Extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfall, flooding and heatwaves, have been described as the “new normal” for China.
The country lost almost 12bn yuan ($1.65bn) due to heavy rainfall and floods in April – “the worst in 10 years”. In June, dozens of people were killed and some 33 rivers in China “exceeded warning levels”. The floods in Guilin, capital city of Guangxi province, were the largest in the area since 1998.
It has been less than a year since the Beijing meteorological service recorded 745mm of rain in just five days during July 2023 – roughly the same amount the city usually receives in the whole month.
The province surrounding Beijing, Hebei, also had heavy rainfall at the same time. In July 2023, the county of Lincheng recorded more than one metre of rain, twice its annual average.
In July 2021, Hebei’s neighbouring province Henan had a “one-in-a-thousand-year” rainstorm.
While China has issued more policies to improve its emergency response system and infrastructure, the increasing number of extreme weather events continues to pose challenges.
In this Q&A, Carbon Brief looks at the reasons for China’s recent floods, how the country is adapting and whether it will need to re-examine and future-proof its flood defence systems.
- What are the reasons behind the recent floods?
- What role does human-caused climate change play?
- How is China adapting to increasingly frequent flooding?
- How effective are these measures?
- What can China learn from other cities?
What are the reasons behind the recent floods?
There are various factors behind the frequent heavy rain and flooding in recent years.
Dr Oliver Wing, honorary research fellow at the school of geographical sciences, University of Bristol, tells Carbon Brief that “on the whole, we expect a warming world to be a wetter world due to the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship”.
This relationship dictates that the air can generally hold around 7% more moisture for every 1C of temperature rise, meaning rainfall is likely to be heavier in a warmer climate.
Wing notes that “for sub-daily rainfall, we are seeing even greater scaling than this relationship would suggest. This makes surface water flooding in cities [more likely] due to short-duration, intense, localised rainfall increase”.
In addition, he says, “warming is inducing a rise in sea levels in most places, meaning storm surges have a higher baseline from which to inflict damage”.
In China, “higher than normal temperatures” were behind frequent heavy rainfall in southern coastal provinces, such as Guangdong and Guangxi, since April, says Zheng Zhihai, chief forecaster at the National Climate Centre of the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), and reported in China Daily.
Zheng adds that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation – a natural climate cycle that entered its warmer El Niño phase in mid-2023 – was partly to blame because it raised sea surface temperatures and directed vast amounts of water vapour from the South China Sea and the Bay of Bengal towards southern China.
Dr Faith Chan, head of the school of geographical sciences at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, tells Carbon Brief that the rainfall pattern in Guangdong during this April was quite similar to the intensive rainstorm on 6-8 September in 2023 after Typhoon Haikui.
Specifically, the intense rainfalls were generated by the low-pressure moist current from the south-east and south Asian monsoon pattern crashing into another low-pressure rain belt from the Philippines and the west Pacific.
Typhoon Haikui had hit Hong Kong with the worst storm in 140 years and caused some of the heaviest rains in the provinces of Guangdong and Fujian.
While these intense rainstorms, in a meteorological sense, are not unusual, they are happening more closely to one another owing to the warming world, Chan says.
Large-scale heavy rainstorms typically occur three times on average in April – the onset of a monsoon season. But, this year, China has been battered by at least eight regional extreme rain events in the month alone, all happening in quick succession.
River floods are commonly seen in the affected regions, such as Chongqing and Hunan. Identifying the causes can be more complicated for river floods in general, says Wing:
“There are many modulating factors. Drier soils in a warming world may enable the land to absorb the increased rainfall, thereby mitigating any flood hazard increase. Many floods are not driven by intense rainfall, but are driven by snowmelt or low-intensity, long-duration rain falling on saturated soils. For this reason, it is not reasonable to extrapolate that increased rainfall in a warming world will lead to increased fluvial flooding.”
Chan says natural reasons “of course” enhanced the wetness, “but human-induced climate change led to the greenhouse effect and caused sea temperature to rise, which caused more storms and low-pressure rain belts. That is a fact”.
Wing agrees that “the thermodynamic impact” of human-led climate change increases the rainfall associated with storms. But, he adds:
“What we do not understand well is how anthropogenic climate change has altered the dynamics of the climate system, and where and how this either compounds or dampens the thermodynamic response.”
What role does human-caused climate change play?
Many studies have found that warmer sea surface temperatures are supercharging high-impact, back-to-back extreme rains.
The sixth assessment report (AR6) from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also says that human-induced climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions contributes to ocean warming and “is likely the main driver of the observed global-scale intensification of heavy precipitation over land regions”.
In east and central Asia, under 1.5C of global warming, extreme annual daily rainfall (Rx1) and five-day accumulated rainfall (Rx5) events are projected to increase by 28% and 15%, respectively, relative to 1971-2000, according to AR6.
Similarly, it says that in China’s urban agglomerations, “an increase in global warming from 1.5C to 2C is likely to increase the intensity of total precipitation of very wet days 1.8 times and double maximum five-day precipitation”.
Prof Yang Chen of the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences at the CMA tells Carbon Brief that human-caused intensification of heavy rainfall over China had been even larger than expected. He explains:
“Human-caused intensification of heavy precipitation over monsoonal China is markedly larger than expected from increases in atmospheric moisture due to warming, because of stronger feedback between latent heat releases and ascending motion within wetter storms in a warmer climate.”
Such feedback, he adds, is particularly evident in eastern China compared to other regions of similar latitudes.
A recent study in Nature also anticipates storm activity over China to become more frequent and intense as a result of warming. By the end of the 21st century, the annual average frequency of tropical cyclones on the east coast of China is anticipated to increase by 16% compared to the present day, according to the study.
Apart from climate change that is caused by human activities, poorly designed and constructed cities, as well as subsidence – caused by groundwater extraction, the weight of buildings as result of urban growth, urban transportation systems and mining activities – could also amplify floods.
Dr Kevin Smiley, assistant professor from the department of sociology of Louisiana State University tells Carbon Brief:
“Climate change is increasing the severity and frequency of extreme weather. Extra rainfall induced by climate change can be the difference between a building’s parking lot hosting puddles on a rainy day compared to floodwaters crossing the threshold of the building and causing thousands of dollars of damages.
“It’s always important to remember: climate change is anthropogenic, so this increased risk also has human-caused roots.”
How is China adapting to increasingly frequent flooding?
China has built a number of large water projects to prevent flooding, such as the south-north water transfer projects in the Yangtze river that was launched in 2002.
In the most recent “national water network construction planning outline” published by the State Council – China’s top administrative authority, the equivalent of central government – constructing “national water networks” by 2035 is among the “backbones” of future flood prevention.
The “backbones” in the document also include large hard-engineered structures on the main rivers, such as embankments, flood gates and channelised river networks, to mitigate flood risks.
Meanwhile, a study published in the journal Ocean & Coastal Management found that “nature-based solutions” have also become popular in China. The restoration and conservation of freshwater swamps, mangroves and wetlands along coastlines and river mouths are being used to provide a buffer for tidal and storm surges.
They include the Chongming Island wetland in Shanghai (Yangtze delta) and the Futian and Mai Po wetlands in Shenzhen Bay (Pearl River delta).
Another concept proposed in the planning document is to “accelerate smart development” by using the internet, data and technology to monitor and prevent floods.
The capital Beijing has incorporated data from high-definition cameras, as well as telescopes, radar maps and satellite cloud images to provide real-time hazard updates, which has improved emergency response times.
Ningbo, a port city on China’s east coast, has worked with mobile companies to analyse big data and disseminate information.
The Ministry of Emergency Management said these measures have reduced the number of deaths and missing people as a result of natural disasters by 54% over 2018-22, compared to 2013-17. The death toll continued to fall in 2023 but the number of destroyed buildings and direct economic losses rose by 97% and 13%, respectively, compared with 2018-22 levels.
In 2015, the sponge city programme (SCP) concept was written into a policy document of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. It was promoted across the country and 30 major cities, such as Wuhan (home to 11 million people) and Zhengzhou (home to 10 million people), were chosen to be the pilot cities.
Those sponge cities are designed to collect, purify and re-use at least 70% of the floodwaters through “green-blue facilities”, such as green roofs, permeable pavements and stormwater parks, in urban areas. The overall system was meant to resolve the issues of urban heating, freshwater scarcity and flooding all at once.
China has improved its recovery process too. In Ningbo, for example, flood victims were able to access financial compensation within an hour, using an improved online documentation process during Typhoon In-Fa in 2021.
How effective are these measures?
Chan tells Carbon Brief that China has “done very well in terms of preparation, response and recovery for flood and drought hazards” – the two most destructive types of natural disasters.
“As a global south country,” he says, referring to China as a developing country, “China has done quite well with the SCP [sponge cities programme] and the ecologically enhanced solutions for addressing climate change”.
However, Wing argues that nature-based solutions, such as SCP, can “get saturated quickly” and so “there’s a risk of their role being overstated”. He continues:
“These types of interventions are most effective for rainfall events which occur relatively regularly at low intensities. They will be quickly overwhelmed during the very intense, rare rainfall events (whose probabilities are changing rapidly in a warming world) that cause the most damage and suffering.”
In 2021, a “historically rare” rain and flood, that affected more than 14 million people and killed 398 in Zhengzhou, a showcase sponge city, highlighted the limitations of the SCP in the face of climate change.
SCP is designed to only withstand one-in-30-year rain events, says the Nature study. On top of that, it can create a false sense of security, which encourages more people to move to high-risk areas, leading to an increase in population and assets in exposed areas that require ever-increasing protection in a cycle referred to as a “levee effect”, says Chan.
The levee effect refers to the paradox whereby the construction of a flood-defence levee leads to a lowered perception of flood risks and a greater likelihood of property owners investing in their property, increasing the potential damages should the levee breach.
The effect, according to the Nature paper, is a key challenge in the densely populated Yellow River delta and Pearl River areas, which both face high risks of flooding.
Smiley says:
“Risk is realised when social vulnerabilities intersect with hazards. Vulnerabilities are social. Flood impacts are greater when social vulnerabilities are greater…Social vulnerabilities are uneven. A household with some wealth and good insurance can recover from a flooding event much faster and more successfully than a household living paycheck-to-paycheck.”
The Chinese government has allocated more than one trillion yuan ($138bn) – via a special government bond – to support the vulnerable citizens and reconstruction of areas hit by natural disasters in March this year. More than half of the funds are used for “the construction of water conservancy projects like flood control,” reported state media outlet the Global Times.
But the delivery of financial support has been questioned in the past. When Typhoon Doksuri hit China in 2023, only $2bn out of roughly $25bn in aggregate losses were underwritten, according to global reinsurer Munich Re.
In addition, the construction of those sponge cities has already cost China 1.5-1.8bn yuan ($210-250m) between 2015 and 2018. And maintenance will make this bill even larger.
The authors of the Nature paper suggest that the government should work on integrating fragmented “grey infrastructure” – built structures such as drains, pipework and pumping stations – into existing green-blue facilities, but should not rely on engineered infrastructure alone.
Dr Lele Shu, a researcher at the northwest institute of eco-environment and resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, tells the Intellectual magazine that “the [impact of] heavy rain at the current rate cannot be mitigated through traditional engineered approaches alone”.
“Everytime there is heavy rain, the damage it causes will make headlines primarily because there are too many people living in the city,” adds Shu.
The lack of coordination between regional governments and municipalities in flood prone areas also often led to fragmented approaches to disaster management.
In the case of the Yangtze and Pearl deltas, there is a lack of delta-wide plans that “systematically zone land and prioritise investments within one unified hydrological system”, the Nature study adds.
Dr Zheng Yan, a researcher at the Research Institute of Eco-civilisation, China Academy of Social Sciences, noted in the aftermath of the 2023 Beijing flood that government bodies often look after their own jurisdiction and aim only to move the problem and divert the floods quickly, which piled pressure on cities in downstream areas.
Smiley says:
“Floodwaters don’t care about human-created boundaries by municipality, district or province. Effective urban design in one locality may lessen flood risk there, but indirectly increase risk elsewhere. Thinking collectively while centering justice means providing spatially extensive and locally attuned solutions that help all recover effectively instead of exacerbating inequalities.”
What can China learn from other cities?
As flooding is a challenge faced by cities across the world, there is a plethora of ideas and technologies that China can draw on.
The Nature paper suggests that the Yangtze and Pearl deltas, for example, could learn from the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta and the Mekong delta to “improve their responses to regional challenges such as subsidence and erosion, by using and aligning with the underlying dynamics of the deltas that are rapidly changing in response to climate change and anthropogenic activities”.
Building a resilient society that is “proactive and forward-looking, with adequate capabilities to limit detrimental flooding impacts and timely return to the pre-disaster state” is also advocated by the paper.
Rotterdam, a Dutch delta city of 600,000 people that is surrounded by water on four sides, has built water storage facilities, such as an underground parking garage with a basin the size of four Olympic swimming pools. It has also installed green roofs and facades to absorb rainwater.
Japan has built an intricate network of concrete tunnels and vaults about 14 storeys beneath the Saitama prefecture in the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan’s capital city, that can hold more than 1,000 Olympic pools of rainwater.
Both cities’ underground flood diversion facilities are often used as a prime example of a viable flood defence system for urban cities on the frontline of climate change.
Hong Kong has a similar underground stormwater storage system beneath the sport pitches of the Happy Valley Racecourse, designed to withstand once-in-50-years flood events.
However, Chan says it is difficult to compare flood mitigation measures as each city is very different in terms of geography, demographic, densities and topography.
He tells Carbon Brief:
“But in my opinion, China’s megacities should think about using underground spaces to store the sudden extreme discharge from super intensive rainstorms…Tokyo and Rotterdam are quite wise (in that regard) for using their underground spaces.”
The post Q&A: How China is adapting to increasingly frequent flooding appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: How China is adapting to increasingly frequent flooding
In 2026, the dangers of fossil fuel dependence have been laid bare like never before. The illegal invasion of Iran has brought pain and destruction to millions across the Middle East and triggered a global energy crisis impacting us all. Communities in the Pacific have been hit especially hard by rising fuel prices, and Australians have seen their cost-of-living woes deepen.
Such moments of crisis and upheaval can lead to positive transformation. But only when leaders act with courage and foresight.
There is no clearer statement of a government’s plans and priorities for the nation than its budget — how it plans to raise money, and what services, communities, and industries it will invest in.
As we count down the days to the 2026-27 Federal Budget, will the Albanese Government deliver a budget for our times? One that starts breaking the shackles of fossil fuels, accelerates the shift to clean energy, protects nature, and sees us work together with other countries towards a safer future for all? Or one that doubles down on coal and gas, locks in more climate chaos, and keeps us beholden to the whims of tyrants and billionaires.
Here’s what we think the moment demands, and what we’ll be looking out for when Treasurer Jim Chalmers steps up to the dispatch box on 12 May.
1. Stop fuelling the fire
2. Make big polluters pay
3. Support everyone to be part of the solution
4. Build the industries of the future
5. Build community resilience
6. Be a better neighbour
7. Protect nature
1. Stop fuelling the fire
In mid-April, Pacific governments and civil society met to redouble their efforts towards a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific. Moving beyond coal, oil and gas is fundamental to limiting warming to 1.5°C — a survival line for vulnerable communities and ecosystems. And as our Head of Pacific, Shiva Gounden, explained, it is “also a path of liberation that frees us from expensive, extractive and polluting fossil fuel imports and uplifts our communities”.
Pacific countries are at the forefront of growing global momentum towards a just transition away from fossil fuels, and it is way past time for Australia to get with the program. It is no longer a question of whether fossil fuel extraction will end, but whether that end will be appropriately managed and see communities supported through the transition, or whether it will be chaotic and disruptive.
So will this budget support the transition away from fossil fuels, or will it continue to prop up coal and gas?
When it comes to sensible moves the government can make right now, one stands out as a genuine low hanging fruit. Mining companies get a full rebate of the excise (or tax) that the rest of us pay on diesel fuel. This lowers their operating costs and acts as a large, ongoing subsidy on fossil fuel production — to the tune of $11 billion a year!
Greenpeace has long called for coal and gas companies to be removed from this outdated scheme, and for the billions in savings to be used to support the clean energy transition and to assist communities with adapting to the impacts of climate change. Will we see the government finally make this long overdue change, or will it once again cave to the fossil fuel lobby?
2. Make big polluters pay
While our communities continue to suffer the escalating costs of climate-fuelled disasters, our Government continues to support a massive expansion of Australia’s export gas industry. Gas is a dangerous fossil fuel, with every tonne of Australian gas adding to the global heating that endangers us all.
Moreover, companies like Santos and Woodside pay very little tax for the privilege of digging up and selling Australians’ natural endowment of fossil gas. Remarkably, the Government currently raises more tax from beer than from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT) — the main tax on gas profits.
Momentum has been building to replace or supplement the PRRT with a 25% tax on gas exports. This could raise up to $17 billion a year — funds that, like savings from removing the diesel tax rebate for coal and gas companies, could be spent on supporting the clean energy transition and assisting communities with adapting to worsening fires, floods, heatwaves and other impacts of climate change.
As politicians arrive in Canberra for budget week, they will be confronted by billboards calling for a fair tax on gas exports. The push now has the support of dozens of organisations and a growing number of politicians. Let’s hope the Treasurer seizes this rare window for reform.
3. Support everyone to be part of the solution
As the price of petrol and diesel rises, electric vehicles (EVs) are helping people cut fuel use and save money. However, while EV sales have jumped since the invasion of Iran sent fuel prices rising, they still only make up a fraction of total new car sales. This budget should help more Australians switch to electric vehicles and, even more importantly, enable more Australians to get around by bike, on foot, and on public transport. This means maintaining the EV discount, investing in public and active transport, and removing tax breaks for fuel-hungry utes and vans.
Millions of Australians already enjoy the cost-saving benefits of rooftop solar, batteries, and getting off gas. This budget should enable more households, and in particular those on lower incomes, to access these benefits. This means maintaining the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, and building on the Household Energy Upgrades Fund.
4. Build the industries of the future
If we’re to transition away from fossil fuels, we need to be building the clean industries of the future.
No state is more pivotal to Australia’s energy and industrial transformation than Western Australia. The state has unrivaled potential for renewable energy development and for replacing fossil fuel exports with clean exports like green iron. Such industries offer Western Australia the promise of a vibrant economic future, and for Australia to play an outsized positive role in the world’s efforts to reduce emissions.
However, realising this potential will require focussed support from the Federal Government. Among other measures, Greenpeace has recommended establishing the Australasian Green Iron Corporation as a joint venture between the Australian and Western Australian governments, a key trading partner, a major iron ore miner and steel makers. This would unite these central players around the complex task of building a large-scale green iron industry, and unleash Western Australia’s potential as a green industrial powerhouse.
5. Build community resilience
Believe it or not, our Government continues to spend far more on subsidising fossil fuel production — and on clearing up after climate-fuelled disasters — than it does on helping communities and industries reduce disaster costs through practical, proven methods for building their resilience.
Last year, the Government estimated that the cost of recovery from disasters like the devastating 2022 east coast floods on 2019-20 fires will rise to $13.5 billion. For contrast, the Government’s Disaster Ready Fund – the main national source of funding for disaster resilience – invests just $200 million a year in grants to support disaster preparedness and resilience building. This is despite the Government’s own National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) estimating that for every dollar spent on disaster risk reduction, there is a $9.60 return on investment.
By redirecting funds currently spent on subsidising fossil fuel production, the Government can both stop incentivising climate destruction in the first place, and ensure that Australian communities and industries are better protected from worsening climate extremes.
No communities have more to lose from climate damage, or carry more knowledge of practical solutions, than Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The budget should include a dedicated First Nations climate adaptation fund, ensuring First Nations communities can develop solutions on their own terms, and access the support they need with adapting to extreme heat, coastal erosion and other escalating challenges.
6. Be a better neighbour
The global response to climate change depends on the adequate flow of support from developed economies like Australia to lower income nations with shifting to clean energy, adapting to the impacts of climate change, and addressing loss and damage.
Such support is vital to building trust and cooperation, reducing global emissions, and supporting regional and global security by enabling countries to transition away from fossil fuels and build greater resilience.
Despite its central leadership role in this year’s global climate negotiations, our Government is yet to announce its contribution to international climate finance for 2025-2030. Greenpeace recommends a commitment of $11 billion for this five year period, which is aligned with the global goal under the Paris Agreement to triple international climate finance from current levels.
This new commitment should include additional funding to address loss and damage from climate change and a substantial contribution to the Pacific Resilience Facility, ensuring support is accessible to countries and communities that need it most. It should also see Australia get firmly behind the vision of a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific.
7. Protect nature
There is no safe planet without protection of the ecosystems and biodiversity that sustain us and regulate our climate.
Last year the Parliament passed important and long overdue reforms to our national environment laws to ensure better protection for our forests and other critical ecosystems. However, the Government will need to provide sufficient funding to ensure the effective implementation of these reforms.
Greenpeace has recommended $500 million over four years to establish the National Environment Agency — the body responsible for enforcing and monitoring the new laws — and a further $50 million to Environment Information Australia for providing critical information and tools.
Further resourcing will also be required to fulfil the crucial goal of fully protecting 30% of Australian land and seas by 2030. This should include $1 billion towards ending deforestation by enabling farmers and loggers to retool away from destructive practices, $2 billion a year for restoring degraded lands, $5 billion for purchasing and creating new protected areas, and $200 million for expanding domestic and international marine protected areas.
Conclusion
This is not the first time that conflict overseas has triggered an energy crisis, or that a budget has been preceded by a summer of extreme weather disasters, highlighting the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels. What’s different in 2026 is the availability of solutions. Renewable energy is now cheaper and more accessible than ever before. Global momentum is firmly behind the transition away from fossil fuels. The Albanese Government, with its overwhelming majority, has the chance to set our nation up for the future, or keep us stranded in the past. Let’s hope it makes some smart choices.
The 2026 budget test: Will Australia break free from fossil fuels?
Anne Jellema is Executive Director of 350.org.
The war on Iran and Lebanon is a deeply unjust and devastating conflict, killing civilians at home, destroying lives, and at the same time sending shockwaves through the global economy. We, at 350.org, have calculated, drawing on price forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Goldman Sachs, just how much that volatility is costing us.
Even under the IMF’s baseline scenario – a de facto “best case” scenario with a near-term end to the war and related supply chain disruptions – oil and gas price spikes are projected to cost households and businesses globally more than $600 billion by the end of the year. Under the IMF’s “adverse scenario”, with prolonged conflict and sustained price pressures, we estimate those additional costs could exceed $1 trillion, even after accounting for reduced demand.
Which is why we urgently need a power shift. Governments are under growing pressure to respond to rising fuel and food costs and deepening energy poverty. And it’s becoming clearer to both voters and elected officials that fossil dependence is not only expensive and risky, but unnecessary.
People who can are voting with their wallets: sales of solar panels and electric vehicles are increasing sharply in many countries. But the working people who have nothing to spare, ironically, are the ones stuck with using oil and gas that is either exorbitantly expensive or simply impossible to get.
Drain on households and economies
In India, street food vendors can’t get cooking gas and in the Philippines, fishermen can’t afford to take their boats to sea. A quarter of British people say that rising energy tariffs will leave them completely unable to pay their bills. This is the moment for a global push to bring abundant and affordable clean energy to all.
In April, we released Out of Pocket, our new research report on how fossil fuels are draining households and economies. We were surprised by the scale of what we found. For decades, governments have reassured people that energy price spikes are unfortunate but unavoidable – the result of distant conflicts, market forces or geopolitical shocks beyond anyone’s control. But the numbers tell a different story.
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Santa Marta: Ministers grapple with practicalities of fossil fuel phase-out
Around 60 governments that want to make progress on transitioning away from coal, oil and gas are meeting in Colombia to work out how they can do it an equitable way -
Why the transition beyond fossil fuels depends on cities and collective action
Cities will help identify concrete pathways for an equitable shift to clean energy at the Santa Marta conference, with C40 members aiming to halve their fossil fuel use by 2030
What we are living through today is not an energy crisis. It is a fossil fuel crisis. In just the first 50 days of the Middle East conflict, soaring oil and gas prices have siphoned an estimated $158 billion–$166 billion from households and businesses worldwide. That is money extracted directly from people’s pockets and transferred, almost instantly, into fossil fuel company balance sheets. And this figure only captures the immediate impact of price spikes, not the permanent economic drain of fossil dependence. Fossil fuels don’t just cost us once, they cost us over and over again.
First, through our bills. Every time there is a war, an embargo or a supply disruption, fossil fuel prices surge. For ordinary people, this means higher costs for energy, transport and food. Many Global South countries have little or no fiscal space to buffer the shock; instead, workers and families pay the price.
Second, through our taxes. Governments around the world continue to pour vast sums of public money into fossil fuel subsidies. These are often justified as a way to protect the most vulnerable at the petrol pump or in their homes. But in reality, the benefits are overwhelmingly captured by wealthier households and corporations. The poorest 20% receive just a fraction of this support, while public finances are drained.
Third, through climate impacts. New research across more than 24,000 global locations gives a granular account of the true costs of extreme heat, sea level rise and falling agricultural yields. Using this data to update IMF modelling of the social cost of carbon, we found that fossil fuel impacts on health and livelihoods amount to over $9 trillion a year. This is the biggest subsidy of all, because these massive and mounting costs are not charged to Big Oil – they are paid for by governments and households, with the poorest shouldering the lion’s share.
Massive transfer of wealth to fossil fuel industry
Adding up direct subsidies, tax breaks and the unpaid bill for climate damages, the total transfer of wealth from the public to the fossil fuel industry amounts to $12 trillion even in a “normal” year without a global oil shock. That’s more than 50% higher than the IMF has previously estimated, and equivalent to a staggering $23 million a minute.
The fossil fuel industry has become extraordinarily adept at profiting from instability. When conflict drives up prices, companies do not lose, they gain. In the current crisis, oil producers and commodity traders are on track to secure tens of billions of dollars in additional windfall profits, even as households face rising bills and governments struggle to manage the fallout.
Fossil fuel crisis offers chance to speed up energy transition, ministers say
This growing disconnect is impossible to ignore. Investors are advised to buy into fossil fuel firms precisely because of their ability to generate profits in times of crisis. Meanwhile, ordinary people are told to tighten their belts.
In 2026, unlike during the oil shocks of the 1970s, clean energy is no longer a distant alternative. Now, even more than when gas prices spiked due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, renewables are often the cheapest option available. Solar and wind can be deployed quickly, at scale, and without the volatility that defines fossil fuel markets.
How to transition from dirty to clean energy
The solutions are clear. Governments must implement permanent windfall taxes on fossil fuel companies to ensure that extraordinary profits generated during crises are redirected to support households. These revenues can be used to reduce energy bills, invest in public services, and accelerate the rollout of clean energy.
Second, we must shift subsidies away from fossil fuels and towards renewable solutions, particularly those that can be deployed quickly and equitably, such as rooftop and community solar. This is not just about cutting emissions. It is about building a more stable, fair and resilient energy system.
Finally, we need binding plans to phase out fossil fuels altogether, replacing them with homegrown renewable energy that can shield economies from future shocks. Because what the current crisis has made clear is this: as long as we remain dependent on fossil fuels, we remain vulnerable – to conflict, to price volatility and to the escalating impacts of climate change.
The true price of fossil fuels is no longer hidden. It is visible in rising bills, strained public finances and communities pushed to the brink. And it is being paid, every day, by ordinary people around the world.
It’s time for the great power shift.
Full details on the methodology used for this report are available here.
The Great Power Shift is a new campaign by 350.org global campaign to pressure governments to bring down energy bills for good by ending fossil fuel dependence and investing in clean, affordable energy for all
The post What fossil fuels really cost us in a world at war appeared first on Climate Home News.
Computer models that use artificial intelligence (AI) cannot forecast record-breaking weather as well as traditional climate models, according to a new study.
It is well established that AI climate models have surpassed traditional, physics-based climate models for some aspects of weather forecasting.
However, new research published in Science Advances finds that AI models still “underperform” in forecasting record-breaking extreme weather events.
The authors tested how well both AI and traditional weather models could simulate thousands of record-breaking hot, cold and windy events that were recorded in 2018 and 2020.
They find that AI models underestimate both the frequency and intensity of record-breaking events.
A study author tells Carbon Brief that the analysis is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
AI weather forecasts
Extreme weather events, such as floods, heatwaves and storms, drive hundreds of billions of dollars in damages every year through the destruction of cropland, impacts on infrastructure and the loss of human life.
Many governments have developed early warning systems to prepare the general public and mobilise disaster response teams for imminent extreme weather events. These systems have been shown to minimise damages and save lives.
For decades, scientists have used numerical weather prediction models to simulate the weather days, or weeks, in advance.
These models rely on a series of complex equations that reproduce processes in the atmosphere and ocean. The equations are rooted in fundamental laws of physics, based on decades of research by climate scientists. As a result, these models are referred to as “physics-based” models.
However, AI-based climate models are gaining popularity as an alternative for weather forecasting.
Instead of using physics, these models use a statistical approach. Scientists present AI models with a large batch of historical weather data, known as training data, which teaches the model to recognise patterns and make predictions.
To produce a new forecast, the AI model draws on this bank of knowledge and follows the patterns that it knows.
There are many advantages to AI weather forecasts. For example, they use less computing power than physics-based models, because they do not have to run thousands of mathematical equations.
Furthermore, many AI models have been found to perform better than traditional physics-based models at weather forecasts.
However, these models also have drawbacks.
Study author Prof Sebastian Engelke, a professor at the research institute for statistics and information science at the University of Geneva, tells Carbon Brief that AI models “depend strongly on the training data” and are “relatively constrained to the range of this dataset”.
In other words, AI models struggle to simulate brand new weather patterns, instead tending forecast events of a similar strength to those seen before. As a result, it is unclear whether AI models can simulate unprecedented, record-breaking extreme events that, by definition, have never been seen before.
Record-breaking extremes
Extreme weather events are becoming more intense and frequent as the climate warms. Record-shattering extremes – those that break existing records by large margins – are also becoming more regular.
For example, during a 2021 heatwave in north-western US and Canada, local temperature records were broken by up to 5C. According to one study, the heatwave would have been “impossible” without human-caused climate change.
The new study explores how accurately AI and physics-based models can forecast such record-breaking extremes.
First, the authors identified every heat, cold and wind event in 2018 and 2020 that broke a record previously set between 1979 and 2017. (They chose these years due to data availability.) The authors use ERA5 reanalysis data to identify these records.
This produced a large sample size of record-breaking events. For the year 2020, the authors identified around 160,000 heat, 33,000 cold and 53,000 wind records, spread across different seasons and world regions.
For their traditional, physics-based model, the authors selected the High RESolution forecast model from the Integrated Forecasting System of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. This is “widely considered as the leading physics-based numerical weather prediction model”, according to the paper.
They also selected three “leading” AI weather models – the GraphCast model from Google Deepmind, Pangu-Weather developed by Huawei Cloud and the Fuxi model, developed by a team from Shanghai.
The authors then assessed how accurately each model could forecast the extremes observed in the year 2020.
Dr Zhongwei Zhang is the lead author on the study and a researcher at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He tells Carbon Brief that many AI weather forecast models were built for “general weather conditions”, as they use all historical weather data to train the models. Meanwhile, forecasting extremes is considered a “secondary task” by the models.
The authors explored a range of different “lead times” – in other words, how far into the future the model is forecasting. For example, a lead time of two days could mean the model uses the weather conditions at midnight on 1 January to simulate weather conditions at midnight on 3 January.
The plot below shows how accurately the models forecasted all extreme events (left) and heat extremes (right) under different lead times. This is measured using “root mean square error” – a metric of how accurate a model is, where a lower value indicates lower error and higher accuracy.
The chart on the left shows how two of the AI models (blue and green) performed better than the physics-based model (black) when forecasting all weather across the year 2020.
However, the chart on the right illustrates how the physics-based model (black) performed better than all three AI models (blue, red and green) when it came to forecasting heat extremes.
The authors note that the performance gap between AI and physics-based models is widest for lower lead times, indicating that AI models have greater difficulty making predictions in the near future.
They find similar results for cold and wind records.
In addition, the authors find that AI models generally “underpredict” temperature during heat records and “overpredict” during cold records.
The study finds that the larger the margin that the record is broken by, the less well the AI model predicts the intensity of the event.
‘Warning shot’
Study author Prof Erich Fischer is a climate scientist at ETH Zurich and a Carbon Brief contributing editor. He tells Carbon Brief that the result is “not unexpected”.
He adds that the analysis is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
The analysis, he continues, is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
AI models are likely to continue to improve, but scientists should “not yet” fully replace traditional forecasting models with AI ones, according to Fischer.
He explains that accurate forecasts are “most needed” in the runup to potential record-breaking extremes, because they are the trigger for early warning systems that help minimise damages caused by extreme weather.
Leonardo Olivetti is a PhD student at Uppsala University, who has published work on AI weather forecasting and was not involved in the study.
He tells Carbon Brief that “many other studies” have identified issues with using AI models for “extremes”, but this paper is novel for its specific focus on extremes.
Olivetti notes that AI models are already used alongside physics-based models at “some of the major weather forecasting centres around the world”. However, the study results suggest “caution against relying too heavily on these [AI] models”, he says.
Prof Martin Schultz, a professor in computational earth system science at the University of Cologne who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that the results of the analysis are “very interesting, but not too surprising”.
He adds that the study “justifies the continued use of classical numerical weather models in operational forecasts, in spite of their tremendous computational costs”.
Advances in forecasting
The field of AI weather forecasting is evolving rapidly.
Olivetti notes that the three AI models tested in the study are an “older generation” of AI models. In the last two years, newer “probabilistic” forecast models have emerged that “claim to better capture extremes”, he explains.
The three AI models used in the analysis are “deterministic”, meaning that they only simulate one possible future outcome.
In contrast, study author Engelke tells Carbon Brief that probabilistic models “create several possible future states of the weather” and are therefore more likely to capture record-breaking extremes.
Engelke says it is “important” to evaluate the newer generation of models for their ability to forecast weather extremes.
He adds that this paper has set out a “protocol” for testing the ability of AI models to predict unprecedented extreme events, which he hopes other researchers will go on to use.
The study says that another “promising direction” for future research is to develop models that combine aspects of traditional, physics-based weather forecasts with AI models.
Engelke says this approach would be “best of both worlds”, as it would combine the ability of physics-based models to simulate record-breaking weather with the computational efficiency of AI models.
Dr Kyle Hilburn, a research scientist at Colorado State University, notes that the study does not address extreme rainfall, which he says “presents challenges for both modelling and observing”. This, he says, is an “important” area for future research.
The post Traditional models still ‘outperform AI’ for extreme weather forecasts appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Traditional models still ‘outperform AI’ for extreme weather forecasts
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