The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has warned that there is an 80% chance of an El Niño event forming before September and a 90% chance of it forming before November, the Guardian reports on its frontpage. The newspaper says: “Scientists have previously warned that it could be the strongest this century. However, the WMO stopped short of backing such projections and said forecasters were still in a window of uncertainty.” BBC News notes a “very strong” or “super” El Niño is characterised by sea surface temperatures in the Pacific monitoring region rising by more than 2C above baseline temperatures.

Reuters says the forecast of a stronger El Niõ and the impact of global warming “make this year’s forecast particularly worrying”, adding: “That higher baseline supercharges the effects ​of El Niño – enabling higher temperature spikes, more intense droughts, heatwaves, rains and the resulting disasters, including bushfires, floods and crop failures.” Al Jazeera quotes UN secretary-general António Guterres, who said “the world must treat it as the urgent climate warning it is”. The Independent, Politico, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail also cover the news. 

MORE ON EXTREME HEAT

• Inside Climate News reports that rising temperatures are threatening the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.
• Reuters says that “Spain registered record sea temperatures for the month of May along much ​of its coastline”. 
• The Guardian reports that El Niño will bring “hotter and drier weather to eastern Australia”. 
• Schools in the UK could get “maximum temperature limits”, according to the Daily Mirror.
• Euronews outlines how heatwaves affect pregnancies across Europe.

The UK government has set a draft target to cut emissions to 87% below 1990 levels by 2040, reports Reuters. The newswire quotes energy secretary Ed Miliband, who said in a statement yesterday that “as Britain faces the second fossil-fuel shock of the decade, the only way to protect family and business ​finances is to drive for clean homegrown power that we control”. The Associated Press adds: “The UK has a legally binding target, set in 2008, of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. By law, the government must legislate for emissions caps for future five-yearly budgets on a strict timetable.” The Financial Times says the move “drew swift criticism from the Conservatives”. It adds: “Parliament must approve or reject the legally binding 87% target by the end of June. The last carbon budget in 2021 received cross-party support but climate policy has since become increasingly divisive and the new proposals are expected to become a flashpoint among lawmakers.”

Several newspapers focus their coverage on what they claim will be required to meet the draft budget. The Independent reports that according to the UK’s Climate Change Committee, “meeting the target will require households to install heat pumps instead of new boilers, switch to electric cars and eat less meat and dairy, but families could save hundreds of pounds a year by mid century in the shift away from fossil fuels”. Climate minister Katie White tells Sky News that the target will “future-proof” the country. The Daily Express quotes Claire Coutinho claiming, without evidence, that net-zero will make Britons “weaker and poorer”. The Daily Mail and the Sun misleadingly claim that changes in diet will be required to meet the target. [Carbon Brief has in-depth coverage of the draft budget.]

MORE ON UK

• The Daily Mail reports that March-May 2026 was the warmest spring on record for England and Wales and the third warmest for the UK as a whole, according to provisional statistics from the UK Met Office.
• BBC News reports that the UK “could see a warmer-than-average summer with the potential for more heatwaves”, according to the Met Office.
• The Financial Times has a story under the subheading: “Rapid coastal erosion threatens thousands of houses, leaving politicians and communities with a dilemma: save the houses or let nature take its course?”
• The Daily Mail claims that the “Mandelson files” reveal “cabinet splits over Ed Miliband’s rush to net-zero”.
• The Financial Times says: “Munro, Scotland’s first carmaker in more than four decades, plans to build a new plant for industrial-use electric vehicles in the UK in a boost for the government’s ambitions to boost car manufacturing.”
• The Financial Times has a story about “what happens when heat pump installations go wrong”. Separately, the Daily Mail reports on rooftop solar fires.

Democrats are planning to “fight” a Trump administration plan to dismantle a deep-ocean observation system, the New York Times reports. The newspaper says: “The [National Science Foundation] will begin sending ships to begin pulling up the instruments later this month, a process that is expected to take about 15 months. The ocean observation system was designed to operate for at least 25 years, meaning the decision would result in the loss of more than a decade of data.” The newspaper says: “The Trump administration has repeatedly tried to shut down the ocean observation system, proposing to cut its funding by 80% in both 2025 and again in 2026. Each time, Congress pushed back, restoring the money.” The Associated Press says “the timing feels particularly punishing” with the strong El Niño event forecast this summer. The Guardian, Scientific American and the Independent also cover the news.

Seven US states are suing the Trump administration over its deal with TotalEnergies, in which the company gave up its two offshore wind leases “in exchange for a full refund of their $928m cost and a pledge to redirect the money to fossil-fuel investments”, reports the Financial Times. According to the newspaper, a coalition of north-eastern states say the deal was “‘blatantly unlawful’ and should be struck down by courts”. The Guardian says the plaintiffs argue the deal violated two pieces of legislation, among other allegations. It says: “The plaintiffs are asking a court to strike down [the] agreement, halt the lease cancellation and prevent Donald Trump officials from taking further steps to implement the deal.” Reuters, the Associated Press, the Independent, CNN and Axios also cover the news.

MORE ON US

• The Guardian and DeSmog have published an investigation, which finds that Colorado’s oil and gas regulator is letting companies “off the hook” on decommissioning old drilling sites.
• Inside Climate News reports that “another warm, arid winter could leave Colorado River reservoirs nearly dry”. Politico says the river is facing record-low flows, prompting the Trump administration to turn to a “Democrat’s climate law”.
• Reuters: “US plans energy investments in Azerbaijan, says $8bn in deals signed.”
• Inside Climate News says new research finds that “the destruction of wetlands in the US has increased the amount of flood insurance claims by $10bn over the past 40 years, a phenomenon expected to worsen in tandem with climate change”.
• E&E News explains how “heat officials” are “learning how to work within a system that rejects their agendas”, as the Trump administration cancels grants and adaptation programmes on extreme heat.

China is expected to “tap deeper into its record crude oil inventories” as its oil imports in May are on track to reach the lowest level in a decade, reports Reuters. The newswire says that since the Iran war began, Beijing has worked to insulate itself through measures including “maximising” drilling, curbing exports and “providing extra import quotas” to encourage purchases of discounted oil. Meanwhile, China has told some “independent refiners to cut output from June”, a sign of Beijing’s “growing confidence that it can weather an oil shock triggered by the closure of the strait of Hormuz”, according to another Reuters report. China’s gas imports increased “marginally” from a year ago in May, ahead of peak summer demand, reversing months of decline, reports Bloomberg. Zhao Wei, economist at Shenwan Hongyuan Securities, writes in financial news outlet Caixin, that China’s high-tech exports tied to energy transition “remain bright spots with high certainty” for the remainder of 2026.

MORE ON CHINA

• Reuters says China’s SAIC Motor plans to build its first EU car factory in Spain.
• The Economic Observer reports that the contradiction between China’s food security and “worsening” global climate is becoming increasingly “acute”. Xinhua reports that China called for the green transformation of agriculture.
• China’s new non-fossil electricity accounting rules upgraded “green electricity certificates” from a “supplementary certificate” to a core tool, reports International Energy Net.
• Xinhua reports that China’s new-energy storage capacity increased by 76% in the first quarter of 2026, reaching 27 gigawatt hours.
• The UK is willing to deepen cooperation with China in areas including energy, UK foreign secretary Yvette Cooper said in Beijing, according to Xinhua. Cooper also said the UK and China share common interests in “green development” and addressing climate change, reports Global Times.
• The Times reports that “China has made an accounting adjustment to how it counts carbon emissions, making its climate change targets easier to meet”. 

Bloomberg opinion columnist David Fickling writes about the growing risk of heatwaves in urban areas. He says that we should also be focusing on high night-time temperatures,  as “a person exposed to constant high temperatures without the opportunity to cool off during sleep finds their reserves run down, day after day”. He adds that “the risk is greatest in the burgeoning megacities of south Asia, south-east Asia and Africa”. He notes that urbanisation can exacerbate extreme heat, for example by replacing cooling trees with concrete. He highlights cities that “have managed to claw back green space from already built-up urban fabric”, but says that “doing the same to the next wave of megacities is going to require levels of civic ambition that are all-too rare in emerging Asia and Africa”. 

MORE COMMENT

• Tim McDonnell, the climate and energy editor of Semafor, outlines the “buffers” that are preventing the price of oil from rising even higher.
• James Murray, the editor-in-chief of BusinessGreen, writes for Ian Dunt’s Striking 13 Substack about the warm homes plan, which he calls “Labour’s net-zero triumph”.
• A comment by Daily Telegraph writer Philip Johnston has the headline: “Stop carpeting our prime farmland with pointless solar panels.” 
• John Rentoul, the chief political commentator for the Independent, claims that “doubts” about the UK government’s climate targets “are growing”. 

This edition of the Daily Briefing was written by Ayesha Tandon, with contributions from Henry Zhang and Anika Patel. It was edited by Simon Evans.

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