A short story posted on Xinhua, China’s state news agency, early on Saturday morning confirmed that the world’s largest emitter had formally ratified the Paris agreement on climate change. It said: “Lawmakers voted to adopt ‘the proposal to review and ratify the Paris Agreement,’ at the closing meeting of the week-long bimonthly session of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee.” It was all part of the diplomatic choreography signalling the start of the G20 meeting, being hosted this year by China. Hours later, the US, the second largest emitter, announced it, too, had ratified the deal, when Barack Obama held a press conference after touching down in Hangzhou. The New York Times said it represented “rare harmony” between the two nations. The Washington Post said it “could be bad news for Donald Trump”, who opposes climate action. BBC News said it was a “big step towards turning the Paris climate agreement into reality”. Climate Home and BusinessGreen carry round-ups of reaction to the joint ratification. Meanwhile, the Financial Times says the EU remains a “potential stumbling block”.

Pressure is growing on the UK government to ratify the Paris climate change deal immediately, says the BBC’s environment analyst. A spokesman for the prime minister told the BBC the UK would ratify “as soon as possible”, but did not suggest a date. But Labour, the Lib Dems, SNP and the Greens say the UK has lost its long-term leadership on climate after the US and China jointly ratified the deal at the weekend. They say there is no good reason for the UK to delay. Labour warns that unless ministers start the ratification process right away they will attack the government’s “failures” on climate policy in an opposition day Commons debate on Wednesday when a motion will call for immediate action. It is supported by the Lib Dems, SNP and the Greens. Harrabin adds that some analysts believe ministers are delaying the process until they have their long-awaited low carbon plan in place.

The UK’s efforts to get fracking for shale gas have suffered a fresh delay, reports the Telegraph, after it emerged a legal challenge against the only approved project will not be heard until the end of November. Shale explorer Third Energy had hoped it might start work at its Kirby Misperton site in North Yorkshire as soon as the end of this year, after getting planning consent in May. But green groups Friends of the Earth and Frack Free Ryedale sought a judicial review of North Yorkshire County Council’s decision, claiming councillors failed to assess the impact of the project on climate change and assess financial safeguards against environmental damage. A date has now been set to hear the challenge on November 22 and 23 – later than had been expected.

With the impact of Hurricane Hermine still being felt along the eastern seaboard of the US this weekend, the New York Times says it is a “moment that puts on display much of what we know, and still do not know, about hurricanes, and what to expect as climate change progresses”. It speaks to scientists about the nuances and challenges of finding the strong telltale “signal” of climate change in events such as Hermine. Meanwhile, in FiveThirtyEight, Eric Holthaus notes that “we haven’t seen many storms like Hermine”.

The Telegraph’s energy editor has a long interview with the UK chief of ScottishPower, which is part of Spain’s Iberdrola and the UK’s biggest onshore wind generator. Anderson explains how he loves wind farms, but also wind power needs continued financial support, as does “every other form of investment in this industry”. He also says that Hinkley C does not make economic sense and that he would “dearly love” to be building new gas plants. His comments about Hinkley are also turned into a separate news story.

EDF and its Chinese partner could be paid more than £100bn over 35 years for Hinkley Point C’s electricity if the UK government gives the go-ahead to the French utility’s contentious nuclear power station, according to analyses commissioned by the Financial Times. The total revenue that EDF and CGN secure from Hinkley Point C could even be as high as £160bn, said three analysts, depending on assumptions about inflation, plant output and idle time for maintenance. The FT says the figures are “likely to be seized on by critics of Hinkley”. A separate article in the FT carries deeper analysis of the figures. In an earlier article, the FT reports that “EDF sees Britain taking £6bn Hinkley stake”. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that a UK government official signalled over the weekend that the decision on Hinkley C will be taken by the end of this month.

According to a new study, the ‘warm West, cold East’ temperature gap in the US is steadily expanding, and is likely being driven by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. In a new Stanford-led study, published to the Journal of Geophysical Research, researchers explain that simultaneous ‘warm West, cold East’ events increased between 1980 and 2015. ‘Although the occurrence of cold extremes is often used as evidence to dismiss the existence of human-caused global warming, our work shows that the warm West, cool East trend is actually consistent with the influence of human activities that have modified Earth’s climate in recent decades,’ said the lead author.

A $10bn funding body central to the Paris climate change accord has been saddled with cumbersome board rules that mean it has backed the wrong sort of projects, its former executive director has warned. The Green Climate Fund in South Korea’s planned city of Songdo has also been struggling to attract staff to a location that is “not very cosmopolitan or expat-oriented”, said Héla Cheikhrouhou, who has just stepped down from the organisation. In an interview with the FT, she says that “we are getting rather business-as-usual types of investment proposals and these are getting approved by the board,” she said. “There is no project that has been rejected.”

Plans to drill for shale gas leave communities divided and make people stressed, fearful and feeling powerless and disillusioned with politics, according to a study of the human impact of fracking applications. Residents near two proposed fracking sites in Lancashire have been “profoundly impacted” by the plans even before a final decision on whether to approve them has been made, the study says. Dr Anna Szolucha, a social anthropologist at the University of Bergen, spent 12 months studying the impact of the proposals and interviewing residents.

The former head of the UNFCCC – and current candidate to be the new UN secretary general – has written a “practitioner commentary” for the journal Global Policy. The abstract begins: “The Paris Agreement is a critical global response that enables a transition toward human and planetary wellbeing. It articulates a new trajectory toward a low-carbon economic system. It encompasses all countries, in the global North and South, and engages public and private sectors at local and global levels.”

Butlers suggests three steps that should form a “new dialogue” on Hinkley: “First, the French state-controlled company should reduce the scale of the Hinkley project. Instead of two reactors, why not just build one?…Second step should be to accept that no new reactor will be built unless and until the comparable plant at Flamanville in northern France is completed and working normally…[Third], the deal needs to be renegotiated – this time with professionals representing consumers and the public interest.”

In an editorial, the Sunday Times focuses on the new prime minister’s first major international meeting and references the ratification of the Paris deal by China and the US: “Mrs May’s international debut is helped by the fact that America and China have something to celebrate: their joint ratification of the Paris climate agreement. The good news is that two countries, which between them are responsible for 40% of the world’s global emissions, have signed up to a deal to limit them. The bad news, or the cynical view, is that they have done so only because it is not particularly onerous. Britain has yet to sign up to Paris.” Christopher Booker also uses his weekly column in the Sunday Telegraph to take a characteristically cynical look at the Paris deal.

The Independent is overjoyed at the ratification of the Paris deal by China and the US: “Cynics and climate change deniers were snide about the aviation fuel burnt to bring the diplomats and politicians together, mocked their lavish banquets and sneered at the multiple instances of hypocrisy, real or imagined. Progress was, in truth, often illusory at these windy events. Well, we know now that an invaluable prize will soon be secured – the survival of normal human life on the planet…For even if the direst estimates about climate change are wrong, and even if the science is flawed – as claimed by a vanishingly small section of expert opinion – reducing pollution and carbon dioxide emissions are no bad things in themselves. The world should long ago have proceeded on the precautionary principle, that is when the first warnings about melting ice caps and holes in the ozone layer were heard…There is plenty to criticise in the Paris accord, and the implementation of promises made is yet to be witnessed of course, but when the two powers that dump four in every ten tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere belatedly decide to get real, it is a happy day that many thought could never arrive.”

In a lengthy, frontpage feature for the New York Times, its climate science writer travels to the US eastern seaboard and speaks to local residents and climate scientists about what’s driving the “inundation of the coast”: “Federal scientists have documented a sharp jump in this nuisance flooding — often called ‘sunny-day flooding’ — along both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast in recent years. The sea is now so near the brim in many places that they believe the problem is likely to worsen quickly. Shifts in the Pacific Ocean mean that the West Coast, partly spared over the past two decades, may be hit hard, too.” Gillis notes the local frustration with Republican politicians who continue to deny any link with human-caused climate change.

The columnist scolds the BBC over its coverage of Brexit, making the point that it has made similar mistakes when covering climate change: “Until recently, it considered the climate change denier Nigel Lawson as fine a match for peer-reviewed research as it now believes him a trusted guarantor of post-Brexit glories, possibly forgetting his earlier history of shadowing the deutschmark…As with climate change, implicit in extreme BBC impartiality is a distinctly un-BBC like, post-truth proposal that, since all opinions merit equal coverage, the public might as well give up on evidence-based argument.”

Over the past decade, more than 365 tropical fish species have shifted pole-ward, away from ocean warming hotspots. A new study examines the capacity of a model species – a thermally-sensitive coral reef fish, Chromis viridis (Pomacentridae) – to adapt to rising ocean temperatures. The results suggest that the fish do not have sufficient capacity to adapt to warming, but will instead move to cooler waters. The findings “challenge [the] theory” that the principal way that species will be able to survive climate change is by adapting to rising temperatures, the researchers say.

A new paper compares the success of the Paris Conference of the Parties (COP21) – the “good COP” – with COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009 – the “bad cop”. The article explains what led to the shift from the “low point in climate policy” of COP15 to the “unprecedented global collaboration” in COP21. The paper also examines the threats and opportunities as the world moves from making commitments to implementing them, and draws parallels with a similar process on sustainable development that is unfolding in the United Nations at the same time.