Climate change did not have a statistically significant impact on the wildfires that hit Chile earlier this month, according to a new rapid attribution study by the World Weather Attribution service (WWA).
In early February, a series of wildfires broke out across the coast of Chile. Within just days, they burned more than 29,000 hectares of land, destroying more than 7,000 homes and killing more than 130 people.
“The wildfires were the world’s deadliest since the 2009 Australia bushfires,” according to the WWA.
The authors warn that “global warming will likely increase the risk of fire conditions in central Chile” if temperatures rise by 2C above pre-industrial temperatures. Moreover, it is already making the country hotter and drier – both risk factors for wildfires.
The study finds that climate change had made the observed fire conditions more likely, but this result was not statistically significant, meaning it could have occurred by chance.
The findings are also subject to fairly wide uncertainty. One reason is that coastal Chile is seeing a slight local cooling effect, the researchers say, due to shifting weather patterns.
In addition, the study notes that changes in land use – such as the growth of informal settlements in forest zones and widespread conversion towards non-native species and monoculture plantations – are making many regions of Chile “significantly more vulnerable” to wildfires.
’Perfect storm’
Forest fires in the Valparaíso region in central Chile started on 2 February. They then “spread rapidly through mountainous forests near Viña del Mar, Quilpué and Villa Alemana… [and] moved extremely quickly into the outskirts of cities”, WWA says in a press release, leaving more than 29,000 hectares burned since 4 February.
Chilean president Gabriel Boric described the fires as “the biggest tragedy we have experienced as a country since the earthquake of 27 February 2010”, according to La Tercera.
The most up-to-date death toll remains at 132, Chile’s La Tercera reported, while El Mercurio reported on the mental health impacts of the fires, with affected people suffering from anxiety and stress.
According to Diálogo Chino, Boric said that evacuating people had been made difficult by the speed at which the fires were spreading – in some areas at more than 10km per hour, faster than most people can walk.
The map below, taken from the attribution study, shows the burned area across the Viña del Mar-Valparaíso sector, highlighted in red. The yellow circles show active fires on 2 February.

In an article by the NASA Earth Observatory, NASA research scientist Dr Elizabeth Wiggins suggested the wildfires “were the product of a perfect storm of conditions”, adding that “they occurred during a heatwave, drought and high-wind event borne from a combination of El Niño and climate change”.
Hot, dry and windy
The attribution study assesses the role of climate change on Chile’s fires between 31 January and 4 February, as these were the “highest fire intensity” days, when most of the impacts occurred, according to the study authors.
The intensity of a wildfire is influenced by a wide range of factors, such as atmospheric moisture, wind speed and fuel availability. The authors of this study focus on the “hot dry windy index” (HDWI) – a measure which combines maximum temperature, relative humidity and wind speed.
The study notes that this index does not take into account factors – such as the build-up of fuel – as other more “complex” indices do. However, the authors say the index is “an effective hazard metric for estimating threat to communities and difficulty of containment”.
The map below shows the maximum of average four-day HDWI between 31 January and 4 February 2024. Darker red indicates a higher HDWI, signifying hotter, windier and less humid conditions. The blue box indicates the study area.

To put the wildfire into its historical context and determine how unlikely it was, the authors analyse a timeseries of HDWI. They find that the hot, dry and windy conditions that drove the wildfires of February 2024 are a one-in-30 year event in today’s climate.
To assess the role that climate change played in creating these weather conditions, the scientists use climate models to compare HDWI in this coastal region of Chile in the world as it is today, with a “counterfactual” world without human-caused climate change.
This is one approach to attribution, the fast-growing field of climate science that aims to identify the “fingerprint” of climate change on extreme-weather events.
The study finds a “small increase” in the HDWI due to climate change, but says that the trend is not “statistically significant”. (A statistically significant result would mean that an HWDI index as high as that seen during the wildfires in Chile is unlikely to be explained by chance.)
The authors also assess the individual components of the HDWI – maximum temperature, relative humidity and wind speed – but again find no “significant” trend due to climate change.
The study also uses two different indices to assess the extent whether the natural climate phenomenon El Niño had any impact on the dangerous fire weather conditions, but again finds “no significant influence”.
Finally, using the same models, the authors assess whether the fire would be more likely in a warmer world. Although the impact of climate change on fire weather in this year’s Chilean wildfires is “not yet significant”, they find that “global warming will likely increase the risk of fire conditions in central Chile if warming reaches 2C” above pre-industrial temperatures.
(These findings are yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. However, the methods used in the analysis have been published in previous attribution studies.)
Coastal cooling
It is “not surprising” that climate change did not have a statistically significant impact on Chile’s wildfires, the study says.
The authors explain that the coast of Chile is one of the few places in the world where climate change is causing a slight local cooling effect, due to a high-pressure year-round weather system in the south-east Pacific Ocean called the “South Pacific High”.
The study explains:
“Climate change is causing the South Pacific High to move southwards, leading to stronger southerly winds that are pushing deep, cold water to the coast of Chile. These cold waters replace warm, superficial water in a process called ‘upwelling’, which causes low temperatures along the coast, unlike inland Chile and the rest of South America.”
Tomás Carrasco Escaff, a researcher at the University of Chile’s Climate and Resilience Research Center (CR2) and author on the study, told a press briefing that this shift in the South Pacific High results in “coastal cooling”, which drives down HDWI. However, he adds that it also causes “competing” effects of “greater dryness” and “intensification of wind”, both of which act to increase HDWI.
Coastal cooling is also tricky for climate models to capture accurately – especially as the fires broke out on the “transition between the coast, which is cooling, and the inland part of the country which has a warming trend”, explained Dr Joyce Kimutai, a research associate at Imperial College London.
This, combined with the limited observational data available, means that there is a “relatively large degree of uncertainty” in the results of the study.
Contributing factors
Local media has also reported on the potential drivers of the fires. Citing a recent study, La Tercera said that climate change and El Niño have made the country more prone to “megafires” – those spanning more than 200 hectares.
The research noted that megafires – such as the ones registered in the summer of 2017 and 2023 – were influenced by both the high temperatures driven by El Niño and more frequent and intense heatwaves. It also showed that the central regions from El Maule to Araucanía – to the south of the Valparaíso region – have been the most affected by megafires between 2014 and 2023.
Diálogo Chino cited a 2020 study from CR2, which found that “since 2010, forest fires in south-central Chile have increased in terms of occurrences and area burned, compared to the previous three decades, while the average duration of the fire season has also become longer”.
The article noted that the “fire-affected south-central zone of Chile has been transformed by vast forest plantations of exotic species, especially pine and eucalyptus, introduced for timber and pulp production”. The CR2 study found that “exotic plants can modify the dynamics of forest fires, increasing the speed of spread, as well as their extent, frequency, intensity and seasonality”, the article said.
Diálogo Chino also said that infrastructure in Valparaíso “is another factor explaining the scale of the fires”. It added:
“Some of the burned areas are densely populated, with their expansion having often taken place without planning permission. Additionally, many houses there are informal dwellings that may have been constructed with flammable materials such as wood.”
This aligns with the findings of the attribution study, which notes:
“Fire risk is increasing notably due to current land management practices, such as the expansion of Wildland-Urban Interface areas (including the growth of informal settlements in forest zones) and widespread conversion from native to foreign and monoculture plantations.”
In addition, Diálogo Chino reported that Chile’s minister of the interior and public security Carolina Tohá claimed at least some of the recent fires may have been started intentionally.
Analysis Chile’s National Forest Corporation (CONAF) found that the main cause of 64% of fires in Chile from August 2023 to January 2024 is “negligence”, followed by intentional and accidental fires, and then 0.5% directly started by lightning. Negligence is driven by agricultural burning, which contributed the most to the fires, forestry work and the poor condition of power lines, the analysis found.
New draft law
The fires caused widespread destruction, with BioBioChile reporting that 7,000 houses had been damaged or destroyed. The government has estimated the reconstruction cost at up to $1bn, the outlet noted. Of those homes, 70% were in informal settlements, the attribution study notes.
BioBioChile also reported on the deaths of wildlife – including owls, thrushes, foxes, partridge and chinchilla mice – as a result of the fires.
Pedro Álvarez, forest engineer and forest chair at Reforestemos, a Chilean civil society organisation that implements forest restoration and fire prevention projects, travelled to the affected area. He tells Carbon Brief that some of the ecosystems harmed were native forests – home to native species such as the Chilean palm – and sclerophyllous forests, which are composed of shrubs and trees.

Due to the scale of the fires, a new bill is being discussed in Chile’s congress, and – according to a CONAF press release – the minister of agriculture, Esteban Valenzuela, has urged that this is finalised by April this year.
The draft law aims to prevent forest and rural fires – for example, by implementing spatial planning instruments to set up “measures to manage landscape” and creating preventative management plans on forest land, such as fuel-cutting belts and clearance of combustible material.
Álvarez tells Carbon Brief that the biggest challenge facing Chileans and the state right now is rebuilding the area. He suggests that public policies should focus on preventing fires, enhancing spatial planning and restoring key regions for ecosystem services and biodiversity.
The post No ‘statistically significant’ link between climate change and Chile’s wildfires appeared first on Carbon Brief.
No ‘statistically significant’ link between climate change and Chile’s wildfires
Greenhouse Gases
Guest post: How atmospheric rivers are bringing rain to West Antarctica
“Atmospheric rivers” are bringing rain to the frozen slopes of the West Antarctic ice sheet, hitting the ice shelves that play a major role in holding back rapidly retreating glaciers.
In a new study, my colleagues and I show how rain is occurring in sub-zero temperatures due to these “rivers in the sky” – long, narrow plumes of air which transport heat and moisture from the tropics to the mid-latitudes and poles.
Rain in Antarctica is significant, not only because it is a stark indicator of climate change, but because it remains an under-studied phenomenon which could impact ice shelves.
Ice shelves in Antarctica are important gatekeepers of sea level rise.
They act as a buffer for glaciers that flow off the vast ice sheet, slowing the rate at which ice is released into the ocean.
In the study, we explore the causes of rain falling on ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea embayment region, which stand in front of the critically important Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers.
Researchers have warned the collapse of ice shelves in this region could trigger the loss of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet over several centuries.
Rivers in the sky
Atmospheric rivers are typically associated with bringing extreme rainfall to the mid-latitudes, but, in the frigid Antarctic, they can deliver metres of snow in just a few days.
In West Antarctica, atmospheric rivers deliver a disproportionate quantity of the year’s snowfall. Research shows they account for around 13% of annual snowfall totals, despite occurring on just a few days per year.
But what makes atmospheric rivers in Antarctica so interesting is that snow is only part of the story. In extreme cases, they can also bring rain.
To explore how extreme precipitation affects the Amundsen Sea embayment region, we focused on two events associated with atmospheric rivers in 2020. The summer case took place over a week in February and the winter case over six days in June.
We used three regional climate models to simulate the two extreme weather events around the Thwaites and Pine Island ice shelves, then compared the results with snowfall observations.
During both the winter and summer cases, we find that atmospheric rivers dumped tens of metres of snow over the course of a week or so.
Meanwhile, the quantities of rain driven by these events were not insignificant. We observed up to 30mm of rain on parts of the Thwaites ice shelf in summer and up to 9mm in winter.

A mountain to climb
Antarctica’s cold climate and steep, icy topography make it unique. It also makes the region prone to rain in sub-zero temperatures.
The first reason for this is the foehn effect, which is when air forced over a mountain range warms as it descends on the downward slope.
Commonly observed across Antarctica, it is an important cause of melting over ice shelves on the Antarctic peninsula, the northernmost point of the continent.
When air passes over the mountainous terrain of the West Antarctic ice sheet during atmospheric river events, temperatures near the surface of the ice shelves can climb above the melting point of 0C.
This can accentuate the formation of rain and drizzle that stays liquid below 0C – also known as “supercooled drizzle”.
Another factor which leads to liquid drizzle, rather than snow, in sub-zero conditions is a lack of dust and dirt – particles which are usually needed to trigger the formation of ice crystals in clouds.
In the pristine Antarctic, these particles – which act as “ice nuclei” – are few and far between. That means that pure liquid water can exist even when temperatures are below 0C.
The origins of rain over ice shelves
It is easy to assume that rain that reaches the surface in Antarctica is just snow that has melted after falling through a warm layer of air caused by the foehn effect. Indeed, this is what we initially supposed.
But our research shows that more rain reaches the surface of Antarctica when the air near the ground is within a few degrees of freezing.
At times when the foehn effect is strongest, there is often little or no rainfall, because it evaporates before it gets a chance to reach the surface.
However, we saw rain falling well above the warm layer of air near the surface, where temperatures were universally below 0C – and, in some cases, as low as -11C.
Rare rain
Rain in Antarctica is a rare occurrence. The region’s normally frigid temperatures mean that most precipitation over the continent falls as snow.
However, exactly how rare rain is in the region remains relatively unknown, because there are virtually zero measurements of rainfall in Antarctica.
There are a number of reasons for this – rain falls infrequently, and it is very difficult to measure in the hostile Antarctic environment.
Our results show that extreme events such as atmospheric rivers can bring rain. And it is likely that rain will become a more common occurrence in the future as temperatures rise and extreme weather events occur more frequently.
However, until rain starts being measured in Antarctica, scientists will have to rely entirely on models to predict rain, as we did in this research.
It is also not yet known exactly how rain could impact ice in Antarctica.
We do know that rain falling on snow darkens the surface, which can enhance melting, leading to greater ice losses. Meanwhile, rain that refreezes in the snowpack or trickles to the base of the ice can change the way that glaciers flow, impacting the resilience of ice shelves to fracture.
So, if we want to understand the future of the frozen continent, we need to start thinking about rain too. Because while rain may be rare now, it may not be for long.
The post Guest post: How atmospheric rivers are bringing rain to West Antarctica appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: How atmospheric rivers are bringing rain to West Antarctica
Greenhouse Gases
Analysis: 95% of countries miss UN deadline to submit 2035 climate pledges
Around 95% of countries have missed a UN deadline to submit new climate pledges for 2035, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Just 10 of the 195 parties signed up to the landmark Paris Agreement have published their new emissions-cutting plans, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs), by the 10 February deadline.
Countries missing the deadline represent 83% of global emissions and nearly 80% of the world’s economy, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
The COP30 summit in Brazil this November is being billed as a key moment for countries to increase their efforts towards achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.
In a 6 February speech, UN climate chief Simon Stiell said the “vast majority of countries have indicated that they [will] submit new plans this year” and “taking a bit more time to ensure these plans are first-rate makes sense”.
He added that countries need to submit their plans “at the latest…by September” in order to be included in the UN’s next global “synthesis” assessment of climate action ahead of COP30.
‘Quantum leap’
Back in 2015, almost every nation on Earth adopted the Paris Agreement, a landmark climate deal aimed at keeping temperatures “well-below” 2C above pre-industrial levels, with an ambition of keeping them at 1.5C, by the end of the century.
As part of the agreement, countries committed to submitting new plans describing what they will do to cut emissions and adapt to climate change every five years. These are known as NDCs.
Countries also agreed to assess their progress towards meeting the Paris goals in a five-yearly “global stocktake” and then increase their efforts accordingly.
This “review and ratchet” step is key to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. This is because, when the agreement was adopted 10 years ago, it was clear that countries were far off track for meeting their goals.
They hoped this gap could be closed over time, based on future policy efforts and technologies. As such, the so-called “ratchet mechanism” requires each round of pledges to go further than the last and to represent countries’ “highest possible ambition”.
The first two rounds of NDCs took place in 2015 and 2020-21. The 10 February 2025 deadline for the third round of NDCs was confirmed as part of a “global stocktake” of climate action conducted in 2023. The deadline is nine months ahead of the start of COP30.

According to the most recent UN emissions gap report, countries remain largely off track for meeting the Paris goals, with 2035 climate pledges needing to deliver a “quantum leap in ambition” to give the world a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C.
However, just 10 of the 195 parties to the Paris Agreement have met the UN deadline to publish 2035 climate pledges by 10 February.
Only two of the group of seven (G7) nations – the US and the UK – have come forward with new climate plans. However, the US submitted its NDC before the inauguration last month of Donald Trump, who has already begun the process of delivering his campaign promise to withdraw the nation from the Paris Agreement.
These countries, along with the other nations to meet the deadline – Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, New Zealand, Switzerland, Uruguay, Andorra, Ecuador and Saint Lucia – are visualised on the map below.

Analysis by climate research group Climate Action Tracker has found that the new 2035 NDCs of Brazil, the UAE, the US and Switzerland are “not compatible” with a pathway for limiting global warming to 1.5C.
It also found that the UK’s new NDC is “1.5C compatible”, but noted that the nation would need to increase its spending on helping other countries tackle their emissions in order to do its “fair share” towards reaching the Paris goals.
The group has not yet analysed New Zealand’s NDC, but a climate expert within the country described it as “shockingly unambitious”.
Major polluters missing
Many of the world’s largest emitters have cited technical issues, economic pressures and political uncertainty as reasons why they have not been able to meet the UN deadline.
EU officials said the bloc’s lengthy process for approving new legislation made it “basically impossible” to meet the deadline.
China has not confirmed when it will release its climate plan.
Unnamed Indian officials have said they are in “no hurry” to release the nation’s NDC and might submit it in the “second half of this year”, according to the Indian Express. They added that India’s NDC will “reflect the disappointment of the climate finance outcome at COP29 in Baku”, a “hint” that it is “unlikely to be a significant or ambitious upgrade of climate actions”.
Canada, Japan and Indonesia have all released draft versions of their 2035 climate plans, but have yet to submit them to the UN. Canada’s plan has faced criticism for setting an emissions pledge that is less ambitious than what its official climate advisors recommended.
Russia has not made any public comments about when it will release its new NDC. Its last major climate update came in 2021, when it pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2060.
Australia has indicated it will delay the release of its NDC until after the country’s election in May, “in part due to uncertainty about the ramifications of the US presidential election”, the Guardian reported.
At the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, a group including Canada, Chile, the EU, Georgia, Mexico, Norway and Switzerland pledged to release “1.5C-aligned” NDCs, but did not offer details on how this would be achieved or commit to meeting the February deadline.
History repeats
Seasoned COP watchers will note that it is the norm for the majority of countries to miss the deadline for their NDCs.
During the last round of pledges, only five countries met the February 2020 deadline, with most countries eventually publishing their pledges later in 2020 and 2021. (This was amid the Covid-19 pandemic.)
During a speech in Brazil on 6 February, UN climate chief Simon Stiell said the “vast majority of countries have indicated they will submit new plans this year” and that he believed “countries are taking this extremely seriously”, adding:
“So taking a bit more time to ensure these plans are first-rate makes sense, properly outlining how they will contribute to this effort and therefore what rewards they will reap. At the latest, though, the [UN climate change] secretariat team needs to have them on their desks by September to include them in the NDC synthesis report, which will come out before the COP.”
The post Analysis: 95% of countries miss UN deadline to submit 2035 climate pledges appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: 95% of countries miss UN deadline to submit 2035 climate pledges
Greenhouse Gases
Media response to 2022 IPCC report suggests shift to ‘solutions-based reporting’
Journalists covering a major climate report in 2022 broke with a “historical tradition” of focusing on the negative impacts of climate change, shifting instead to “positive, solutions-based reporting”, a study has found.
The research, published in Climatic Change, looks at the way US and UK news outlets covered the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2022 report on the mitigation of climate change.
The findings “strongly suggest a shift in emphasis” to climate solutions in climate-change reporting, the authors say.
They note that previous IPCC reports “did not receive such an overwhelmingly positive, and at times even optimistic, message”.
However, the response to the report was significantly less optimistic on social media, where popular posts were more likely to focus on a “sense of hopelessness” and the “dire” nature of the climate threat, the authors say.
The findings contribute to the growing literature on the changing nature of media coverage as climate impacts become more frequent and severe, and groups opposed to climate action shift tactics.
Priority messages
The research looks at the media response to the report published in April 2022 by the IPCC’s Working Group III (WG3), as part of the influential body’s sixth assessment report cycle (AR6). (See Carbon Brief’s in-depth coverage.)
The report provides an overview of the world’s progress on tackling greenhouse emissions, while also examining the different sources of emissions. It is one of three comprehensive scientific assessments published each five-to-seven year IPCC assessment cycle, alongside reports on the physical science basis for climate change and its impacts.
To assess the media’s response to the WG3 report, the researchers identify 12 “official priority messages” promoted by the IPCC around its launch.
These are based on the news release, the press conference, headline statements in the report’s summary for policymakers section, and social-media posts sent out by the IPCC’s communication team.
The table below sets out the IPCC’s key messages, as identified by the researchers, ranging from the headline “there are options available now in all sectors” to more specific messages around the need to decarbonise buildings and industry, and ramp up finance to developing countries.

The researchers then assess the presence (mentions) and dominance (inclusion in headline, top five sentences, or as a strong narrative throughout) of these “key messages” in 66 articles published over 4-6 April on more than 20 popular UK and US news websites.
They also look at how the 12 main messages aligned with 56 of the most popular social media posts about the report on Facebook and Twitter.
A small sample
The study’s media sample focuses on articles published by the top 12 most popular online news sites in the UK and US, as identified by Reuters Institute’s 2021 digital news report, with a few exceptions.
The sample features left-leaning publications, such as the Guardian and the New York Times, centre-right outlets, including the Times and the Financial Times, and right-leaning titles, such as the Daily Mail and the Wall Street Journal.
Regional newspapers and local television websites were missed due to a lack of coverage of the report.
The authors say they chose to focus on news media in the UK and US because the two countries are host to “legacy media organisations” that have a “strong worldwide presence in English (particularly online), host sceptical voices and are influential amongst policymakers outside of their home countries”.
The social-media sample includes posts by authors, news organisations, scientists, journalists and pro- and anti-climate action groups.
Dr James Painter – an author of the study and research associate at the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism – tells Carbon Brief the sample size was relatively small largely due to a muted media response to the report. He adds:
“Sixty six [articles] isn’t a huge sample compared to other studies, but it is big enough to be robust and broad enough in terms of a spectrum of types of media outlets and political leaning.”
Solutions-focused coverage
The study notes that coverage “seldom deviated from the main messages the IPCC was promoting”.
The three most mentioned messages are:
- “There are options available to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” (70%)
- “Major transformations in the energy sector are needed into renewables” (67%)
- “A substantial reduction in fossil fuels is needed” (63%)
A majority of articles (54%) also mention the IPCC’s recommendation that carbon dioxide removal (CDR) solutions are necessary to bring down emissions.
The bar chart below shows the percentage of UK and US media coverage that included the IPCC’s key messages, with UK media represented in dark blue and US media in light blue.

The authors say the paper provides a “detailed case study of which solutions get the most traction – and most critiques – in the media coverage of a policy event”.
For example, it notes how the least-mentioned solutions were sectoral measures focused on reducing the climate impact of industry, cities and buildings, and ramping up finance to poorer nations.
Painter says he believes the downgrading of these particular messages was a product of the space constraints of online journalism, which led journalists to prioritise “key findings” and “controversial” topics, such as CDR.
Break from the past
The research acknowledges that solutions-focused media coverage of the WG3 report is “to be expected”, given the document’s focus on climate mitigation options.
However, the researchers note that media coverage of the previous iteration of the WG3 report – published in 2014 – did not focus on solutions.
They point to a 2015 study that found the dominant frames of coverage were “settled science” and “political and ideological struggle”.
They also highlight analysis published in 2016 that finds a “low presence of the opportunity of action frame compared to disaster and uncertainty framing” in the response to all three key reports of the fifth IPCC assessment cycle.
As a result, the study authors argue the news media’s focus on solutions in reporting of the latest WG3 report “confirms a trend to more solutions coverage” observed by other researchers.
The research also notes the response to the 2022 WG3 report “to a large extent may have been prompted by the IPCC’s communication approach”.
However, Sigourney Luz, digital media and communications manager at Imperial College London and communications manager for the WG3 report, tells Carbon Brief that this is “difficult to determine”.
This shift could also be down to the nature of the report or “part of a broader trend in climate reporting”, she says, adding that “both media coverage of climate change and the scope of IPCC reports have evolved” between 2014 and 2022.
Dr Jill E Hopke, an associate professor of journalism at DePaul University, who was not involved in the study, says it is “encouraging” to see traditional media reflect the IPCC’s priorities. However, she adds that reporting of solutions remains scarce in reporting on climate impacts:
“The link is missing in that type of coverage, which is discouraging. As audiences and as people living on this planet, when we see extreme weather events driven by climate change, it is important to have media coverage that talks about the solutions relative, or links those things together.”
Dr Antal Wozniak, senior lecturer in media, politics and society at the University of Liverpool, who was also not involved in the study, adds that his research suggests that “solutions coverage now is actually shifting more towards adaptation [as opposed to mitigation], especially when you leave the politics beat”.
The pair are working on a number of studies which look at the media’s response to climate impacts, from heatwaves to soil degradation.
Social media
While traditional media narratives about the WG3 report largely dovetailed with the solutions-orientated messages promoted by the IPCC, social media posts did not.
The study finds that 60% of the social-media posts contained themes that did not reiterate any of the IPCC’s “official” or “unofficial” messages. Around half made no mention of solutions at all.
(On top of the 12 “official” IPCC messages, the researchers also looked at dominance and prevalence of three “unofficial messages” promoted by the IPCC and UN secretary general Antonio Guterres around the report launch – for instance, a warning that it was “now or never”.)
Instead, social-media posts focused on the “dire nature of the climate threat, the need for urgent action and a sense of hopelessness”, the study notes.
Painter says “strong” divergence between social media and news media responses holds implications for efforts to build momentum behind climate action:
“If there is an increasingly fractured debate where there isn’t consensus about responses to the climate challenge, then that is important. How do you build a sort of multi-sectoral alliance to do something about climate change if that is the case?”
Equity and justice
The study notes that the concepts of equity and justice “do not seem to have been given priority” by IPCC messaging, beyond a recommendation for more finance to go to poorer nations.
The message around financial flows was among the least covered by news media: it was the third-least prevalent message in mainstream media, and the fifth least dominant.
However, the research says that journalists highlighted issues of equity and justice that were not explicitly promoted by the IPCC. For example, it finds that 22% and 14% of articles, respectively, included messaging that either richer nations or wealthier individuals “should do more”.
The study also notes discussions of equity were “lacking” on social media, with just one social-media post – from Carbon Brief’s Simon Evans – focusing on the unequal distribution of greenhouse gas emissions within and between nations.
Climate obstructionism
Another notable finding of the media analysis was the absence of a response to WG3 from what the report authors dub the “organised climate counter-movement”.
This was contrary to expectations that the analysis might confirm a trend of changing tactics of climate-sceptic groups away from outright climate denial and towards questioning climate solutions.
In fact, the paper notes that the most common source cited in critiques of climate solutions in articles was the IPCC itself.
CDR technology was the most critiqued solution, with more than a third (35%) of articles raising some form of concern.
The authors note that the UK news media was “noticeably more critical of CDR and land-based solutions than the US sample”. The US media, on the other hand, was more critical of messaging around “options being available” and the need to phase out fossil fuels.
Overall, the study finds that the IPCC was the source for 57% of all critiques of solutions in the media studied, followed by the article authors themselves (23%), IPCC-affiliated and other scientists (15%), and pro-climate action campaign groups (5%).
In contrast, the research finds “only very limited presence of organised or individual scepticism on social media” and “no presence of evidence scepticism…nor any presence of organised scepticism or individual scepticism” in articles.
The researchers argue the relative lack of a response from sceptics could be a result of the study’s small sample size and a lack of specific country-level policy recommendations for groups to critique.
Dr Max Boykoff, a professor in the University of Colorado Boulder’s environmental studies department, who was not involved in the study, says the findings chime with his research into the evolving strategies of the Heartland Institute, which found the influential US conservative thinktank was increasingly preoccupied with opposing climate action at a state-level. He tells Carbon Brief:
“There was less of a focus on the international and national scene, and more of a focus on state level, local level engagements. In baseball lingo…it’s thinking about ‘small ball’, instead of trying to hit a home run.”
Boykoff adds that the study forms “part of a larger set of efforts that take place across research communities that add value to how we understand how the world is changing around us and what we can do to influence positive change”.
The post Media response to 2022 IPCC report suggests shift to ‘solutions-based reporting’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Media response to 2022 IPCC report suggests shift to ‘solutions-based reporting’
-
Greenhouse Gases9 months 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 Change9 months 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 Change1 year ago
Spanish-language misinformation on renewable energy spreads online, report shows
-
Climate Change Videos1 year ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Climate Change1 year ago
Why airlines are perfect targets for anti-greenwashing legal action
-
Climate Change1 year ago
Clouds now contains plastic, contaminating ‘everything we eat and drink’
-
Climate Change1 year ago
Farmers turn to tech as bees struggle to pollinate
-
Climate Change Videos1 year ago