Good morning to you – COP28 came to a close last week. After our team and delegation traveled and rested, we spent some time analyzing the final results of the conference. We’re diving into the outcomes for our final digest today. Thank you for spending your time with us these past two weeks!
Just one day beyond the scheduled end of COP28, negotiators attended the closing plenaries to agree on the official outcome document: the UAE Consensus. Let’s dive into the top three outcomes, both from the document and the conference itself. Consider these your climate talking points over the winter and holiday season.
- The document calls for the “transitioning away” from fossil fuels.
Yes, this is a hard-fought, 30-years-in-the-making moment. If you remember last year’s outcome, the final document only called for the phase down of coal and harmful subsidies of fossil fuels. Some are calling this language, this moment, the beginning of the end of fossil fuels. While that may be true on some level, the document is also disappointing, imperfect, and not enough. In a time when phasing out fossil fuels is paramount to mitigation emissions and operating in line with climate science, the “transitioning away” language falls flat. There’s no naming of oil and gas, or hard deadlines for phase out.
This language was included and agreed on in the face of massive opposition from fossil fuel interests — the largest number of lobbyists ever to attend a COP, in fact. And still, countries on the front lines of the climate crisis are rightly naming the document as full of loopholes.
The document, in an ideal world, could be a catalyst for the renewable energy transition. It calls for the tripling of renewable energy by 2030 and doubling energy efficiency. In its essence though, it is fragile. The words rely on serious, urgent, and well-funded action from the exact leaders that agreed on the words. In the coming months ahead of COP29, the world will be watching for actual action. Not just words.
- The need for justice is the writing on the wall.
The inclusion of “transitioning away” from fossil fuels language would not have been possible without the pressure from Indigenous leaders, island nations, activists, civil society, and countries on the frontlines of climate change impacts; the people and communities who do not have time for posturing, because their lives are at stake. Many have called this COP “business as usual” due to the lack of real ambition in its outcomes.
While the Loss and Damage Fund was realized, COP28 finished with roughly $770 million dollars pledged — roughly 0.2% of what frontline countries actually need annually to adapt to extreme weather, drought, loss of life, loss of infrastructure, and other impacts. Since there is no obligation to pay into the fund, the level of trust is low; not to mention the fact that some of the funds pledged were repeats of existing pledges.
A lack of funding overall getting into the hands of communities on the frontlines is limiting justice-based solutions, leaving poorer countries with small capacity to pay for clean energy, adaptation, and mitigation measures. And these communities should not have had to wait 30 years for the mere mention of fossil fuels to come into play. If the global community had taken incremental action at the scale needed 30 years ago, lives would have been saved.
- Carbon conversations are on the rise — removal, storage, and capture.
The mechanics for carbon removal, and capture and storage, are central to Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, however not much progress was made at COP28 to instill trust, standards, or regulations for this process.
Ranging from nature-based carbon sinks like mangroves to climate tech like direct air capture, carbon removal is part of the conversation. Yes, the IPCC states we need to remove carbon from the atmosphere to align with the 1.5 goal. The main concern? The technologies aren’t viable yet to make any massive impact — and carbon removal is often seen as an excuse to continue emitting, rather than a needed tactic in tandem with phasing out fossil fuels. If there is any way forward with the voluntary carbon markets, it must be developed while phasing out fossil fuels and listening to the communities that are often the ones managing the basis of the carbon credits (i.e. preserving forests on Indigenous lands, etc.)
Science tells us we need both mitigation and carbon removal, but the current iteration of carbon markets, carbon offsets, and strategies is mistrusted, riddled with loopholes, and does not contain clear reporting across the international community. We expect these conversations to become more charged, regarding the injustices they contribute to, during COP29.
For more specific pledges, actions, and commitments made during COP28 crossing issues from agriculture to methane mitigation, see this list from Carbon Brief.
While international agreements are critical for funding action, creating diplomacy, and providing spaces for civil society to hold leaders accountable, the actual agreement text isn’t what makes action happen. It’s the people. The people in leadership positions, in communities, on the ground, pushing for local solutions like fighting pollution, stronger standards, public transportation, youth empowerment, education, justice, health, and so much more.
Join us in thanking our COP28 delegates for their late nights, perspectives, content gathering, emotional processing, and collaboration as they were our eyes and ears on the ground in Dubai.
Thanks to all of you for reading and experiencing this COP with us.
We are looking forward to seeing you in the work ahead!
The post Your Summary of Negotiations –– COP28 Outcomes appeared first on Climate Generation.
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Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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