The Committee on Climate Change has said that the UK’s current climate target for the early 2030s remains sufficient, despite a tightening of the overall global goal at the recent UN climate negotiations in Paris. However, new government policies will be required to reach this target as current policies are not enough, the committee wrote in a letter to the government. Campaigners have called the recommendation “desperately disappointing”. The Financial Times focuses on the letter’s recommendation that ministers should “urgently” find ways to capture and store emissions. BusinessGreen, Climate Home and Carbon Brief also covered the story.

Europe is warmer now than it has been since the times of the Roman empire, according to a new study. Since 1986, mean summer temperatures have been about 1.3C hotter than they were two millennia ago, while heatwaves have been longer, more frequent and more persistent. More than 40 academics are behind the paper, which was researched by analysing tree rings, using climate modelling and looking at historical evidence from the notes of doctors, priests and monks. The study is the most detailed look at historical temperatures ever conducted for any continent, says the New Scientist. The Daily Mail and the BBC also cover the story.

Shell has received the final green light for its takeover of BG Group, with 99.55% of BG shareholders voting in favour of the merger. The move received an 83% majority from Shell shareholders on Wednesday. While BG shareholders were unlikely to oppose the move, there have been consistent fears that Shell is overpaying for the company, due to the collapse in oil prices since the bid was made in April. Reuters and the Financial Times also cover the story.

Despite delays to the decision over whether to invest in Hinkley point, EDF has told contractors to restart “unconstrained spending”, in anticipation of the plant obtaining the final green light within days, reports the Guardian. They have been told to restart work, which stopped in April last year. A source said: “EDF asked us ‘if we release the budget to you, what will you do with it?’ We told them what we would do with it, and they said ‘get your plans ready to start spending this’.” Carbon Brief has looked at the impacts of delays to the project.

The Senate has approved four amendments to the Energy Bill, which is the first rewrite of energy legislation that the US has seen in seven years. It is the first stage of a long process — senators had offered 89 amendments to the legislation as of Thursday morning, according to the chair of the energy and natural resources committee. The amendments made so far concern nuclear research, crude oil exports, carbon capture technology and manufacturing.

Greenland’s quest for independence from Denmark means that it could not afford to sign up to the UN’s recently-agreed climate deal. “If we sign it will cost us hundreds of millions of dollars and we would never be independent,” the deputy foreign minister, Kai Holst Andersen, told the Guardian. If it becomes independent, it would lose the $1bn a year that it receives from Denmark — around half its income — which would leave them “no choice” but to develop mining and oil.

David Bowman, a professor of environmental change biology at the University of Tasmania, considers the impact of the bushfires that are destroying much of Tasmania’s unique vegetation — some areas of which may never recover, he says. He also looks at the impact of climate change on the disaster, and concludes that the root cause has been the dry spring and warm summer, which have left the peat soils “bone dry”.

In a feature for the Financial Times, Jerusalem bureau chief John Reed investigates “Israel’s most secretive company”, the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company (EAPC). In 2014, EAPC was responsible for countries “biggest environmental disaster” when a ruptured pipe spilled some 5,000 cubic metres of crude into the Evrona nature reserve. Since then, Israelis have been demanding accountability for the spill, while the government has invoked a secrecy decree. The first lawsuits are now finally reaching court.

A new study finds that it is climate, rather than land-use, that controls the distribution of blanket-bogs in the UK. The researchers used a climate model and pollen-based reconstructions to predict blanket bog evolution since the mid-Holocene, 6,000 years ago. They found a good match with modern day distribution, with blanket bogs now covering 6% of the UK.

Scientists have reconstructed the temperature of European summers back to 755 CE, using tree rings and other proxy records providing annual resolution. Recent summers are unusually warm in the context of the last two millennia with the 30-year period between 1986-2015 the hottest in the record, the paper concludes. Prior to that, the average European summer temperature in the 1900s was not significantly different from some earlier centuries.