Daily Briefing

Several publications report new findings showing that Greenland’s ice sheet shrank by a record amount last year. Reuters says the study “showed the risk that climate change could cause sharp rises in global sea levels”. It adds: “The huge melt was due not only to warm temperatures, but also atmospheric circulation patterns that have become more frequent due to climate change, suggesting scientists may be underestimating the threat to the ice, the authors found.” The Independent says the melt last year was the largest in records going back to 1948. BBC News runs under a headline focused on the changing circulation patters: “Climate change: Blue skies pushed Greenland ‘into the red’”. Its piece adds: “While high temperatures were critical to the melting seen in Greenland last year, scientists say that clear blue skies also played a key role.” It continues: “These conditions were due to wobbles in the fast moving jet stream air current that also trapped heat over Europe…Current climate models don’t include the impact of the wandering jet stream say the authors, and may be underestimating the impact of warming.” Bloomberg also picks out the findings on clear skies, adding that the new research “suggests that glacier models could be underestimating future melting by half”, because of a failure to fully account for changes in atmospheric circulation due to climate change. The Guardian reports that high pressure conditions over Greenland persisted for 63 of the 92 summer days last year, compared to an average of 28 between 1981 and 2010. It adds: “The team say the climate models of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have not taken into account such unusual conditions. If such high pressure zones become a regular annual feature, future melting could be twice as high as currently predicted, a result that could have serious consequences for sea level rise.” Last September, Carbon Brief published a guest post on Greenland ice melt in 2019, which reached a similar conclusion to this week’s research.

The Times and others report on the latest International Energy Agency (IEA) oil market report, which says global demand will fall 29% in April and 9% this year, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The Times quotes IEA head Fatih Birol saying this year is likely to be “the worst year in the history of global oil markets” and “Black April” the worst month. Reuters also reports the IEA forecast, saying the cut in April would see demand fall to “levels not seen in 25 years”. It adds that oil prices fell further below $30 per barrel on the news. The Guardian and others also report the IEA forecast. Another Reuters article says demand for jet fuel is expected to fall by 59% in April and 26% this year, according to the IEA. The newswire reports: “Demand for flights and jet fuel could take years to recover from the coronavirus crisis as airlines struggle to survive their worst downturn, haunted by possible changes in the habits of tourists and business travellers”. It adds that “many airlines expect to use the crisis to speed up retirements of their oldest and thirstiest jets”. The Hill reports that US demand for petrol was already down by an “unprecedented” 20% in March “amid decreases in use linked to the coronavirus”. Reuters reports that US demand for the fuel had fallen even further, by 32%, in the latest four-week average compared to the same period last year. It adds that US demand for diesel is “weakening as the nation’s economy crashes”, having fallen by 8% over the past four weeks, compared to the same period a year earlier. Axios reports on new data from Apple Maps, which, it says, “shows big coronavirus-driven drops in travel” around the world.

In other coronavirus-related energy and climate news, Reuters reports that US electricity demand has fallen to a near 17-year low as a result of the crisis, down 6.1% on the same week in 2019. Reuters also reports that French utility EDF expects “a sharp drop in its nuclear output as a result of the fall in business activity caused by the coronavirus crisis”. BBC News reports that the shipping industry “is already feeling the impact as the global economy heads into a deep recession”. It adds: “Hundreds of ship sailings have been cancelled as first ports in China, and then across the globe, have seen trade fall away – with millions of workers and consumers in lockdown.” And a piece by Reuters columnist Clyde Russell points to evidence of weakening demand for coal from the world’s major importers of the fuel. Another Reuters article reports that US gas prices fell as a result of forecasts showing the coronavirus response would “cut demand in coming months”. Separately, Reuters reports that the crisis “will not impact nuclear power plant construction” in China, citing a nuclear safety official, while a further Reuters piece reports that the Hungarian car industry is planning a “gradual restart of production”.

The oil price slump and wider impacts of the current crisis pose a threat to renewable energy, reports Climate Home News. It says the IEA is “reviewing its October 2019 forecasts that 2020 will be a record year for additions of electricity generation capacity for solar, wind and other clean energies”. The website adds that rooftop solar installations, which “often require workers to be physically close together to install panels”, are expected to be “especially hard hit by social distancing and disruptions to Chinese supplies”. The Hill reports that 106,000 US clean energy jobs were lost in March amid the wider economic downturn created by the ongoing crisis.

Meanwhile, E&E News via Scientific American reports on how “climate science deniers [are] turn[ing] to attacking coronavirus models”. It explains: “A vocal set of conservative critics have increased their attacks recently on the data modelling behind the novel coronavirus response, and they claim – despite scientific evidence to the contrary – that the flaws also prove the limits of climate change forecasts.”

The Independent reports on new polling in the UK which, it says, “found 48% of the public agree that the government should respond ‘with the same urgency to climate change as it has with Covid-19’, with just 28% saying it shouldn’t”. BusinessGreen reports that the Club of Rome has “urged G20 leaders and other heads of state to work together to implement green recovery packages and fiscal stimulus plans during and after the coronavirus pandemic”. EurActiv reports that the European Commission is reviewing its 2020 work programme in light of the pandemic and that, while “climate policies remain broadly on track, other initiatives under the European Green Deal are being delayed because they are considered ‘less essential’”. S&P Global reports that the Trump administration has formed an “energy advisory panel on reviving [the] US economy”. It continues: “The White House has released a list of a dozen oil, gas, mining and power industry representatives to advise president Donald Trump on how to revitalise the U.S. economy in the wake of national coronavirus mitigation efforts.” The Hill reports that Democrats in the US “are arguing that fossil fuel companies should not be able to receive any assistance under the coronavirus relief package passed by congress last month”. The Hill also reports that Democrats in the US are calling for a moratorium on new gas pipelines amid the coronavirus pandemic “to make sure the public is included in the process and also to protect the safety of construction crews”. Axios says polling shows “an immense partisan divide [in the US] on the threat of climate change, one that contrasts sharply with widespread agreement on the risks of spreading infectious disease”.

Finally, the Financial Times reports that a UK ban on plastic straws and drinks stirrers has been delayed “because of coronavirus”, adding that “[c]ampaigners say [the] pandemic [is] not a reason to roll back environmental protections”.

Bloomberg is reporting that “South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s ruling coalition [has] scored the largest parliamentary election victory since the end of military-backed rule more than three decades ago”. It adds that this signals “to global leaders that a strong pandemic response can win votes”. However, the ruling party’s re-election could be a significant boost for climate policy in the region as one of its manifesto pledges was to introduce a net-zero emissions target, which would be a first for east Asia, as explained in Carbon Brief’s in-depth profile of South Korea.

Oil giant Shell has set out further details of its climate plans, Bloomberg reports, including eliminating “all net emissions from its own operations and the bulk of greenhouse gases from fuel it sells to customers by 2050”. The website says: “Shell’s move indicates that, despite the turmoil caused in the industry by the coronavirus, major oil and gas companies aren’t abandoning the transition to cleaner energy”. Reuters also has the story, saying that the firm has “announced plans to deepen its greenhouse gas emissions reduction ‘ambitions’”. The newswire says: “Shell also expanded its broader aim to cut the total carbon emission footprint from energy products its sells by around 65% by 2050, and by around 30% by 2035. Previously Shell aimed to reduce its net carbon footprint by 50% by 2050 and 20% by 2035.”

“The UK has been less successful at cutting greenhouse gas emissions than the official record claims”, the Times says, picking up a new report that finds “nearly half our carbon footprint now comes from emissions released overseas to produce imported goods”. The Guardian also has the story. The findings come from a collaboration between charity WWF-UK and the University of Leeds, the Times says. The latter already produces data on consumption-based emissions published by the UK government and explored in a guest post for Carbon Brief last year.

In a comment for the New York Times, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute, writes: “Covid-19 and the economic collapse it has caused have laid bare how connected our problems are.” She continues: “Congress and the Federal Reserve are not going to lay out trillions of dollars, over and over, in perpetuity. Refusing to include measures related to climate and environmental justice in economic stimulus packages related to the coronavirus is not neutral when there is no guarantee of other opportunities to do so later. We need to design the stimulus not only to help the U.S. economy recover but to also become more resilient to the climate crisis, the next multitrillion-dollar crisis headed our way.” Gunn-Wright adds: “If history is any indication, rebounding from an economic disruption this large requires an equally large spike in demand and production. Outside of war, climate change is the only issue large enough to provide such a spike.”

Separately, the Washington Post has a feature answering a reader question about whether the coronavirus pandemic is connected to climate change. It says: “The short – and incomplete – answer to this question is: not really…The more accurate answer is: of course. Climate change is frequently described as a threat multiplier, something that exacerbates existing problems and creates new ones. No aspect of life on this planet has been untouched by climate change – viruses included.” A feature for Rolling Stone by Abrahm Lustgarten says that “climate change won’t stop for the coronavirus pandemic” and warns that the next few months “could bring hurricanes, floods and fire”. He notes: “The public health responses required to manage the pandemic run directly against what will need to be done to respond to…a hurricane. Large numbers of people may need to flee on short notice and be housed in shelters that are overcrowded, understaffed and undersupplied.” In other coronavirus-related commentary, Alf Young writes in the Times that the world “will be very different in future, and let’s hope it will be better”. He adds: “[W]e haven’t even begun to talk about what fresh thinking this global health crisis might trigger in our daily discourse about other outstanding existential challenges, from our shared climate change challenge through inter-generational equity to the broken balance of risk and reward in society today.” Tim Mohin writes for EurActiv that the crisis “reinforces [the] need for governments to go green”. At the Conversation, Kate Guy writes that the pandemic “shows we are not at all prepared for the security threat of climate change”. Another piece for the Conversation, by Paul Monks, says the lockdown’s effect on air pollution “provides rare glimpse of low-carbon future”. The Independent “offers some ideas for tackling climate change and protecting the planet that you can do from the safety of home during the coronavirus pandemic”.

A new paper summarises a “focus” collection in Environmental Research Letters on “the role of forests and soils in meeting climate change mitigation goals”. Natural climate solutions have “become a major focus of climate policy”, the authors say, and this collection covers papers that address three important aspects of the role for forests: “(i) Carbon accounting of forest sinks and reservoirs, process emissions and carbon storage in forest products, (ii) the carbon dioxide dynamics of using forest bioenergy and (iii) the carbon cycle of tropical forests.”

A new study unpacks the causes behind the “unprecedented atmospheric conditions” that occurred in the summer of 2019 over Greenland, causing new record or close-to-record values of surface mass balance, runoff, and snowfall. The study uses a combination of remote sensing observations, regional climate model outputs, reanalysis data and artificial neural networks. The researchers find that the 2019 summer was “characterised by an exceptional persistence of anticyclonic conditions that, in conjunction with low albedo associated with reduced snowfall in summer, enhanced the melt–albedo feedback by promoting the absorption of solar radiation and favoured advection of warm, moist air along the western portion of the ice sheet towards the north”.

The hottest summers in India could become seven-fold or twenty-fold more likely if global warming reaches 2C or 3C, respectively, a new study suggests. Using observations from the India Meteorological Department, the researchers show that average maximum summer temperatures have increased significantly in three (arid, monsoon, and savannah) out of five major climatic regions of India over 1951–2015. The study projects the impact of warming on future summers using a large ensemble of simulations using the EC-Earth model. The projected increases in the frequency of the hot summers and associated heatwave days “will pose great societal challenges in the future in India”, the authors say.