front of the police station – apparently confiscated along with its load.
In May, Governor Leandro Zdero hailed the arrival of new satellite-equipped trucks, which he said had helped forest service officials halt an illegal deforestation incident.
But environmental activists told Climate Home that for the most part, those responsible for deforestation, including large-scale landowners, do so with impunity in a province plagued by corruption.
Struggle to protect Indigenous land
For Chaco’s forest defenders, who include members of Indigenous communities, there have been some small victories.
In August, the provincial government partially vetoed a law that had been heavily criticised in April for lessening fines and allowing the use of illegally deforested timber for profit, creating an incentive for illicit tree-cutting.
Bigger battles continue, however.
Óscar Villalba, a member of the Moqoit Indigenous community, has been fighting in the courts to secure his people’s land rights since 2012, when the 308,000 hectares (761,000 acres) of the forested Reserva Grande in western Chaco were recognised as Indigenous land jointly belonging to the Moqoit, Wichí and Toba – or Qom – communities.
Despite the recognition by a provincial Indigenous rights body, governors have twice blocked court rulings that supported the Indigenous communities’ exclusive rights to live on and work the land, Villalba said, adding that in the meantime, loggers have had free rein to encroach on the land and cut down trees.
The provincial government did not reply to requests for comment.
“For many years we have been travelling, walking, denouncing, demanding that the government grant us hearings,” Villalba said, struggling to hold back tears as he stood by the side of a dusty road near the reserve. “There is no response. But they are cutting down trees to their heart’s content, day and night.”
The post Milei’s budget cuts fuel deforestation fears in Argentina’s Chaco appeared first on Climate Home News.
Milei’s budget cuts fuel deforestation fears in Argentina’s Chaco
In this rural Alabama community, some residents can’t flush their toilets. Developers want to build a state-of-the-art data center next door.
HAYNEVILLE, Ala.—When Alabamians marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 to demand voting rights for African Americans, Highway 80 became their path toward freedom.
On the Historic Route From Selma to Montgomery, an AI Cloud Looms
The planet is heating up more quickly than ever before.
For decades, greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity have been building up in the atmosphere and trapping ever-higher levels of heat.
The resulting asymmetry between incoming solar energy and energy radiated back out into space – known as “Earth’s energy imbalance” – provides a direct measure of the extent to which humans are disrupting the Earth’s climate system.
This imbalance is growing and in 2025 its 10-year average reached a record high, indicating that global temperatures could increase at even higher rates in the future.
This is among the headline findings of the latest “indicators of global climate change” (IGCC) report, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, which tracks changes in the climate system on an annual basis.
The report, now in its fourth iteration, has been produced by dozens of scientists from around the world.
Its findings are designed to fill the gap between Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) science reports, which are published every 5-7 years.
In this article, we unpack the IGCC report, which explores how human activity is driving a growing energy imbalance and why monitoring systems to track global climate are so crucial.
(For more on previous IGCC reports, see Carbon Brief’s coverage in 2023, 2024 and 2025.)
Greenhouse gas emissions remain at an all-time high
Global greenhouse gas emissions are continuing to increase, mostly as a result of the use of fossil fuels. However, deforestation, agriculture and industrial processes also play an important role.
Over the most recent decade (2015-24), emissions stood at the equivalent of 54.6bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) per year. In 2024, the most recent year for which we have complete data, emissions reached 56.8GtCO2e.
As the chart below shows, these emissions have pushed up atmospheric levels of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. In 2025, concentrations of these gases reached 425.6 parts per million (ppm), 1936.3 parts per billion (ppb) and 339.4ppb, respectively.
This represents a rise of 3.8%, 3.8% and 2.2%, respectively, since the 2019 levels reported in the IPCC’s sixth assessment report (AR6).
At the same time, declines in emissions of aerosols such as sulphur dioxide, partly as a result of efforts to tackle air pollution, are increasing the Earth’s energy imbalance. This is because aerosols have a cooling effect on the Earth’s climate, counteracting warming from CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions.
(Tackling sulphur dioxide, alongside other particulate emissions, remains critical because the immediate health and environmental damage they cause far outweighs their short-term cooling effect on the climate.)
The Earth’s energy imbalance is rising rapidly
The Earth’s energy imbalance has long been recognised as a key indicator of how the climate is being affected by human activities.
However, it is only in the last few decades that scientists have been able to record temperature changes deep enough in the ocean to accurately quantify it.
Earth’s energy imbalance measures how quickly excess heat is accumulating in every part of the Earth system, primarily in the ocean, but also in land, ice and atmosphere.
Through this accumulation of heat, the energy imbalance influences the rate of sea level rise and ice melt across the world, as well as increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as storms, floods and droughts.
Without human influence, the Earth’s energy imbalance would be close to zero.
But, as greenhouse gas emissions have built up in the atmosphere, the imbalance has been growing since the 1970s. Recent increases to Earth’s energy imbalance have outpaced those projections made by climate models — indicating the planet could see more warming than expected in the future.
As the right-hand chart below shows, the imbalance is now at a record high, having more than doubled over the past two decades.
It has increased by around 40% since 2019, from an average 0.79 watts per square metre (Wm2) over 2006-18, according to IPCC AR6, to 1.12Wm2 over 2013-25.
The left-hand chart shows how heat is accumulating in the ocean (blues), ice (grey), land (orange) and atmosphere (purple).
Global temperature rise
The excess heat building up in the climate system from the energy imbalance is pushing up global temperatures at a record rate of 0.27C per decade.
We estimate that human-induced warming – the amount of observed global surface
temperature increase attributable to both the direct and indirect effects of human activities – reached 1.37C in 2025. This has risen from 1.0C in 2017, as reported in IPCC AR6.
While natural variability in the climate system – such as El Niño or La Niña events – can also influence temperatures year-to-year, the upward temperature trend we are seeing is being driven by the persistent imbalance in energy.
We now expect global temperatures to exceed the Paris Agreement limit of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels around the year 2030.
This is significant because 1.5C has been identified as the critical dividing line between manageable climate risks and catastrophic, potentially irreversible damage to global ecosystems and human societies.
Heat accumulating throughout the Earth system
While heat is accumulating throughout the Earth system, it is not being distributed evenly around the globe.
Since the 1970s, around 90% of this heat has been taken up by the ocean, affecting marine ecosystems, ocean circulation patterns, sea level rise and climate extremes.
For example, the number of marine heatwave days – periods of unusually high sea surface temperatures – has more than tripled globally since the early 1990s. The year 2025 alone saw 65 days of marine heatwaves – meaning they occurred, on average, more than one day a week.
Meanwhile, the cryosphere – the portion of the Earth made up of frozen water, including glaciers, ice sheets and permafrost – is experiencing widespread ice loss and thawing in response to the growing energy imbalance. This affects ecosystems, sea level rise and infrastructure in polar and high-latitude regions.
Rapid warming has also resulted in record extreme temperatures over land, with average maximum temperatures for any single day over 2016-25 around 1.92C above pre-industrial levels). This is an increase of almost half a degree compared to the previous decade (2006-15).
Sea level rise and the energy imbalance
Sea level rise provides one of the clearest long-term signals of a changing planet.
It is closely linked to Earth’s energy imbalance. As heat accumulates in the ocean, water expands, raising sea levels. Meanwhile, a warming land and atmosphere means addition of water to the oceans through melting of glaciers and ice sheets, also adding to sea level rise.
Over the long-term, sea levels have been rising, on average, at a rate of around 1.8mm per year since 1901, totalling a record 23cm in 2025. This is increasing the risk of coastal flooding, erosion and habitat loss in many low-lying areas around the world.
This rise can be seen in the left-hand chart below, which shows observed global sea level changes from tide gauges (grey and blue dashed lines) and satellites (red dashed lines) since 1901. The solid lines indicate the average across multiple datasets.
Sea level rise is accelerating consistent with the observed increase in Earth’s energy imbalance. Over 2006-25, sea levels have risen at a rate of 3.67mm per year – more than double the rate of 1.69mm per year seen over 1976-95.
This increasing rate is shown in the right-hand figure below, which shows four successive overlapping 20-year periods and the most-recent decade.
(Last year’s transition from El Niño to weak La Niña conditions affected global rainfall patterns and led to a small and temporary fall in global average sea level in 2025. This explains the slight decrease in rate of sea level rise for the most recent decade, which is affected more than the 20-year period 2006-25.)
The bigger picture
Despite greenhouse gas emissions not increasing as rapidly as in the 2000s, this year’s IGCC findings continue to show how far and how fast the climate is changing due to human activity.
A significant increase in decarbonisation efforts in the second half of this decade is required to slow down the rate of human-caused warming and limit the escalation of climate risks and impacts.
These findings, like many others produced by scientists across the globe, rely on international expertise, partnership and the maintenance and availability of global climate datasets and the global observing programmes that underpin them.
This year’s edition of IGCC used more than 40 global datasets produced by research teams around the world, including the NASA satellite record of the Earth’s energy imbalance and the ARGO deep ocean float network.
However, a number of long-term monitoring programmes could be threatened by funding decisions made by governments around the world, most notably the Trump administration in the US.
Local meteorological data and weather balloon measurement programmes in many countries have declined in recent years, especially in Africa, the west Pacific and South America. This reduces scientists’ ability to monitor and understand key indicators of climate change.
This is not just an issue for climate science. Many of these observations are key to weather forecasts and systems that provide early warning for extreme weather. For example, media reports have suggested that recent reductions in weather balloon measurements in Alaska led to a lack of warnings for a recent winter storm.
The continuity and integrity of the climate observations that scientists use to understand how the climate is changing depends on effective and sustained coordination by international organisations, such as the Global Climate Observing System, the World Meteorological Organization and World Climate Research Programme.
Without this data and its coordination, future assessments will be much more difficult at a time when urgent climate action is needed.
The post Guest post: How a record-high ‘energy imbalance’ is driving global warming appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: How a record-high ‘energy imbalance’ is driving global warming
A new paper found that the remnants of “foundation species” strongly influenced the fate of survivors.
Death casts a shadow over life, not only for people but also other animals, plants and entire ecosystems.
Across Ecosystems, Dead Organisms Help Shape the Living World
-
Climate Change10 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases10 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Renewable Energy8 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Greenhouse Gases11 months ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测