Last year was the hottest the Earth has experienced since the start of global temperature records in the mid-1800s – and likely for many thousands of years before.
The year 2024 was the first in which average global temperatures at the surface of the planet exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels in the majority of leading datasets.
While reaching 1.5C in an individual year is not equivalent to a breach of the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit – which refers to long-term warming – it nevertheless indicates that the world is quickly approaching this internationally agreed threshold.
Here, Carbon Brief examines the latest data across the Earth’s oceans, atmosphere, cryosphere and surface temperature. (Use the links below to navigate between sections.)
Noteworthy findings from this 2024 review include…
- Global surface temperatures: It was the warmest year on record by a large margin – at between 1.46C and 1.62C above pre-industrial levels across different temperature datasets and 1.55C in the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) synthesis.
- Exceptional monthly temperatures: Global temperatures set a new record each month between January and June, extending a 15-month record-setting stretch which began in 2023.
- Warmest over land: Global temperatures over the world’s land regions – where humans live and primarily experience climate impacts – were a record 2.3C above pre-industrial levels.
- Warmest over oceans: Global sea surface temperatures set a new record at 1.1C above pre-industrial levels.
- Ocean heat content: It was the warmest year on record for ocean heat content. In 2024, the oceans added 25 times more heat than all annual human energy use.
- Regional warming: It was the warmest year on record in more than 100 countries – including China, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Brazil, Greece, Malaysia and South Korea – and in areas where a total of 3.3 billion people live.
- Unusual warmth: The specific causes behind the exceptionally warm, record-setting temperatures in both 2023 and 2024 remain an open scientific question, with human-caused greenhouse gases, variability in El Niño and changes in the reflectivity of clouds all playing a role.
- Comparison with climate models: Observations for 2024 are above the central estimate of climate model projections in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sixth assessment report, but well within the model range.
- Heating of the atmosphere: It was the warmest year in the lower troposphere – the lowest part of the atmosphere – by a large margin.
- Sea level rise: Sea levels reached new record highs, with notable acceleration over the past three decades.
- Shrinking glaciers and ice sheets: Cumulative ice loss from the world’s glaciers and from the Greenland ice sheet reached a new record high in 2024, contributing to sea level rise.
- Greenhouse gases: Concentrations reached record levels for carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide.
- Sea ice extent: Arctic sea ice saw its seventh-lowest minimum extent on record, while Antarctic sea ice was at the second-lowest level on record for much of the year.
- Looking ahead to 2025: Carbon Brief predicts that global average surface temperatures in 2025 are likely to be the third warmest on record after 2024 and 2023, at around 1.4C above pre-industrial levels. However, large uncertainties remain given how exceptionally and unexpectedly warm the past two years have been.
Record warm surface temperatures
Global surface temperatures set a new record in 2024, surpassing the record set in 2023 by around 0.11C. It was unambiguously the warmest year since records began in the mid-1800s. 2024 was far warmer than any year prior to 2023, exceeding the previous record (set in 2016) by a massive 0.26C.
The figure below shows global surface temperature records from five different datasets: NASA, NOAA, the Met Office Hadley Centre/University of East Anglia’s (UEA) HadCRUT5, Berkeley Earth and Copernicus ERA5.
Other surface temperature datasets not shown – including JRA-3Q, the AIRS satellite data and the Japanese Meteorological Agency – also show 2024 as the warmest year on record.
Annual global average surface temperatures over 1850-2024. Data from NASA GISTEMP, NOAA GlobalTemp, Hadley/UEA HadCRUT5, Berkeley Earth and Copernicus ERA5. Temperature records are aligned over the 1981-2010 period and use the WMO approach to calculate warming relative to the pre-industrial (1850-1900) baseline. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Global surface temperature records can be calculated back to 1850, though some groups such as NASA GISTEMP choose to start their records in 1880 when more data was available.
Prior to 1850, records exist for some specific regions, but are not sufficiently widespread to calculate global temperatures with high accuracy (though work is ongoing to identify and digitise additional records to extend these further back in time).
These longer surface temperature records are created by combining ship- and buoy-based measurements of ocean sea surface temperatures with temperature readings of the surface air temperature from weather stations on land. (Copernicus ERA5 and JRA-3Q are an exception, as they use weather model-based reanalysis to combine lots of different data sources over time.)
Some differences between temperature records are apparent early in the record, particularly prior to 1900 when observations are more sparse and results are more sensitive to how different groups fill in the gaps between observations. However, there is strong agreement between the different temperature records for the period since 1970, as shown in the figure below.
Annual global average surface temperatures as in the prior chart, but showing the period from 1970-2024. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Global temperatures in 2024 clearly stand out as much warmer than anything that has come before, above even the exceptionally warm temperatures of 2023. This can be seen in the figure below from Berkeley Earth. Each shaded curve represents the annual average temperature for that year. The further that curve is to the right, the warmer it was.
The width of each year’s curve reflects the uncertainty in the annual temperature values, which is caused by factors such as changes in measurement techniques and the fact that some parts of the world have fewer measurement locations than others.
The year 2024 was the warmest on record for both the world’s land and ocean regions. Global average land temperatures were around 2.3C above pre-industrial levels in the Berkeley Earth dataset, while global ocean temperatures exceeded 1.1C.
The figure below shows land (red) and ocean (blue) temperatures along with their respective confidence intervals, relative to pre-industrial levels, in the Berkeley Earth surface temperature record.
Global land regions – where the global human population lives – has been warming around 70% faster than the oceans – and 40% faster than the global average in the years since 1970.
2024 started off quite hot, boosted by an El Niño event that peaked at the start of the year. The first six months of the year set new all-time monthly records, extending a run of 15 record-setting months that started in July 2023. The latter part of the year remained warm, and was only slightly exceeded by the exceptionally hot temperatures experienced in the second half of 2023.
The figure below shows each month of 2024 in black, compared to all prior years since 1940. Each year is coloured based on the decade in which it occurred, with the clear warming over time visible, as well as the margin by which both 2023 and 2024 exceeded past years.
Monthly global surface temperatures for each year since 1940, with anomalies shown relative to the pre-industrial 1850-1900 period using data from Copernicus/ECMWF ERA5. Chart by Carbon Brief.
First year above 1.5C in most records
In the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries agreed to work to limit global temperatures to “well below 2C” and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels”.
While the agreement did not specifically define how to measure the breach of these climate targets, the goals have been widely interpreted (including by the IPCC) to refer to temperature averages over 20 years.
In other words, the limits refer to long-term warming, rather than an individual year that includes the short-term influence of natural fluctuations in the climate, such as El Niño.
However, a single year exceeding 1.5C still represents a grim milestone and a sign that the world is quickly approaching the target. And, in the majority of datasets in 2024, global surface temperatures exceeded 1.5C for the first time. (In the Berkeley Earth dataset, 2023 was actually the first year above 1.5C.)
| Temperature record | 2024 temperatures relative to preindustrial |
|---|---|
| NASA GISTEMP | 1.47C |
| Hadley/UAE HadCRUT5 | 1.53C |
| NOAA GlobalTemp | 1.46C |
| Berkeley Earth | 1.62C |
| Copernicus/ECMWF | 1.60C |
| JRA-3Q | 1.59C |
| Japanese Meteorological Agency | 1.52C |
Global temperature anomalies for 2024 relative to pre-industrial temperatures (1850-1900).
NOAA and NASA were the only organisations to report global temperatures below 1.5C – and by just a few hundredths of a degree. Berkeley Earth, Copernicus and JRA-3Q all estimated that temperatures were around 1.6C.
This year, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) provided a synthesis of the different global surface temperature records – incorporating NASA, Hadley, NOAA, Berkeley, Copernicus and JRA-3Q data – which is a useful tool to provide a best-estimate across the different groups. It finds that 2024 was the first year above 1.5C, coming in at 1.55C compared to 1.45C in 2023.
The figure below shows various temperature records along with their published uncertainty range (where available), alongside the WMO synthesis estimate.
As noted earlier, these datasets are nearly identical over the past 50 years. Differences in warming relative to pre-industrial levels emerge earlier in the record, particularly prior to 1900 when observations are more sparse and the choice of how to fill in the gaps between observations has a large impact on the resulting temperature estimate.
The figure below shows how different temperature records look if each is calculated relative to its own pre-industrial baseline, rather than using an average pre-industrial baseline as shown in the prior section. Focusing on warming since pre-industrial levels – rather than more recent warming – magnifies differences between groups, with the variation in warming across groups largely due to the most uncertain early part of the record.
Ocean heat content sets another record
Last year was the warmest on record for the heat content of the world’s oceans. Ocean heat content (OHC) has increased by around 484 zettajoules – a billion trillion joules – since the 1940s. The heat increase in 2024 alone compared to 2023 – about 16 zettajoules – is around 25 times as much as the total energy produced by all human activities on Earth in 2023 (the latest year in which global primary energy statistics are available).
Human-emitted greenhouse gases trap extra heat in the atmosphere. While some of this warms the Earth’s surface, the vast majority – around of 93% – goes into the oceans. About two-thirds of this accumulates in the top 700 metres, but some also ends up in the deep oceans.
The figure below shows annual OHC estimates between 1950 and present for the upper 700 metres (light blue shading) and 700-2,000 metres (dark blue) of the ocean.
Annual global ocean heat content (in zettajoules – billion trillion joules, or 10^21 joules) for the 0-700 metre and 700-2,000 metre layers. Data from Cheng et al. (2024). Chart by Carbon Brief.
In many ways, OHC represents a much better measure of climate change than global average surface temperatures, because it is where most of the extra heat ends up and is much less variable on a year-to-year basis than surface temperatures.
The graph above shows a distinct acceleration in OHC after 1991, matching the increased rate of greenhouse gas emissions and other radiative forcing elements over the past few decades.
A year of climate extremes
While media coverage of 2024 temperatures has largely focused on the global average, many different regions of the planet experienced climate extremes.
The figure below shows global temperature anomalies in 2024 across the world, with the red areas warmer than the baseline period (1951-80) used by Berkeley Earth and the (few) blue areas experiencing cooler temperatures.
Approximately 3.3 billion people – 40% of Earth’s population – live in places that experienced their warmest year on record in 2024. This was concentrated in Asia, South and Central America, Africa, and Eastern Europe. It also includes two-thirds of the population of China, as well as most of the population of Brazil, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mexico and one-third of the population of the US.
The figure below highlights regions of the planet that experienced their top-five warmest (red shading) or coldest (blue) temperatures on record in 2024. Overall, around 24% of the planet set a new record, including 32% of the land and 21% of the ocean. No location on the planet experienced record cold temperatures (or even top-five record cold temperatures) for the year as a whole.
In 2024, more than 100 countries saw their warmest year on record, as listed in the table below.
| Africa | Asia | Europe | North America | Oceania | South America |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Algeria Cameroon Central African Republic Chad Comoros Democratic Republic of the Congo Djibouti Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Ethiopia Gabon Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Ivory Coast Kenya Liberia Libya Malawi Mozambique Republic of the Congo Sao Tome and Principe Seychelles Sierra Leone Somalia South Sudan Togo Tunisia Uganda Zambia Zimbabwe |
Brunei Cambodia China Indonesia Laos Malaysia Mongolia North Korea Oman Palau Philippines Singapore South Korea Sri Lanka Taiwan Thailand Vietnam Yemen |
Albania Austria Belarus Bosnia and Herzegovina Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czechia Germany Greece Hungary Italy Kosovo Liechtenstein Lithuania Malta Moldova Montenegro Netherlands Poland San Marino Republic of Serbia Romania Slovakia Slovenia Ukraine |
Antigua and Barbuda Barbados Belize Canada Dominica El Salvador Grenada Guatemala Haiti Honduras Jamaica Mexico Nicaragua Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Trinidad and Tobago |
Federated States of Micronesia Fiji Kiribati Samoa Solomon Islands |
Brazil Colombia Guyana Paraguay Suriname Venezuela |
While the contiguous US saw record warmth, 2024 was the country’s second-warmest year on record once Alaska and Hawaii temperatures are included.
Furthermore, the continents of North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Europe each set new annual average records in 2024.
Untangling the drivers of spiking global temperatures
Global temperatures spiked in both 2023 and 2024 in a manner that scientists had not anticipated. Projections of 2023 temperatures were far below what actually occurred, and even 2024 projections ended up being on the lower end, despite incorporating 2023’s extremes.
The figure below shows estimates by four different groups that provided temperature predictions for the year prior to any data being collected – the UK Met Office, NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt, Berkeley Earth and Carbon Brief’s own estimate.
Temperature predictions for 2024 from the UK Met Office, NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt, Berkeley Earth, and Carbon Brief relative to pre-industrial (1850-1900) temperatures and compared to the historical average of six different datasets produced by the WMO. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Unusually high global temperatures in 2023 and 2024 have sparked a slew of new studies by scientists attempting to explain the excessive heat. A range of possible causes has been proposed, including:
- The possibility that El Niño behaved unusually as it followed a rare extended triple-dip La Niña event. A 2024 paper found that when El Niño followed an extended La Niña in climate model simulations, it produced a temperature spike commensurate to what was observed in 2023-24 around 10% of the time.
- A decline in emissions of sulphur dioxide, reducing atmospheric aerosol concentrations and “unmasking” additional warming from past human greenhouse gas emissions. Multiple different papers have looked at the effects of a 2020 low-sulphur marine shipping fuel regulation, and ongoing research is looking at the effects of a sharp drop in sulphur emissions in China.
- An unusual 2022 eruption of the Hunga-Tonga Hunga Ha’apai volcano that put around 150m tonnes of water vapour into the stratosphere, as well as some sulphur dioxide. Papers have been mixed on whether the water vapour warming or the sulphur dioxide cooling would be larger.
- Other factors include an uptick in the 11-year solar cycle, and unusually low Saharan dust concentrations in early summer 2023.
One notable paper, published in the journal Science in early December 2024, found a substantial decline in reflective low-cloud cover in the northern mid-latitudes and tropics. They noted that this has the effect of increasing the amount of solar radiation that reaches the Earth’s surface and is re-radiated as heat.
The finding by itself does not reveal what caused a decline in cloud reflectivity, and the authors note that it could be a combination of natural variability, declining atmospheric aerosol concentrations associated with falling sulfur emissions, or – more worryingly – a sign of a strong positive cloud feedback associated with warming.
The figure below, created by Dr Robert Rohde at Berkeley Earth, synthesises the main drivers of temperature change over the past decade. It includes estimates of the warming contribution from human greenhouse gas emissions, El Niño and La Niña, changes in the solar cycle, the Hunga-Tonga eruption, and the 2020 low-sulphur marine fuel regulations. For the latter two elements, it includes a range of six published estimates of the eruption and five published estimates of the low sulphur fuel rules.
Over the longer-term, human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases alongside planet-cooling aerosols are the main driver of global temperatures. Global temperatures have risen by more than 1.3C since pre-industrial times as a result of human activity.
However, on top of long-term warming, global temperatures vary year-to-year by up to 0.2C.
These variations are primarily driven by El Niño and La Niña events that redistribute heat between the atmosphere and oceans. However, other factors such as volcanic eruptions, the 11-year solar cycle and changes in short-lived climate forcers can influence year-to-year temperature changes.
The figure below shows the El Niño (red shading) and La Niña (blue) conditions over the past 40 years (collectively referred to as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or “ENSO”). While not unprecedented, the extended La Niña conditions since the latter half of 2020 have extended for an unusually long period of time.
Carbon Brief has used this historical relationship between ENSO conditions and temperature to effectively remove the effects of El Niño and La Niña events from global temperatures, as shown in the figure below.
This analysis indicates that El Niño boosted global temperatures in 2024 by around 0.16C compared to the estimate of global temperatures with both El Niño and La Niña events removed. This was a much larger effect than the 0.04C estimated for 2023, when El Niño emerged relatively late in the year and peaked in November.
Annual global average surface temperatures from the WMO average of six different datasets , as well as Carbon Brief’s estimate of global temperatures with the effect of El Niño and La Niña (ENSO) events removed using the Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) approach. Chart by Carbon Brief.
However, this approach – which relies on a historical lag of around three months between peak ENSO conditions in the tropical Pacific and global surface temperature response – may not fully reflect El Niño effects on 2023. As discussed earlier, the fact that El Niño occurred on the heels of unusually-long La Niña conditions may have contributed to an earlier global temperature response than has been seen in other recent strong El Niño events.
Observations broadly in line with climate model projections
Climate models provide physics-based estimates of future warming given different assumptions about future emissions, greenhouse gas concentrations and other climate-influencing factors.
Here, Carbon Brief examines a collection of climate models – known as CMIP6 – used in the 2021 science report of the IPCC’s sixth assessment. In CMIP6, model estimates of temperatures prior to 2015 are a “hindcast” using known past climate influences, while temperatures projected from 2015 onward are a “forecast” based on an estimate of how things might change.
The figure below shows how observations compare to the full ensemble of 37 CMIP6 models (under the middle-of-the-road SSP2-4.5 emissions scenario for future projections). The blue line represents the average of all the models and the grey areas showing the 5th to 95th percentile range. Observational temperatures are plotted on top of the climate model data, with individual observational records represented by red lines of different shades.
The chart illustrates how observations have generally been below the model average over the past two decades and are slightly above model average in 2024.
Annual global average surface temperatures from CMIP6 models and observations between 1950 and 2030 (through 2024 for observations). Models use the SSP2-4.5 scenario after 2015. Anomalies plotted with respect to a 1981-2010 baseline. Chart by Carbon Brief.
The CMIP6 ensemble is marginally more challenging for this comparison than past generations of CMIP because a subset of its models have unrealistically high climate sensitivity and they reproduce historical observations poorly. To account for this, rather than simply averaging all the models – as had been done in prior assessments – the IPCC employed an approach that effectively weights models by their performance. As a result, the models align better with the range of climate sensitivity derived from multiple different lines of evidence.
In the chart below, the blue line shows the average of 22 different models whose transient climate response (TCR) falls within the IPCC’s “likely” range (which results in temperature projections nearly identical to the IPCC-assessed warming). The grey area shows the 95% (two standard deviation) range of the TCR-screened model projections.
CMIP6 models compared to observations as in the prior chart, but models are screened to only include those models with a transient climate response (TCR) in-line with the IPCC’s “likely” range as discussed in Hausfather et al (2022). Anomalies plotted with respect to a 1981-2010 baseline. Chart by Carbon Brief.
The chart reveals that observed global surface temperatures (red lines) are further above the multimodal average, but remain well within the range of TCR-screened model runs.
This might be surprising given the focus on 2023 and 2024 being unusually warm. However, climate models broadly expect an acceleration of warming in the current period in a scenario like SSP2-4.5 where emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases continue to modestly increase, but emissions of planet-cooling aerosols like sulphur dioxide are rapidly reduced.
Record atmospheric temperatures
In addition to surface measurements over the world’s land and oceans, satellite microwave sounding units have been providing estimates of temperatures at various layers of the atmosphere since 1979.
The lowest layer of the atmosphere that satellite microwave units provide temperature estimates for is the lower troposphere. This data reflects temperatures a few kilometres above the Earth’s surface. It reveals a pattern of warming in the lowest troposphere that is similar – though not identical – to surface temperature changes.
The records produced by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), the University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) and NOAA show 2024 as the warmest year on record in the lower troposphere. The chart below shows the three records for the lower troposphere.
Global average lower-troposphere temperatures from RSS version 4 (blue), UAH version 6 (red) and NOAA STAR version 5 (grey) for the period from 1979-2024, relative to a 1981-2010 baseline. Chart by Carbon Brief.
The lower troposphere tends to be influenced more strongly by El Niño and La Niña events than the surface. Therefore, satellite records show correspondingly larger warming or cooling spikes during these events. This explains why the year-on-year increase in lower-troposphere temperature – of around 0.3C – seen in 2024 is larger than the ~0.1C increase in surface records.
The lower-tropospheric temperature records show large differences after the early 2000s. RSS shows an overall rate of warming quite similar to surface temperature records, while UAH and NOAA show considerably slower warming in recent years than has been observed on the surface.
Greenhouse gas concentrations reach new highs
Greenhouse gas concentrations reached a new high in 2024, driven by human emissions from fossil fuels, land use and agriculture.
Three greenhouse gases – CO2, methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) – are responsible for the bulk of additional heat trapped by human activities. CO2 is by far the largest factor, accounting for roughly 42% of the increase in global surface temperatures since the pre-industrial era (1850-1900).
Methane accounts for 28%, while nitrous oxide accounts for around 5%. The remaining 25% comes from other factors including carbon monoxide, black carbon and halocarbons, such as CFCs.
Human emissions of greenhouse gases have increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide to their highest levels in at least a few million years – if not longer.
The figure below shows concentrations of these greenhouse gases – in parts per million (ppm) for CO2 and parts per billion (ppb) for methane and nitrous oxide – from the early 1980s through to October 2024 for CO2 and September 2024 for CH4 and N2O (the most recent data currently available).
Global concentrations of CO2, methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). Based on data from NOAA’s Earth Systems Research Laboratory. Note that the y-axes do not start at zero. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Sea level rise is speeding up
Modern-day sea levels have risen to a new high, due to a combination of melting land ice (such as glaciers and ice sheets), the thermal expansion of water as it warms and changes in land water storage.
In recent years, there have been larger contributions to sea level rise from melting ice sheets and glaciers, as warmer temperatures accelerate ice sheet losses in Greenland and Antarctica.
Since the early 1990s, the increase in global sea level has been estimated using altimeter data from satellites. Earlier global sea levels have been reconstructed from a network of global tide gauge measurements. This allows researchers to estimate how sea level has changed since the late 1800s.
The chart below shows five different modern sea level rise datasets (blue lines), along with satellite altimeter measurements as assessed by NASA (in black) after 1993. (As sea level rise data has not yet been released for the whole year, the 2024 value is estimated based on data through to October.)
Global average sea level rise reconstructed from tide gauge data between 1880 and 2024 from Frederikse et al 2020, Dangendorf et al 2019, Hay et al 2015, Church and White 2011, and Palmer et al 2021. Satellite altimeter data from 1993 (black) to present is taken from NASA. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Sea levels have risen by over 0.2 metres (200mm) since 1900. While sea level rise estimates mostly agree in recent decades, larger divergences are evident before 1980. There is also evidence of accelerating sea level rise over the post-1993 period when high-quality satellite altimetry data is available. (See Carbon Brief’s explainer on how climate change is accelerating sea level rise.)
Shrinking glaciers and ice sheets
A significant portion of global sea level rise is being driven by melting glaciers on land. Scientists measure the mass of glaciers around the world using a variety of remote-sensing techniques, as well as through GRACE measurements of the Earth’s gravitational field. The balance between snow falling on a glacier and ice loss through melting and the breaking off – or “calving” – of icebergs determines if glaciers grow or shrink over time.
The World Glacier Monitoring Service is an international consortium that tracks more than 130 different glaciers in 19 different regions around the world. The figure below shows the change in global average glacier mass from 1950 through to the end of 2023. (2024 values are not yet available.) Note that glacier melt is reported in metres of water equivalent, which is a measure of how much mass has been lost on average.
Global average glacier melt over the 1950-2023 period from the World Glacier Monitoring Service, in metres of water equivalent. Carbon Brief.
Greenland ice sheets have become a larger contributor to sea level rise in recent years due to accelerating loss of mass. The year 2024 was the 28th in a row where Greenland lost ice overall, with 80bn tonnes of ice lost over the 12 months from September 2023 to August 2024. Greenland last saw an annual net gain of ice in 1996.
The figure below shows the cumulative mass balance change – that is, the net ice loss – from Greenland between 1970 and October 2024. The authors find that Greenland has lost around 6tn tonnes of ice over the past 50 years – more than 700 tonnes lost per person for every person on the planet.
Cumulative ice loss from Greenland in billion metric tonnes (gigatonnes) between 1970 and 2024 from Mankoff et al 2021, updated through December 2024. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Near-record low Antarctic sea ice extent
Arctic sea ice was at the low end of the historical (1979-2010) range for most of 2024, but did not set any new all-time low records apart from a few individual days at the end of the year.
The summer minimum extent – the lowest recorded level for the year – was the seventh-lowest since records began in the late 1970s.
Antarctic sea ice, on the other hand, was the second lowest on record – after 2023 – for much of the year. Taken together, 2023 and 2024 Antarctic sea ice extent was “way outside anything we have witnessed in our satellite record for their winter months”, an expert told Carbon Brief in October last year.
While long-term trends in Antarctic sea ice have been ambiguous in the past (unlike in the Arctic where there is a consistent long-term decline), there is increasing evidence that human-driven warming is starting to drive significant loss of sea ice in the region.
The figure below shows both Arctic (red line) and Antarctic (blue line) sea ice extent for each day of the year, along with how it compares to the historical range (corresponding shading).
Arctic and Antarctic daily sea ice extent from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center. The bold lines show daily 2024 values, the shaded area indicates the two standard deviation range in historical values between 1979 and 2010. The dotted black lines show the record lows for each pole. Chart by Carbon Brief.
Looking ahead to 2025
There is reason for caution when estimating likely temperatures for 2025. In 2023, temperatures were significantly higher than predictions made at the start of the year, while 2024 temperatures were towards the high end of annual predictions.
At the same time, there is strong reason to expect that 2025 will be cooler than 2024. As noted earlier, 2024 temperatures were boosted by more than 0.1C by a strong El Niño event that has largely faded by the start of 2025. While global land temperatures remain quite elevated, sea surface temperatures have begun to fall in recent months, and weak La Niña conditions are starting to develop in the tropical Pacific.
It seems unlikely that a strong La Niña will develop in 2025, and it is quite possible that the world remains in ENSO neutral conditions with no formal La Niña being declared for the first half of the year. There is even a small chance that the world will re-enter El Niño conditions by the latter part of 2025 – though most models forecast neutral conditions to persist, as shown in the figure below.
There have been four published predictions – from the UK Met Office, NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt, Berkeley Earth and Carbon Brief (in this article) – of what temperatures might look like in 2025.
The figure below shows the four different 2025 predictions compared to the average of six different temperature records (NASA, NOAA, Hadley, Berkeley, Copernicus and the Japanese JRA-3Q reanalysis) used by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). These have been “normalised” to show 2025 warming relative to 2024 in the WMO dataset. This is to remove any differences in predictions due to divergences in the baselines used by different temperature records.
Carbon Brief’s prediction of likely 2025 temperatures is based on a statistical model using the average temperature of the past year, the latest monthly temperature and projections of ENSO conditions over the first three months of 2025.
Temperature projections for 2025 from the UK Met Office, NASA’s Dr Gavin Schmidt, Berkeley Earth and Carbon Brief, relative to pre-industrial (1850-1900) temperatures and compared to the historical average of six different datasets produced by the WMO. Chart by Carbon Brief.
The Met Office, Dr Schmidt, Berkeley Earth and Carbon Brief estimates all have 2025 most likely ending up as the third-warmest year on record, after 2024 and 2023. However, it is still possible that it could be as high as the second-warmest year or as low as the sixth-warmest year, depending on how global temperatures evolve in the coming months.
Against a 1880-99 pre-industrial baseline, the central estimate of all four forecasts for 2025 is around 1.4C warming, with the world relatively unlikely to top 1.5C again next year.
Ultimately, what matters for the climate is not the leaderboard of individual years. Rather, it is the long-term upward trend in global temperatures driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases. Until the world reduces emissions down to net-zero, the planet will continue to warm.
If global emissions remain on the current trajectory, the world will likely firmly pass 1.5C in the late 2020s or early 2030s, as shown in the figure below.
Annual global average surface temperatures from the composite average (black dots) along the 30-year LOWESS fit (red line), combined the AR6 assessed warming projection for SSP2-4.5 as published and without any baseline alignment. Chart by Carbon Brief.
The post State of the climate: 2024 sets a new record as the first year above 1.5C appeared first on Carbon Brief.
State of the climate: 2024 sets a new record as the first year above 1.5C
Greenhouse Gases
DeBriefed 28 November 2025: COP30’s ‘frustrating’ end; Asia floods; UK ‘emergency’ climate event
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
‘Lukewarm’ end to COP30
BYE BELÉM: The COP30 climate talks in Belém ended last weekend with countries agreeing on a goal to “triple” adaptation finance by 2035 and efforts to “strengthen” climate plans, Climate Home News reported. The final deal “fell short on the global transition away from oil, gas and coal”, the outlet said, as Brazil announced that it would bring forward voluntary roadmaps to phase out fossil fuels and deforestation, before the next COP. It was a “frustrating end” for more than 80 countries who wanted a roadmap away from fossil fuels to be part of the formal COP agreement, BBC News said.
WHAT HAPPENED?: Carbon Brief published its in-depth analysis of all the key outcomes from COP30, spanning everything from negotiations on adaptation, just transition, gender and “Article 6” carbon trading through to a round-up of pledges on various issues. Another Carbon Brief article summed up outcomes around food, forests, land and nature. Also, Carbon Brief journalists discussed the COP in a webinar held earlier this week.
ART OF THE DEAL: The “compromise” COP30 deal – known as the “global mutirão” – “exposed deep rifts over how future climate action should be pursued”, Reuters noted. The “last-ditch” agreement was reached after fossil-fuel wording negotiations between the EU and Saudi Arabia, according to the Guardian. Meanwhile, Carbon Brief revealed the “informal” list of 84 countries said to have “opposed” the inclusion of a fossil-fuel roadmap in the mutirão decision, but analysis of the list exposed contradictions and likely errors.
UNITY, SCIENCE, SENSE: The final agreement received “lukewarm praise”, said the Associated Press. Palau ambassador Ilana Seid, who chaired the coalition of small-island nations, told the newswire: “Given the circumstances of geopolitics today, we’re actually quite pleased…The alternative is that we don’t get a decision and that would have been [worse].” UN climate chief Simon Stiell said that amid “denial, division and geopolitics”, countries “chose unity, science and economic common sense”, reported the Press Trust of India.
Around the world
- Floods and landslides killed more than 200 people in Thailand and Indonesia this week, reported Bloomberg. At least 90 people also died in recent floods in Vietnam, said Al Jazeera.
- New measures to cut energy bills and a “pay-per-mile” electric-vehicle levy were among the announcements in the UK’s budget, said Carbon Brief.
- The Group of 20 (G20) leaders signed off on a declaration “addressing the climate crisis” and other issues, reported Reuters, which had no input from the US who boycotted last week’s G20 summit in South Africa.
- Canadian prime minister Mark Carney signed a deal with the province of Alberta “centred on plans for a new heavy oil pipeline”, said the Guardian, adding that Canadian culture minister and former environment minister, Steven Guilbeault, resigned from cabinet over the deal.
- Greenpeace analysis, covered by Reuters, found that permits for new coal plants in China are “on track to fall to a four-year low” in 2025.
27
The number of hours that COP30 talks went over schedule before ending in Belém last Saturday, making it the 11th-longest UN climate summit on record, according to analysis by Carbon Brief.
Latest climate research
- The risk of night-time deaths during heatwaves increased “significantly” over 2005-15 in sub-Saharan Africa | Science Advances
- Almost half of climate journalists surveyed showed “moderate to severe” symptoms of anxiety | Traumatology
- Lakes experienced “more severe” heatwaves than those in the atmosphere over the past two decades | Communications Earth & Environment
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The key COP30 agreement – termed the “global mutirão” – contained 69 inactive verbs, which require no action from countries, compared to 32 active ones. “Recognises”, “recalls” and “acknowledges” were used far more often than more active verbs, such as “decides”, “calls” and “requests”, showed Carbon Brief analysis.
Spotlight
Nine warnings from a UK climate and nature ‘emergency’ briefing
This week, Carbon Brief’s Orla Dwyer reports from an event where experts and campaigners sounded the alarm bell on climate change and nature loss.
Naturalist and broadcaster Chris Packham urged attendees at a climate and nature “emergency briefing” in London yesterday to “listen to the science” on climate change amid a “dangerous wave of misinformation and lies”.
The “first-of-its-kind” event heard from nine experts on the links between climate change, nature loss, health, food production, economics and national security.
Event host, Prof Mike Berners-Lee from Lancaster University, called for a “World War II level of leadership” to tackle the interconnected crises.
Hundreds of people showed up, including Green Party, Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs, leader of the Greens Zack Polanski, musician Brian Eno and actress Olivia Williams.
Here is a snapshot of what the nine speakers said in their short, but stark, presentations.
Prof Kevin Anderson, professor of energy at University of Manchester
Anderson focused on the risks of a warmer world and the sliver of emissions left in the global carbon budget, noting:
“We have to eliminate fossil fuels or temperatures will just keep going up.”
He urged a “Marshall-style” plan – referencing the 1948 post-war US plan to rebuild Europe – to ramp up actions on retrofitting, public transport and electrification.
Prof Nathalie Seddon, professor of biodiversity at University of Oxford
Nature is not a “nice to have”, but rather “critical national infrastructure”, Seddon told attendees. She called for the “need to create an economy that values nature”.
Prof Paul Behrens, British Academy global professor at University of Oxford
Behrens discussed the food security risks from climate change. Impacts such as poor harvests and food price inflation are “barely acknowledge[d]” in agricultural policy, he said.
He also emphasised the “unsustainable” land use of animal agriculture, which “occupies around 85% of total agricultural land” in the UK.
Prof Tim Lenton, chair in climate change and Earth system science at Exeter University
Lenton outlined the “plenty” of evidence that parts of the Earth system are hurtling towards climate tipping points that could push them irreversibly into a new state.
He discussed the possibility of the shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which he said could cause -20C winters in London. He also noted positive tipping points, such as momentum that led the UK to stop burning coal for electricity last year.
Prof Hayley Fowler, professor of climate change impacts at Newcastle University
One in four properties in England could be at risk of flooding by 2050, Fowler said, and winters are getting wetter.
She discussed extreme weather risks and listed the impacts of floods in recent years in Germany, Spain and Libya, adding:
“These events are not warnings of what might happen in the future. They’re actually examples of what is happening right now.”
Angela Francis, director of policy solutions at WWF-UK
Francis factchecked several claims made against climate action, such as the high cost of achieving net-zero.
She noted that the estimated cost for the UK to achieve net-zero is about £4bn per year, which is less than 0.2% of GDP.
Lieutenant general Richard Nugee, climate and security advisor
Discussing the risks climate change poses to national security, Nugee said:
“Climate change can be thought of as a threat multiplier, making existing threats worse or more frequent and introducing new threats. Climate shocks fuel global instability.”
Tessa Khan, environmental lawyer and executive director of Uplift
Khan said the rising cost of energy in the UK is “turning into a significant political risk for the energy transition”.
She discussed the cost of fossil-fuel dependency and the fact that these fuels cost money to burn, but renewable “input[s], sun or wind [are] free forever”.
Prof Hugh Montgomery, professor of intensive care medicine at University College London
Montgomery discussed the health and economic benefits of climate actions, such as eating less meat and using more public transport, noting:
“The climate emergency is a health emergency – and it’s about time we started treating it as one.”
Watch, read, listen
WATER WORRIES: ABC News spoke to three Iranian women about the impacts of Tehran’s water crisis amid the “worst drought in 60 years”.
CLIMATE EFFORT: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast looked at the main outcomes from COP30 and discussed the “future of climate action” with a team of panelists.
CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR:New Scientist interviewed criminal psychologist Julia Shaw about the psychology behind environmental crimes.
Coming up
- 24 November-5 December: COP20 on international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
- 29-30 November: First part of global youth environment assembly, Nairobi, Kenya
- 3-4 December: Second round of Egyptian parliamentary elections
- 5 December: World soil day, global
Pick of the jobs
- Aldersgate Group, head of policy | Salary: £56,650-£66,950 per year. Location: London
- Ofgem, climate resilience expert | Salary: £61,446-£86,547. Location: Cardiff, Glasgow or London
- Green Climate Fund, integrity risk management lead | Salary: $171,200. Location: Incheon, South Korea
- Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust, project manager – seabird recovery | Salary: Up to £45,000 per year. Location: Isles of Scilly, UK
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 28 November 2025: COP30’s ‘frustrating’ end; Asia floods; UK ‘emergency’ climate event appeared first on Carbon Brief.
DeBriefed 28 November 2025: COP30’s ‘frustrating’ end; Asia floods; UK ‘emergency’ climate event
Greenhouse Gases
Revealed: Leak casts doubt on COP30’s ‘informal list’ of fossil-fuel roadmap opponents
A confused – and, at times, contradictory – story has emerged about precisely which countries and negotiating blocs were opposed to a much-discussed “roadmap” deal at COP30 on “transitioning away from fossil fuels”.
Carbon Brief has obtained a leaked copy of the 84-strong “informal list” of countries that, as a group, were characterised across multiple media reports as “blocking” the roadmap’s inclusion in the final “mutirão” deal across the second week of negotiations at the UN climate summit in Belém.
During the fraught closing hours of the summit, Carbon Brief understands that the Brazilian presidency told negotiators in a closed meeting that there was no prospect of reaching consensus on the roadmap’s inclusion, because there were “80 for and 80 against”.
However, Carbon Brief’s analysis of the list – which was drawn up informally by the presidency – shows that it contains a variety of contradictions and likely errors.
Among the issues identified by Carbon Brief is the fact that 14 countries are listed as both supporting and opposing the idea of including a fossil-fuel roadmap in the COP30 outcome.
In addition, the list of those said to have opposed a roadmap includes all 42 of the members of a negotiating group present in Belém – the least-developed countries (LDCs) – that has explicitly told Carbon Brief it did not oppose the idea.
Moreover, one particularly notable entry on the list, Turkey – which is co-president of COP31 – tells Carbon Brief that its inclusion is “wrong”.
Negotiating blocs
COP28, held in Dubai in 2023, had finalised the first “global stocktake”, which called on all countries to contribute to global efforts, including a “transition away from fossil fuels”.
Since then, negotiations on how to take this forward have faltered, including at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, where countries were unable to agree to include this fossil-fuel transition as part of existing or new processes under the UN climate regime.
Ahead of the start of COP30, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made a surprise call for “roadmaps” on fossil-fuel transition and deforestation.
While this idea was not on the official agenda for COP30, it had been under development for months ahead of the summit – and it became a key point of discussion in Belém.
Ultimately, however, it did not become part of the formal COP30 outcome, with the Brazilian presidency instead launching a process to draw up roadmaps under its own initiative.
This is because the COP makes decisions by consensus. The COP30 presidency insisted that there was no prospect of consensus being reached on a fossil-fuel roadmap, telling closed-door negotiations that there were “80 for and 80 against”.
The list of countries supporting a roadmap as part of the COP30 outcome was obtained by Carbon Brief during the talks. Until now, however, the list of those opposed to the idea had not been revealed.
Carbon Brief understands that this second list was drawn up informally by the Brazilian presidency after a meeting attended by representatives of around 50 nations. It was then filled out to the final total of 84 countries, based on membership of negotiating alliances.
The bulk of the list of countries opposing a roadmap – some 39 nations – is made up of two negotiating blocs that opposed the proposal for divergent reasons (see below). Some countries within these blocs also held different positions on why – or even whether – they opposed the roadmap being included in the COP30 deal.
These blocs are the 22-strong Arab group – chaired in Belém by Saudi Arabia – and the 25 members of the “like-minded developing countries” (LMDCs), chaired by India.
For decades within the UN climate negotiations, countries have sat within at least one negotiating bloc rather than act in isolation. At COP30, the UN says there were 16 “active groups”. (Since its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has not sat within any group.)
The inclusion on the “informal list” (shown in full below) of both the LMDCs and Arab group is accurate, as confirmed by the reporting of the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB), which is the only organisation authorised to summarise what has happened in UN negotiations that are otherwise closed to the media.
Throughout the fortnight of the talks, both the LMDCs and Arab group were consistent – at times together – in their resistance to proscriptive wording and commitments within any part of the COP30 deal around transitioning away from fossil fuels.
But the reasons provided were nuanced and varied and cannot be characterised as meaning both blocs simply did not wish to undertake the transition – in fact, all countries under the Paris Agreement had already agreed to this in Dubai two years ago at COP28.
However, further analysis by Carbon Brief of the list shows that it also – mistakenly – includes all of the members of the LDCs, bar Afghanistan and Myanmar, which were not present at the talks. In total, the LDCs represented 42 nations in Belém, ranging from Bangladesh and Benin through to Tuvalu and Tanzania.
Some of the LDC nations had publicly backed a fossil-fuel roadmap.
‘Not correct’
Manjeet Dhakal, lead adviser to the LDC chair, tells Carbon Brief that it is “not correct” that the LDCs, as a bloc, opposed a fossil-fuel roadmap during the COP30 negotiations.
He says that the group’s expectations, made public before COP, clearly identified transitioning away from fossil fuels as an “urgent action” to keep the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C goal “within reach”. He adds:
“The LDC group has never blocked a fossil-fuel roadmap. [In fact], a few LDCs, including Nepal, have supported the idea.”
Dhakal’s statement highlights a further confusing feature of the informal list – 14 countries appear on both of the lists of supporters and opposers. This is possible because many countries sit within two or more negotiating blocs at UN climate talks.
For example, Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu are members of both the “alliance of small island states” (AOSIS) and the LDCs.
As is the case with the “informal list” of opposers, the list of supporters (which was obtained by Carbon Brief during the talks) is primarily made up of negotiating alliances.
Specifically, it includes AOSIS, the “environmental integrity group” (EIG), the “independent association of Latin America and the Caribbean” (AILAC) and the European Union (EU).
In alphabetical order, the 14 countries on both lists are: Bahrain; Bulgaria; Comoros; Cuba; Czech Republic; Guinea-Bissau; Haiti; Hungary; Kiribati; Nepal; Sierra Leone; Solomon Islands; Timor-Leste; and Tuvalu.
This obvious anomaly acts to highlight the mistaken inclusion of the LDCs on the informal list of opposers.
The list includes 37 of the 54 nations within the Africa group, which was chaired by Tanzania in Belém.
But this also appears to be a function of the mistaken inclusion of the LDCs in the list, many of which sit within both blocs.
Confusion
An overview of the talks published by the Guardian this week reported:
“Though [Brazil’s COP30 president André Corrêa do Lago] told the Guardian [on 19 November] that the divide over the [roadmap] issue could be bridged, [he] kept insisting 80 countries were against the plan, though these figures were never substantiated. One negotiator told the Guardian: ‘We don’t understand where that number comes from.’
“A clue came when Richard Muyungi, the Tanzanian climate envoy who chairs the African group, told a closed meeting that all its 54 members aligned with the 22-member Arab Group on the issue. But several African countries told the Guardian this was not true and that they supported the phaseout – and Tanzania has a deal with Saudi Arabia to exploit its gas reserves.”
Adding to the confusion, the Guardian also said two of the most powerful members of the LMDCs were not opposed to a roadmap, reporting: “China, having demurred on the issue, indicated it would not stand in the way [of a roadmap]; India also did not object.”
Writing for Climate Home News, ActionAid USA’s Brandon Wu said:
“Between rich country intransigence and undemocratic processes, it’s understandable – and justifiable – that many developing countries, including most of the Africa group, are uncomfortable with the fossil-fuel roadmap being pushed for at COP30. It doesn’t mean they are all ‘blockers’ or want the world to burn, and characterising them as such is irresponsible.
“The core package of just transition, public finance – including for adaptation and loss and damage – and phasing out fossil fuels and deforestation is exactly that: a package. The latter simply will not happen, politically or practically, without the former.”
Carbon Brief understands that Nigeria was a vocal opponent of the roadmap’s inclusion in the mutirão deal during the final hours of the closed-door negotiations, but that does not equate to it opposing a transition away from fossil fuels. This is substantiated by the ENB summary:
“During the…closing plenary…Nigeria stressed that the transition away from fossil fuels should be conducted in a nationally determined way, respecting [common, but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities].”
The “informal list” of opposers also includes three EU members – Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
The EU – led politically at the talks by climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, but formally chaired by Denmark – was reportedly at the heart of efforts to land a deal that explicitly included a “roadmap” for transitioning away from fossil fuels.
Carbon Brief understands that, as part of the “informal intelligence gathering” used to compile the list, pre-existing positions on climate actions by nations were factored in rather than only counting positions expressed at Belém. For example, Hungary and the Czech Republic were reported to have been among those resisting the last-minute “hard-fought deal” by the EU on its 2040 climate target and latest Paris Agreement climate pledge.
(Note that EU members Poland and Italy did not join the list of countries supporting a fossil-fuel roadmap at COP30.)
The remaining individual nations on the informal list either have economies that are heavily dependent on fossil-fuel production (for example, Russia and Brunei Darussalam), or are, like the US, currently led by right-leaning governments resistant to climate action (for example, Argentina).
Turkey is a notable inclusion on the list because it was agreed in Belém that it will host next year’s COP31 in Antalya, but with Australia leading the negotiation process. In contrast, Australia is on the 85-strong list of roadmap supporters.
However, a spokesperson for Turkey’s delegation in Belem has told Carbon Brief that it did not oppose the roadmap at COP30 and its inclusion on the list is “wrong”.
Media characterisations
Some media reporting of the roadmap “blockers” sought to identify the key proponents.
For example, the Sunday Times said “the ‘axis of obstruction’ – Saudi Arabia, Russia and China – blocked the Belém roadmap”.
Agence France-Presse highlighted the views of a French minister who said: “Who are the biggest blockers? We all know them. They are the oil-producing countries, of course. Russia, India, Saudi Arabia. But they are joined by many emerging countries.”
Reuters quoted Vanuatu’s climate minister alleging that “Saudi Arabia was one of those opposed”.
The Financial Times said “a final agreement [was] blocked again and again by countries led by Saudi Arabia and Russia”.
Bloomberg said the roadmap faced “stiff opposition from Arab states and Russia”.
Media coverage in India and China has pushed back at the widespread portrayals of what many other outlets had described as the “blockers” of a fossil-fuel roadmap.
The Indian Express reported:
“India said it was not opposed to the mention of a fossil-fuel phaseout plan in the package, but it must be ensured that countries are not called to adhere to a uniform pathway for it.”
Separately, speaking on behalf of the LMDCs during the closing plenary at COP30, India had said: “Adaptation is a priority. Our regime is not mitigation centric.”
China Daily, a state-run newspaper that often reflects the government’s official policy positions, published a comment article this week stating:
“Over 80 countries insisted that the final deal must include a concrete plan to act on the previous commitment to move beyond coal, oil, and natural gas adopted at COP28…But many delegates from the global south disagreed, citing concerns about likely sudden economic contraction and heightened social instability. The summit thus ended without any agreement on this roadmap.
“Now that the conference is over, and emotions are no longer running high, all parties should look objectively at the potential solution proposed by China, which some international media outlets wrongly painted as an opponent to the roadmap.
“Addressing an event on the sidelines of the summit, Xia Yingxian, deputy head of China’s delegation to COP30, said the narrative on transitioning away from fossil fuels would find greater acceptance if it were framed differently, focusing more on the adoption of renewable energy sources.”
Speaking to Carbon Brief at COP30, Dr Osama Faqeeha, Saudi Arabia’s deputy environment minister, refused to be drawn on whether a fossil-fuel roadmap was a red line for his nation, but said:
“I think the issue is the emissions, it’s not the fuel. And our position is that we have to cut emissions regardless.”
Neither the Arab group nor the LMDCs responded to Carbon Brief’s invitation to comment on their inclusion on the list.
The Brazilian COP30 presidency did not respond at the time of publication.
While the fossil-fuel roadmap was not part of the formal COP30 outcome, the Brazilian presidency announced in the closing plenary that it would take the idea forward under its own initiative, drawing on an international conference hosted by Colombia next year.
Corrêa do Lago told the closing plenary:
“We know some of you had greater ambitions for some of the issues at hand…As president Lula said at the opening of this COP, we need roadmaps so that humanity, in a just and planned manner, can overcome its dependence on fossil fuels, halt and reverse deforestation and mobilise resources for these purposes.
“I, as president of COP30, will therefore create two roadmaps, one on halting and reverting deforestation, another to transitioning away from fossil fuels in a just, orderly and equitable manner. They will be led by science and they will be inclusive with the spirit of the mutirão.
“We will convene high level dialogues, gathering key international organisations, governments from both producing and consuming countries, industry workers, scholars, civil society and will report back to the COP. We will also benefit from the first international conference for the phase-out of fossil fuels, scheduled to take place in April in Colombia.”
Fossil-fuel roadmap
‘Supporters’
Both ‘supporter’ and ‘opposer’
‘Opposers’
Additional reporting by Daisy Dunne.
The post Revealed: Leak casts doubt on COP30’s ‘informal list’ of fossil-fuel roadmap opponents appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Revealed: Leak casts doubt on COP30’s ‘informal list’ of fossil-fuel roadmap opponents
Greenhouse Gases
China Briefing 27 November 2025: COP30 wraps; Climate and critical minerals at G20; Coal use up
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.
China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
China called for ‘strengthened’ climate cooperation
‘URGENT ACTION’: As the COP30 climate talks in Brazil drew to a close (see today’s spotlight below), world leaders gathered in South Africa for the G20 summit, where China’s premier Li Qiang urged countries to “strengthen ecological and environmental cooperation”, “take urgent action” on climate issues and “accelerate” implementation of COP30’s outcomes, state news agency Xinhua said. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post said that, due to the US being a “no-show”, “China and its allies drove the consensus” leading to the final G20 leaders’ declaration, adding that it “delivered major wins for African countries on debt, climate and critical minerals processing”.
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MINERALS REGIMES: The G20 declaration included a call to ensure critical mineral value-chain resilience, highlighting “geopolitical tensions, unilateral trade measures inconsistent with [World Trade Organization] rules, pandemics or natural disasters” as potential risks, Bloomberg reported, in a “seemingly veiled reference to China’s sweeping export curbs”. Bloomberg also quoted Li defending China’s need to “cautiously manage” critical-mineral exports for military use, adding that China launched a “green mining initiative with 19 nations” at the summit.
MINING TIES: Meanwhile, China and South Africa agreed an “initiative for supporting Africa’s modernisation” pledging to “assist Africa in achieving a fair, just, open and inclusive green and low-carbon transition”, according to the Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily. The text also “encourages countries to strengthen international cooperation on green infrastructure and green mining”, including in “building responsible, transparent, stable and resilient critical mineral value chains”. Reuters said that, in a meeting between the Chinese and German government, Li “pitched stronger ties” in the face of tensions over rare-earth minerals. The UK has “rolled out a critical minerals strategy designed to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers by 2035”, Reuters also reported.
‘SPECIAL’ CONNECTION: Li highlighted China and Russia’s “special, strategic” cooperation in the “oil, gas, coal and nuclear sectors” in talks with Russia’s prime minister, Reuters said. However, at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Moscow, Li said governments “should work together to advance green and low-carbon transformation”, the People’s Daily reported. Executive vice-premier Ding Xuexiang also said at the China-Russia energy business forum that the two countries should “deepen cooperation on energy transition”, the People’s Daily also said. Russian oil and gas giant Gazprom is “pushing ahead with plans” for the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, according to the Financial Times, which added that Chinese officials have yet to confirm the project.
Coal covered October’s power surge
COAL BACKUP: A heatwave in southern China in October caused a surge in power demand, with “coal-power plants picking up the slack amid slow growth in renewables”, Bloomberg reported. This could “make it difficult” for the country to see a plateau or reduction in carbon emissions this year, it added. David Fishman, principal at the consultancy Lantau Group, theorised on Twitter that this could have been due to the rigidity of China’s power-purchasing mechanisms, availability of coal power on spot markets and poor wind-power generation in October.
SLOWING APPROVALS: China’s permitting for new coal-fired power units is on track to hit its lowest level since 2021, according to new research from Greenpeace East Asia. Around 42 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity was permitted in the first three quarters of 2025, it said, noting that the amount of new coal power approved between 2021-2025 was still “more than twice the total permitted” between 2016-2020. Separately, Swiss bank UBS estimated that power demand in China will grow 8% between 2028 and 2030, said finance outlet Yicai.
RENEWABLES RISE: Meanwhile, 13GW of new solar capacity was added in October, as well as 9GW of wind and 8GW of thermal power, reported Bloomberg. According to energy news outlet BJX News, from January to October 2025, China added 253GW of solar, 70GW of wind and 65GW of thermal power, mostly coal.
Managing industry emissions
MARKETS EXPAND: China has approved plans to expand its national carbon market “via a test system” some time this year, reported Bloomberg, effectively confirming that steel, aluminum and cement will be covered in the mechanism by the end of 2025. The government has also released its third batch of methodologies for its voluntary carbon market, all of which are projects related to the country’s oil and gas sector, according to energy news outlet China Energy Net.
SUPER-POLLUTANT PLAN: Separately, the government issued two plans restricting the manufacturing of products using the potent greenhouse gases known as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and a particular type of hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC), such as refrigerators, freezers and insulation foam boards, reported state news agency Xinhua. An interview with an environment ministry official on the state-run China Environment News noted that the policies “clarify” that the HFC controls “include exported household refrigerators and freezers”, although it “excludes vehicle-mounted refrigerators”. Experts had previously told Carbon Brief that exported products were not covered by an action plan to enhance China’s HFC controls published in April that governs these two policies.
ALL-IN ON HYDROGEN: “Green hydrogen” capacity is being “ramp[ed] up”, said Bloomberg, with several projects coming online in the past few months “after Beijing signaled its continued support” for the sector. The government has “backed [hydrogen] tech with several pilot projects this year” and allowed the sector to access “carbon credits to help with funding”, it added. China has also developed its first “coal-to-chemicals project integrating green hydrogen”, which is forecast to produce 71m cubic metres of hydrogen per year, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, the hydrogen industry has also launched its first “anti-involution” initiative, pledging to avoid or prohibit actions such as “below-cost bidding”, “false planning” and “blind pessimism”, said economic news outlet Jiemian.
Spotlight
How China approached COP30 endgame
As negotiations at COP30 entered their final stages, China’s positions in several of the debates proved to be central to discussions.
Below is an excerpt of our coverage of what China said, wanted and got at COP30. The full article is available on Carbon Brief’s website.
Climate finance
One of China’s key priorities – the provision of “financial resources” from developed to developing countries under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement – proved to be a significant sticking point in negotiations.
With discussions on climate finance looming large, China proposed during the second week the development of a “practical roadmap for implementation”, predominantly by developed countries, of the $300bn per year “NCQG” climate-finance goal.
China delegation head Li Gao said this would help “avoid blame-shifting…and prevent further erosion of trust” on climate finance.
In the end, while COP30 resulted in a plan within the mutirão decision to develop a “two-year work programme on climate finance” that included a mention of Article 9.1, it was situated within the “context of Article 9…as a whole”. This means that developing countries’ contributions also fall under its scope.
“The EU needed to spend its biggest leverage [at COP30] to adjust the adaptation-finance goal,” Kate Logan, director of the China climate hub and climate diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI), told Carbon Brief.
EU-China non-alignment
There was a marked lack of EU-China coordination at COP30 overall, despite efforts to develop a united stance in July.
Multiple observers told Carbon Brief that early negotiations featured a rancorous back-and-forth between the two on the ambitiousness of their respective 2035 emissions reduction targets.
Another point of contention between the two was the role of “unilateral trade measures” (UTMs), which the “like-minded” bloc of developing countries (LMDCs, of which China is a member) asked to be included on the agenda.
Japan, the EU and others argued that other fora would be “more appropriate” for discussions. The EU also implied that China’s critical-mineral export restrictions could also fall into the scope of discussion, should the item be included.
Ultimately, China and others secured its inclusion in the mutirão text and agreement on three annual dialogues on UTMs, culminating in a “high-level event” and report in 2028.
China was also among the countries present for the COP30 presidency’s launch of an integrated forum on climate change and trade, although Carbon Brief understands that it has not formally joined the platform.
Meanwhile, a mention of critical minerals in a draft just-transition text – a potential first for COP – was deleted by the final version.
Joseph Dellatte, head of energy and climate studies at the Institut Montaigne, told Carbon Brief: “Even though the EU is worried about China’s trade measures on [critical materials], it still wants to strike a deal with Beijing.”
Fossil-fuel fracas
China also faced significant pressure on its approach to mitigating emissions.
It was not among countries supporting the idea of a roadmap away from fossil fuels as part of the COP30 outcome. It also opposed calls to emphasise the 1.5C temperature limit, instead “requesting the entire Paris Agreement temperature goal [which includes “well-below” 2C]…be mentioned”.
While the final mutirão text does emphasise the 1.5C limit, fossil fuels were not explicitly mentioned.
Arguments by China that the UAE dialogue should not become a “mini-GST [global stocktake]” also seem to have been considered, with no mention of an annual agenda item in the final outcomes.
The mutirão text “sends a red alert” on the consensus on fossil fuels, Greenpeace East Asia’s global policy advisor Yao Zhe told Carbon Brief.
But Li Shuo, director of ASPI’s China climate hub, said that, despite this, China’s prior agreement to transition away from fossil fuels would “guide its domestic energy reforms”.
Watch, read, listen
VISUALISING CHANGE: Greenpeace East Asia published its work with Chu Weimin, who has used drone photography to document how China’s clean-energy transition is reshaping “landscapes, communities and people’s everyday lives”.
CLIMATE ENVOY’S DEBRIEF: Climate envoy Liu Zhenmin explained why China felt a fossil-fuel roadmap was “unfeasible”, in a wide-ranging interview with the Paper held at the end of COP30.
NDC AMBITION: The Outrage + Optimism podcast spoke with Wang Yi, vice-chair of China’s expert panel on climate change, among others, during week two of COP30.
MISCONCEPTIONS: Wang Binbin, founding director of the Climate Future Global Innovation Lab, explained the thinking behind China’s climate strategy – and how mistranslations underplay its ambition – for China News.
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The number of nuclear reactor units in China, once the newest unit at Fujian Zhangzhou nuclear power plant – the world’s “largest Hualong One nuclear power base” – completes final checks, Jiemian reported. The unit began delivering power to the grid on 22 November.
New science
Climate warming and forest expansion significantly enhance China’s forest methane sink
Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
China’s forest methane sink “significantly increased” over 1982-2020, according to new research. The paper used a database of “forest methane fluxes” to produce a map of changes in forest methane uptake, finding that rising temperatures, decreasing soil moisture and forest expansion were the main drivers of the increased methane sink. The authors said their study “highlights the positive contribution of climate warming-drying and afforestation to methane sink enhancement”.
Quantifying global climate change impacts on daily record-breaking temperature events in China over the past six decades
International Journal of Climatology
A new study found that summer record-breaking high-temperature events occurred more frequently in China than “theoretically predicted”, while winter record-breaking low-temperature events occurred less frequently. The authors carried out statistical analysis of record-breaking events, using daily surface-air temperature data, collected over 1960-2023 from around 2,300 meteorological stations across China. They found a “more pronounced acceleration” in the frequency of high-temperature record-breaking events after the year 2020.
China Briefing is compiled by Wanyuan Song and Anika Patel. It is edited by Wanyuan Song and Dr Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org
The post China Briefing 27 November 2025: COP30 wraps; Climate and critical minerals at G20; Coal use up appeared first on Carbon Brief.
China Briefing 27 November 2025: COP30 wraps; Climate and critical minerals at G20; Coal use up
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