The Met Office has announced that 2018 was the joint hottest summer on record for the UK as a whole, and the hottest ever for England, BBC News reports in a story which yesterday sat on the front page of its website. According to the Met Office, the highs for summer 2018 were tied with those of 1976, 2003 and 2006 for being the highest since records began in 1910. Meanwhile, England’s average temperatures narrowly beat those seen in 1976, it added. The BBC also reports comments from the Met Office that having record average temperatures is “consistent with the general picture of the climate warming in the UK and globally”. A Met Office spokeswoman told BBC News: “It’s generally accepted that the risk of heatwaves is increasing due to global warming. The temperature has risen, since industrial times, by one degree overall, so we’re starting from a degree higher. So the peaks in these heatwaves are going to be a little bit higher as well.” The Guardian notes that a more comprehensive and definitive analysis of this summer’s temperatures will be conducted in the coming weeks. “Many meteorologists believe the recent scorching temperatures will become the new summer norm,” it adds. ITV News, the Mirror, CNN, the MailOnline, the Independent the Express, Sky News and the Times all cover the story. In July, Carbon Brief published an in depth look at how the media has reported the summer heatwave and how the coverage did – or did not – reference climate change.

Friends of the Earth has filed a legal challenge at the high court, saying the government’s National Planning Policy Framework, published in July, makes it “virtually impossible” for councils to refuse local fracking schemes, the Guardian reports. According to the NGO, the policy also fails to rule out future coal developments, and introduces harsh new rules for wind energy schemes. Friends of the Earth argues the planning policy was illegally adopted because the government failed to assess its environmental impact. Eloise Scotford, professor of environmental law at UCL, tells the Guardian there is a “very strong” legal argument the government should have carried out a strategic environmental assessment before adopting the framework. Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraphreports that a high court judge agreed on Monday to grant an interim injunction against unlawful protest at fracking sites in Sussex and Surrey operated by UK Oil and Gas.

EDF, multinational Unilever and the UK’s energy industry body have warned that Brexit could drive up energy bills, the Guardian reports. Trade barriers threaten to increase the cost of importing gas and electricity across the Channel, the power companies say. In a letter to Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, and UK prime minister Theresa May, theysaid imposing costs on the use of interconnectors between the UK and its neighbours would hit consumers and set back the battle against global warming. The government said it will respond to the letter in full “in due course”, but that its commitment to tackling climate change is “unwavering”. Euractiv also has the story.

Governments are unprepared for a crucial climate change meeting in Poland later this year, Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said on Tuesday at the opening of climate talks in Bangkok, Euractiv reports. “In three months’ time we will be in Katowice, and frankly, we are not ready. I don’t think that statement should surprise anyone in this room,” he said in an opening statement. He added that, without guidelines, countries “risk chaos at Katowice and the possibility of yet another delay in the urgent work of combating climate change” and urged delegates to come up with clear guidelines. Meanwhile campaigners and rights groups have accused developed countries of dragging their feet on the promised to mobilise $100bn per year in climate finance, Thompson Reuters Foundationreports. “Rich nations are attempting to escape full accountability for their role in causing and exacerbating climate change, and their obligation to deliver climate finance,” said Lidy Nacpil of the Asian Peoples Movement on Debt and Development. “Inadequate climate finance compromises the capacity of the developing world to survive the climate crisis,” she said. Climate Home reports on three things this week’s Bangkok climate talks “must get right”, the last of which is to ensure a negotiating text is generated by the end of the meeting.

Ukip MEP Stuart Agnew has written a “shamefully” ignorant climate change report for the EU, and it “should never have happened” writes Green MEP Scott-Cato. “After a long, hot summer beset by record temperatures, drought and deadly fires, imagine my shock, on returning to the European parliament, to be confronted with a report that denies the reality of climate change,” she writes. She goes on to look at how “someone with a track record of shameful ignorance of the science of climate change” ended up being assigned the task of compiling the report. “The large right and centre-right groups in the European parliament could and should have blocked Ukip from taking charge of a report on climate change.,” she concludes. “We can only hope that the mainstream groups in parliament – right, left and centre – that are likely to continue to control the majorities will show a greater degree of responsibility in future.”

“The right to mobility is regarded as an entitlement – a symbol of individual progress and freedom,” writes Nick Butler in the Financial Times as part of a special FT report on “The Energy Transition”. The costs, however, are increasing and we are approaching the moment when our freedom of movement may have to be constrained.” Transport is both the most important part of the energy transition story and the most resistant to change, adds Butler, adding that there are no commercially viable substitutes for oil use in freight transportation or aircraft. “The slow pace of change in these sectors is the reason why most long-term energy forecasts see oil consumption remaining at or above current levels for decades to come, even allowing for continuing gains in efficiency,” he says. Butler concludes that gradually improving public transport systems are finding it hard to keep pace with growing numbers. “If cities are to remain viable entities, then current patterns of mobility are unsustainable,” he says. “…The realisation that individual mobility will have to be limited and rationed will come as a sharp reminder that the process of transition will not be painless and will require some sacrifice of rights and freedoms we have come to take for granted.” The FT also has a story from transport correspondent Josh Spero on the technical potential for aircrafts to reduce emissions, while a further FT story discusses challenges on the shipping sector to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. Another FT article looks at how leading German car manufacturers are grappling with how best to switch to greener vehicles.

Two hundred of the world’s most prominent artists and scientists signed an open letter yesterday in French daily Le Monde calling on politicians to act “firmly and immediately” in tackling climate change and the “collapse of biodiversity”, described as the “greatest challenge in the history of mankind”. The letter called for urgent political action to address the “global catastrophe” facing mankind and other species. “It is time to get serious,” the signatories said. “The sixth mass extinction is taking place at unprecedented speed. But it is not too late to avert the worst.”

At the rivers on the edges of Western Siberia’s vast permafrost, CO2 emissions are up to twice as high as those from further upstream, a new study estimates. “We find that emissions peak at the permafrost boundary, and decrease where permafrost is more prevalent and in colder climatic conditions,” the researchers say. The high rate of emissions at the permafrost boundary could be a result of warm temperatures and the long transit times of river water, they add.