English farmers received tens of millions of pounds more in flood-relief funding in 2024 than in any year over the past decade, following intense rainfall last winter.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) recently paid £57.5m from the farming recovery fund to farmers who were hit by extreme rain and floods between October 2023 and March 2024.
This is 75 times more than the amount paid out the last time the fund opened to applicants, which was £768k in 2020, according to figures released to Carbon Brief.
It is also more than six times higher than all of the payments dispersed between 2015 and 2020, which totalled £9.4m.
Between October 2022 and March 2024, England experienced its wettest 18-month period since records began in 1836, according to Met Office data
In 2024, the country had its second-worst harvest in four decades for key crops such as wheat, barley and oats, according to the thinktank the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).
Rachel Hallos, the vice chair of the National Farmers’ Union, welcomes the “long-awaited” payments for last winter’s flooding, but tells Carbon Brief that farmers now face “further devastation in the midst of a new storm season”.
The fund is a “sticking plaster to a much wider problem” facing agriculture, says Alice Groom, the head of sustainable land use policy at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
Record-breaking rain
The farming recovery fund provides one-off emergency payments to farmers impacted by flooding in England. It opened for the first time in 2014 and has re-opened four times since: in 2015, 2019, 2020 and 2024.
The money is intended to help cover the cost of actions to restore flooded land that are not already covered by insurance, such as soil remediation and removing debris.
The fund opened in April this year for farmers hit by last year’s winter flooding.
In October 2023, Storm Babet damaged crops and left “entire fields…submerged in water” across the UK, reported the Guardian. In January 2024, Storm Henk flooded thousands of acres of crops and farmland.
Up to September 2024, £2.2m had been paid out under the fund, according to figures released to Carbon Brief via an Environmental Information Regulations request. This was followed by £57.5m in November, Defra said in a press release.
Carbon Brief received figures showing the total annual payments under the fund since 2015, outlined in the table below. The amount for 2024 is the combined total figures from the request and Defra’s press release.
| 2015 | 2019 | 2020 | 2024 |
| £8,002,300 | £636,271 | £767,628 | £59,662,885 |
October 2023 to March 2024 was the wettest winter half-year period in England since records began in 1836, the Environment Agency said.
Climate change made this record rainfall in the UK and Ireland about 10 times more likely to occur, according to a rapid attribution study.
The extent and significance of extreme weather impacts on farms during this time led to the increased budget for the farming recovery fund in 2024, Defra says.
The fund ran into controversy earlier this year after thousands of farmers waited months to receive their payments.
Extreme weather over the past couple of years has “time and time again render[ed] farmland completely saturated and unusable”, says Rachel Hallos, the vice president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU). She tells Carbon Brief:
“While it’s welcome news that over £57 million in long-awaited farming recovery fund payments has been paid out to farmers, many of our members are only now receiving this support for events that happened over a year ago.
“Yet here we are, facing further devastation in the midst of a new storm season. We also still have members badly affected by the storms last winter who are unsure why they are not eligible for support.”
Fund breakdown
Between 2015 and 2020, around £9.4m was paid out under the farming recovery fund.
The fund opened for the first time in February 2014 with a £10m budget allocation. This year did not fall into the scope of Carbon Brief’s figures, but Farmers’ Weekly reported at the time that less than £530,000 had been paid out by May 2014.
The fund re-opened in December 2015 to help farmers hit by Storm Desmond, which flooded swathes of the UK and Ireland, bringing heavy rainfall and intense winds.
In England, the north of the country was worst affected. The fund was available for flood-hit farmers in Cumbria, Lancashire and Northumberland who had suffered “uninsurable losses” to apply for grants of £500-£20,000.
Just over £8m was paid out under the fund that year, the figures show. Farmers in east Cumbria received the biggest portion (£2.8m), followed by west Cumbria (£1.9m) and north Yorkshire (£1.4m).
The fund re-opened in September 2019 to help farmers affected by summer flooding. Hundreds of homes were evacuated in Lincolnshire after severe flooding in June. Flash floods hit other parts of the country throughout the year, including North Yorkshire in July.
The fund was available for farmers in parts of North Yorkshire and Lincolnshire to apply for grants worth £500-£25,000. This was extended to cover flood-hit farmers in more parts of the country in November.
In 2019, just over £636,000 was awarded to farmers. North Yorkshire received the biggest chunk of funding – around £270,000.
The fund opened again in June 2020 for farmers impacted by floods in February that year. At this stage, Defra said £10m had been allocated for farmers hit by floods in 2019-20.
However, according to the figures released to Carbon Brief, just under £768,000 was spent in 2020. This means that from 2019-20, around £1.4m was paid out – significantly below the total budget.
Defra confirms that 250 farmers were paid out through the fund in 2019-20. The department says the disparity between fund allocation and payouts was due to the budget being set before assessing the extent of the impacts from the weather extremes.
No money was given out under the fund from 2016-2018 and 2021-2023, the Environmental Information Regulations response shows.
The fund lay dormant until April 2024, when it re-opened for farmers hit by winter flooding, including storms Henk and Babet. The fund was then expanded further in May and the then-Conservative government allocated £50m towards the fund – significantly more than payouts in previous years. (The new Labour government increased this again to £60m.)
The payments under the fund – previously set between £500-£25,000 – also rose to £2,895-£25,000, depending on the size of land and the amount affected by floods.
The figures show that almost £2.2m was paid out to farmers between January and September this year. A Defra statement said that more than 12,700 payments, worth £57.5m, were sent to farmers in November. As a result, the combined 2024 total was at least £59.7m – just below the £60m budget.
Defra did not comment directly on the figures when contacted by Carbon Brief, but pointed to a November press release. In this, the farming minister Daniel Zeichner says the farming recovery fund payouts, along with Labour’s farming budget, “demonstrates this government’s steadfast commitment to farmers”.
Future of farming
Extreme weather last winter “created havoc for farmers, making it much harder to establish and manage crops”, says ECIU land, food and farming analyst Tom Lancaster. He tells Carbon Brief:
“It’s right that [the] government should support farmers to rebuild from these impacts, but this strategy will quickly become unaffordable as the impacts of climate change take hold.”
Heavy rainfall and other weather extremes occur more frequently and more intensely as a result of climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Earlier this year, Carbon Brief analysis found that the average UK winter has become around 1C warmer and 15% wetter in the past century. Four of the top 10 rainiest winters in recorded history have occurred in the 21st century.
More widely, farmer “confidence” has taken a hit, according to NFU surveys. The Guardian reports that income for almost every type of farm fell in England last year.
More than 10,000 farmers also protested against inheritance tax changes in London in November. Demonstrators gathered again on 11 December, with hundreds of tractors blocking central London streets.
Extreme weather continues to have a “significant effect” on UK food production, especially arable crops, fruits and vegetables, according to Defra’s food security report published this week.
Alice Groom, the head of sustainable land-use policy at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, says the farming recovery fund is a “sticking plaster to a much wider problem”. She tells Carbon Brief:
“As we see the effects of the climate crisis undeniably worsen, farmers need support in equal measure to farm in a climate and nature friendly way to boost their businesses’ resilience.
“We, therefore, need ambitious packages of support for farmers from [the] government that go beyond managing the effects of climate change and instead build climate resilience and nature into the very core of our farming systems for the benefit of us all.”
Earlier this week, the RSPB was among dozens of NGOs and campaigners who wrote to Defra secretary Steve Reed urging him to “act quickly” on reforming farm subsidies and tackling “supply-chain injustices”.
Hallos, the NFU’s vice president, tells Carbon Brief:
“These increasingly frequent extreme weather events demonstrate that we cannot keep getting stuck in this reactive cycle – we simply must invest in our water management systems.
“The farming recovery fund is one part, but we need [the] government to invest in a long-term plan for how we protect our towns and countryside from what is becoming more regular, and expensive, flooding events.”
Lancaster from the ECIU tells Carbon Brief that a “better approach” to supporting farmers is building “resilience to these extreme events, an area where the government’s new green farming schemes will be vital”.
The post Revealed: English farmers received record-high flood relief after last winter’s extreme rain appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revealed: English farmers received record-high flood relief after last winter’s extreme rain
Israel’s bombardment of Gaza during the conflict that broke out in October 2023 has wrecked progress towards adapting the enclave to climate change and left two million Gazans vulnerable to heatwaves, drought and disease, the Palestinian Authority (PA) said in a new climate plan submitted to the United Nations.
Palestine’s third nationally determined contribution (NDC), uploaded to the UN climate body’s website this week, says that while “the aggression on the Gaza Strip did not make the climate worse”, “it removed the housing, water and sanitation systems, health facilities, energy networks, roads and livelihoods through which people absorb a climate they were already struggling with.”
The 91-page document lists the types of infrastructure it says Israel has destroyed and notes how the destruction will worsen the impacts of climate change. It says the bombing of hospitals and rising hunger have make it harder for Gazans to cope with the health impacts of climate-driven heatwaves and waterborne diseases.
The destruction of water tanks, boreholes and desalination plants, meanwhile, have left Gazans struggling with the effects of water shortages and drought, while mass unemployment reduces people’s ability to afford climate-driven price rises. The erasure of most of the Strip’s homes makes it more difficult for people to avoid the sun’s increasing heat, the NDC said.
Many Gazans are now living in the ruins of collapsed buildings or in makeshift shelters and tents that offer little or no protection from high temperatures.
Palestine’s previous goals to cut emissions and adapt to climate change in Gaza, expressed in its last NDC five years ago, were based on a pre-war baseline that “no longer describes anything that exists”, the NDC says. Progress made since 2021 has now been destroyed, it adds.
Green reconstruction of Gaza
Instead of continuing to aim for these adaptation and emissions-reduction goals, the PA is now calling for the green reconstruction of Gaza. It says buildings should be constructed again in an energy-efficient manner with solar panels and served with modern water, waste and transport systems.
While the PA, controlled by the Fatah political party, continues to claim legitimate control of Gaza, the strip was effectively governed by Fatah’s rival Hamas between 2007 and the recent war. Control is now split between Israel and the political wing of Islamist militant group Hamas, after a US-backed ceasefire took effect in October 2025, although a UN-backed committee plans to take over.
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The United Nations, European Union and World Bank have jointly estimated that Gaza needs $71.4 billion of investment in the next two years to recover and build back. This process should be Palestinian-led, they said in April.
But US President Donald Trump has said the US should “take over” and “own” Gaza and redevelop it as the “Riviera of the Middle East”. Israel’s right-wing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel should control the territory with civil administration managed by Palestinians favourable to Israel.
With occupation, targets conditional
In the other part of Palestine, the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority carries out some government functions, but ultimate control rests with Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
Because Israel controls planning in most of the West Bank, the NDC argues that the PA cannot pursue all the climate projects it wants. In addition, Israel restricts the movement of PA officials, making data collection difficult, and controls the West Bank’s electricity supply meaning that the PA cannot control whether it comes from dirty or clean sources of energy.
Given this situation, the NDC says that all of Palestine’s new climate targets are conditional but it will aim to reduce emissions 12.8% below a business-as-usual baseline by 2035 and 17.1% by 2040. If the Israeli occupation ends and Palestine regains full sovereignty over its land and resources, it will aim for reductions of 15.1% and 19.1% by 2035 and 2040 respectively under an “independence pathway”.
That could allow, for example, for greater electrification and reducing emissions per unit of growth, the document said.
To achieve the 2035 emissions-reduction target and adapt to the impacts of climate change, the PA says it needs $8.6 billion in total. This funding would be spent on measures like encouraging solar farms and rooftop solar and scaling up solar water heating to cover four-fifths of households. To complement the planned increase in solar power, the authority wants to modernise the electricity grid and install battery storage.
In the transport sector, it aims to promote the uptake of electric vehicles, develop bus rapid transit corridors and scrap old polluting trucks and buses. In Gaza in particular, it wants to deploy 66 electric buses when the conflict ends.
To adapt to climate-driven drought, the NDC includes initiatives to reuse wastewater through treatment plants, build desalination plants in Gaza to remove salt from seawater, and promote irrigation for farmers.
The new climate plan was prepared by Palestine’s Environment Quality Authority, with support from the United Nations Development Programme and the governments of Britain and Spain.
The United Nations recognised Palestine’s statehood in 2012 and it joined the UN’s climate convention and signed the Paris climate agreement – which requires countries to submit more ambitious NDCs every five years – in 2016.
The Israeli foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment. But in late 2024, then Israeli climate envoy Gideon Behar told Climate Home News that the war and the resulting environmental destruction in Gaza was the fault of Hamas.
The post Palestine: Israel’s bombing has left Gaza vulnerable to climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.
Palestine: Israel’s bombing has left Gaza vulnerable to climate change
Solar power generation in the UK reached a new record over the summer of 2026, as temperatures across the nation soared, according to new analysis by Carbon Brief.
Collectively over June, July and August, solar farms and rooftops generated 8.8 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in the UK*, as shown in the chart below.
Speaking to Carbon Brief, Chris Hewett, chief executive of trade association Solar Energy UK welcomed the new record, adding that it was driven by “clear skies and continued growth in deployment”.
This surge in generation took place amid the hottest summer on record in the UK, with five heatwaves between May and August.
Summer 2026 was the sixth sunniest on record, with more than 620 hours of sunshine, according to the Met Office. England and Wales – which experienced the most extreme heat – saw their second-sunniest summers on record.
June 2026 was the hottest June in England since records began in 1884, according to Met Office data, while Wales and the UK as a whole experienced their second-warmest June.
It was the driest July for England and Wales since records began in 1836, with some parts of London seeing no rain at all in the month, while Wisley in Surrey had no rain for 62 days.
In England, temperatures peaked at 38.1C at Kew Gardens in London on 13 August.
According to the Met Office, this summer’s record mean temperature was made 130 times more likely by climate change.
Amid these hot and sunny months, solar power generation increased 23% from the same period in 2025. This is double the level of solar generation over the summer of 2021, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
While solar panels can be affected by periods of extreme heat, the longer hours of daylight and higher levels of irradiation over the summer more than offset any efficiency losses.
June, July and August all saw solar set new monthly records for solar generation – July saw the highest solar generation in a calendar month ever, with 3.3TWh meeting 15% of overall electricity demand for the month.
As of the end of August, the total UK solar generation in 2026 stood at 17TWh – 13% higher than the same point in 2025.
The number of solar farms and rooftop installations has grown substantially in recent years, helping to boost generation. Domestic rooftop solar accounts for around 29% of total capacity.
In 2025, the UK’s solar capacity reached 21 gigawatts (GW) by the third quarter of the year, according to UK government figures. This is a jump of 3GW, or 18%, year-on-year, as Carbon Brief reported in January.
(Capacity is the maximum output possible from an electricity generation, whereas generation is what was produced over a certain time period, such as a day, month or year.)
According to the University of Sheffield, the installed solar capacity is now nearly 24GW.
This includes nearly 172,000 solar installations that have been fitted across the UK since the start of 2026, according to recent government figures. In July alone, more than 19,800 rooftop solar panels were installed – the equivalent of one installation every two minutes.
In total, nearly 1.7m households in the UK now have solar panels installed.
Over 26 heatwave days this summer – periods of at least three days when temperatures exceed the Met Office’s county-level heatwave temperature threshold – UK households with rooftop solar panels avoided an estimated £86.7m in electricity costs, according to analysis by Utility Bidder.
Talking about the surge in solar generation this summer, Hewett says:
“[It] not only kept bills down for people with solar and batteries in their homes, but helped keep overall power prices much lower than they would have been if Britain had been relying on more gas generation during the day”.
Despite the record generation, no new half-hourly solar power output record was set in the summer of 2026. This still stands at 15.2 megawatts (MW) on 23 April 2026.
* This article refers to the UK throughout, but strictly relates to the island of Great Britain, made up of England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland is part of the separate, all-Ireland electricity system.
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The post Analysis: UK solar power hits record high over summer 2026 appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Farmers around Europe are dealing with the aftermath of a summer of extreme heat, drought and wildfires that were exacerbated by climate change.
Human-caused climate change is increasing the severity and likelihood of many extreme weather events around the world, which is increasing volatility for food producers.
This summer resulted in, for example, shrunken potatoes in the Netherlands, reduced carrot harvests in France, dried-up rice fields in Italy and scorched olive groves in parts of the Mediterranean region.
Global food prices are currently at their highest level since early 2023 due to “heatwaves and energy price dynamics”, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Other factors such as blocked fertiliser supplies in the Strait of Hormuz and high fuel costs have also played a role in this year’s agricultural outputs.
In the six charts below, Carbon Brief provides a snapshot of the impact this summer’s extremes are considered to have had on crop production and yields across Europe.
1. Most EU countries expect to see declines in cereal production this year
2. Most countries are recording reduced crop yields
3. Around €2bn worth of cereal losses after June heatwave
4. UK yields of wheat, barley and oats are all due to drop in 2026
5. Maize production in France is due to hit a four-decade low
1. Most EU countries expect to see declines in cereal production this year
France, in particular, will see heavy losses in the amount of cereals – such as wheat, barley and oats – it produces this year, according to European Commission data.
French cereal production is expected to drop by almost 8 megatonnes (Mt) in 2026, compared to 2025.
The chart above shows that most European countries, aside from Bulgaria, will also see production losses this year.
Germany is due to see the second-largest losses in production, dropping by almost 4Mt compared to 2025.
Prof Til Feike, a cropping systems expert at the Julius Kühn-Institut, says many areas in Germany and Austria, as with other parts of Europe, have been “hit hard by a long-lasting dry period in combination with record-high heatwaves”.
This has resulted in dry grassland for animals and lower yields of maize, which is a “key fodder crop” for livestock. He tells Carbon Brief:
“In the long run, farming must adapt better to more extreme weather conditions, not only heat and drought, but also prolonged wet periods. So, there is no one-fits-all solution for climate change adaptation.”
2. Most countries are recording reduced crop yields
Heat and a lack of water have “substantially worsened” crop expectations this summer in western and most of central Europe, according to a recent bulletin from the EU Joint Research Centre.
Yields are expected to be “significantly reduced”, with local crop failures “likely” in areas such as France, southern Germany, northern and central Italy, and Hungary, it added.
The chart below shows that yields of cereal grains – which, here, refers to the tonnes of a grain grown per hectare of land – are expected to fall in most EU countries in 2026.
Slovakia, Austria and Hungary are expected to see the largest declines in cereal yields, reducing by more than one tonne per hectare in 2026 compared to 2025.
The recent EU bulletin noted that irrigated crops performed well in Portugal this summer – the country with the largest yield increases. Other crops relying on rainfall showed growing signs of heat stress, it added.
3. Around €2bn worth of cereal losses after June heatwave
The record heatwave that hit many parts of Europe in June contributed to an estimated €2-2.3bn in cumulative grain production losses, as shown in the chart below.
The intense June heat in western Europe would have been “virtually impossible” just 50 years ago, according to a rapid climate attribution study. It was the region’s hottest June on record.
The Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) thinktank analysed June and July 2026 grain forecasts from Coceral, a European grain traders association.
ECIU estimated lost supply by multiplying the change in tonnes of grains between these two months by prices for harvest delivery in 28 European countries.
Major grain producers France, Germany, Hungary and Spain accounted for 86% of the lost revenue, according to the ECIU.
Extreme heat is also expected to have a wider economic impact across the continent. Analysis from Triodos Bank found that this summer’s extreme weather could reduce the EU’s gross domestic product (GDP) by around 1% this year, or around €180bn.
4. UK yields of wheat, barley and oats are all due to drop in 2026
If current trends continue, the average yields for cereals and oilseeds will result in the UK’s worst harvest since detailed records began in 1984, according to ECIU.
Barley yields could fall by 15%, oats by 14% and wheat yields by 6% year-on-year, according to 2026 harvest surveys from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, a non-departmental public body that provides agricultural data to the UK government.
ECIU said that, even if the situation improves, this year is still expected to be one of the five worst harvests on record. This means that four of the five worst harvests in the UK have occurred in the past decade.
Consumers will likely see higher prices and/or smaller vegetables in supermarkets as a result, Tim O’Malley, chairman of UK company Nationwide Produce, told BBC News in August.
Other crops, such as berries, have grown successfully in the extreme heat. But the Guardian noted fears this could dip later this year “as plants become exhausted from heavy cropping during the heatwave”.
5. Maize production in France is due to hit a four-decade low
France has been acutely affected by this summer’s extreme weather, with more than 7,300 excess deaths during heatwaves and a record number of weather stations recording temperatures of above 40C.
The country is the EU’s largest agricultural producer, but heat, drought and wildfires have affected many crops.
The chart below shows that maize production is set to drop by more than one-third (35%) year-on-year.
This could result in France’s lowest maize production since 1980, according to data from Agreste, the country’s agriculture ministry’s statistics service.
Due to the heat, “record-early” grape harvests have also been recorded in various parts of the nation since mid-July, reported Le Monde. In some cases, this means “smaller, less juicy grapes, which will yield less wine”, explained the newspaper.
6. Declines in EU grains since 2025
Overall in the EU, data and projections indicate declines in the output of cereal grains this year.
Cereal production is set to fall by 9% compared to 2025, according to the European Commission.
Just one year in the past decade – 2024 – recorded lower production levels.
Maize production is set to be particularly affected, with projections indicating a 13% drop, to 52Mt – the lowest level in the EU since 2007.
The post How this summer’s heat and drought impacted crops in Europe – in six charts appeared first on Carbon Brief.
How this summer’s heat and drought impacted crops in Europe – in six charts
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