UK climate extremes are “becoming increasingly normal”, according to an annual Met Office “state of the UK climate” report covered by the Guardian on its frontpage. The newspaper notes that 2025 was the UK’s hottest year on record and the last four years were all among the top-five hottest on record. Scientist Mike Kendon, lead author of the report, tells Reuters: “What we used to think of as extreme, we increasingly consider as normal.” Bloomberg notes that the number of days above 30C in London has quadrupled since the 1980s, according to the report. Sky News notes that “man-made climate change – mostly caused by burning fossil fuels – [is] driving more extreme weather”. The UK has recorded 25 non-consecutive days of 30C or higher so far this year, exceeding the 1976 record, says the Financial Times. 

MORE ON UK 

• Advisors to the next UK prime minister Andy Burnham are in “disagreement” over the appointment of a new chancellor, with opinions divided on whether energy secretary Ed Miliband should receive the role, reports Bloomberg.
• Home secretary Shabana Mahmood is “said to be the frontrunner”, notes the Times on its frontpage, adding that a source “insisted that no final decision had been taken”. 
• Burnham faces a “dilemma” over oil drilling in the North Sea when he takes office, according to BBC News. 
• Oil major BP has seen a profit “boost” from higher oil prices driven by the war on Iran, reports the Financial Times. The Daily Telegraph says it also expects to “write down the value of its low-carbon and energy transition division by a further $1bn”.
• Reuters: “UK’s Ofgem to ensure independent review of heatwave operations.” 
• The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs “confirmed plans to invest up to £30m to strengthen the evidence-base required to shape UK climate adaptation measures”, says BusinessGreen. 

China’s exports of low-carbon technologies rose by more than a third from January to June, driven by the “accelerating global energy transition”, reports Bloomberg, citing data from China’s General Administration of Customs. The outlet says shipments of lithium batteries and wind turbines increased by 38% and 36%, respectively. Rare-earth exports fell 6.4%, reports state-supporting newspaper Global Times. EV exports increased by 68.7%, says state broadcaster CCTV. Meanwhile, the Communist Party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily says Africa’s installed renewable-energy capacity rose 15.9% in 2025 as the continent’s energy cooperation with China deepens. An editorial in the Global Times says “protectionism and exaggerating market competition anxiety” over Chinese-made EVs will not serve “South Korea’s long-term industrial interests”.

MORE ON CHINA

• Xinhua reports the share of NEVs in China’s vehicle fleet reached 13.2%, up 2.9 percentage points from a year earlier. China’s Hainan became the first province to “prohibit the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles” by 2030, reports Yicai.
• The NDRC says coal remains China’s “greatest source of confidence in dealing with a complex energy landscape”, according to the Singapore-based Lianhe Zaobao.
• Wan Jinsong, deputy head of the NEA, said that China has improved the efficiency of using coal as a chemical feedstock in recent years, reports Xinhua.
• China Photovoltaic Industry Association says China’s solar cell exports face “dual pressures from trade barriers and the increasing capacity in other countries”, says BJX News.
• China’s new “five-year plan” for consumption calls for “promoting green consumption”, expanding supply of new-energy vehicles and “developing green supply chains”, reports IdeaCarbon.
• Typhoon Bavi, the “most powerful storm” to hit mainland China this year, forced a further 260,000 people to evacuate in north-eastern Liaoning province, reports Reuters.

The Associated Press reports that 11 people – “mostly women and children” – were “killed overnight when heavy rain caused the roof of a mud-brick house to collapse” in north-west Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region. The Kashmir Reader reports that India’s Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir “has recorded at least 15 cloudburst incidents” in the last 14 days. It quotes a meteorologist saying: “Cloudbursts are highly localised events, but the pattern of intense rainfall over short durations is becoming more frequent in the Himalayan region.” In India’s easternmost state of Arunachal Pradesh, the New Indian Express reports that the “ongoing spell of rain-triggered floods and landslides has so far claimed seven lives”. In neighbouring Assam, NDTV reports that the death toll from the “first wave of flood[ing to] hit the state” rose to four, with over 37,000 people now impacted.

MORE ON SOUTH ASIA

• The Dhaka Tribune reports that “at least 56 people have lost their lives” in rain-triggered floods in Bangladesh, with nearly 11,000 people displaced. 
• A Daily Star column observes that flooded Dhaka “demands the most honest accounting”, as natural flood buffers “were not lost to climate change but to ourselves”.
• Business Standard reports that India’s hydropower generation declined 21% in June compared to last year “because of the El Niño effect”.
• In Down to Earth, researchers say “closing the communication gap” between forecasters and media is “an urgent public-good investment” that can “reduce heat-related harm”. 
• India is now considering exporting surplus ethanol to Nepal, Bangladesh and Indonesia even as its domestic rollout of ethanol-blended petrol has “sparked growing consumer backlash”, industry groups tell the Economic Times.

Reuters covers a new report: “Trump administration policies that scaled back federal support for clean energy have led to the cancellation ​or delay of $83bn in investment across hundreds of projects.” It says the analysis from a non-profit group of trade unions and environmental organisations, BlueGreen Alliance, found that 223 manufacturing and clean energy projects, amounting to $82.9bn in investment and 111,765 jobs, had been “stalled [or] cancelled” under Trump. The newswire adds that according to the group, the cancellations and delays were caused by “Trump’s signature tax and spending package, which repealed or curtailed Biden-era incentives, as well as other ‌administration actions ⁠aimed at reducing federal support for renewable energy and electric vehicles”. 

MORE ON US 

• New York became the first US state to halt new data-centre construction, putting in place a one-year moratorium on their development, reports Reuters. 
• The New York Times: “Data centres to add billions in power costs in 13 states.” 
• Conservation groups have sued the Trump administration over changes to the Endangered Species Act which they argue “gutt[ed] a core protection” in the law, says Agence France-Presse. 
• Reuters: “Trump exempts certain chemical companies from Biden-era emissions rules.” 
• A “record-smashing” heatwave is moving from the western US towards the east and parts of Canada, reports Agence France-Presse, as “hot and dry conditions also contributed to fierce wildfires”. 

Fires continue in France with an ongoing blaze in the Fontainebleau forest south of Paris consuming nearly 2,000 hectares and leading to the evacuation of 1,000 people, reports the Associated Press. The newswire notes: “Bigger fires have been ravaging areas of southern France, but the Fontainebleau fire is exceptionally close to the densely populated region surrounding the French capital.” The Guardian reports that Bastille Day celebrations were disrupted by the “searing heatwave and wildfires”. Meanwhile, wildfires continue to burn in parts of the UK, reports BBC News, amid hot and dry conditions. 

“I have studied climate tipping points for more than 20 years, and I’m increasingly concerned that scientists have overlooked the most dangerous aspect of these for societies,” writes Anders Levermann, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Nature. He says that the way in which these tipping points unfold is “more important” in some ways than the endpoint. He writes that this will “manifest as a period of increasingly dramatic weather volatility, rather than a sharp shift in average conditions”. Levermann notes that “there is no coherent framework – in climate physics or economics – for analysing climate subsystems during tipping transitions”. He concludes: “Instead of analysing future climate as a sequence of quasi-equilibria – as a system that will settle when the world stops emitting carbon – researchers must treat it as an unstable system that is reorganizing while society tries to phase out carbon-based energy.” 

MORE COMMENT

• CNN Business senior reporter David Goldman writes: “The world no longer has an oil problem. It has a gasoline problem.” 
• “As long as countries depend on fossil fuels, instability anywhere can create economic pain everywhere,” writes executive director of Greenpeace International, Mads Flarup Christensen, in Al Jazeera.  
• In Climate Home News, Suresanathan Murugesu, country director of Action Against Hunger in the Philippines, writes that the nation is “caught in an extreme weather trap”. 
• Science commentator Anjana Ahuja writes about threats to US science in the Financial Times under the headline: “Trump is driving another nail into the coffin of US science.”
• Climate sceptic Bjorn Lomborg writes misleading and selective narratives about the impacts of climate change on food production in the Los Angeles Times.

Closing the “adaptation gap” should be a “priority” rather than an “afterthought” for incoming UK prime minister Andy Burnham”, writes executive director of the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative, Laurie Laybourn, in the Guardian. This gap is the “difference between the climate society is built for and the one that exists”, he writes, saying that Burnham should take heed because “climate breakdown is playing out worse than many expected”. Laybourn writes: “For example, in 2021, the chances of a 40C heatwave happening in the UK before 2040 were assessed at 0.02%. Yet the following year, it happened.” He says the next Labour government should focus on decarbonisation, adaptation and other measures, but concludes: “To stop derailment, even deeper changes are needed.” 

MORE UK COMMENT 

• The Guardian’s parliamentary sketch writer John Crace writes about Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch’s “ideological purge” of “moderate” members. The Guardian says Tory peer Gavin Barwell lost the party whip and that he believed this was due to his criticism of Badenoch over excluding “Tories who supported net-zero targets”.
• A number of opinion columns are dedicated to the possibility of Ed Miliband becoming the next UK chancellor. Economics editor at the Times, David Smith, says: “If Ed Miliband becomes chancellor, he should tackle energy prices.” 
• Former Labour MP, Tom Harris, writes in the Daily Telegraph: “Stopping Miliband from becoming chancellor is a national emergency.” 
• Political editor at the Daily Express, Martyn Brown, says there would be “jitters” if Miliband was appointed as “city bosses and ultra-high-net-worth individuals have warned that a left-wing chancellor would reduce market confidence”. 
• An editorial in the Sun says Burnham “won’t stand a chance” of tackling cost of living issues with Miliband as chancellor due to his net-zero “zealotry”. 
• Shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho says in the Daily Telegraph that “energy grid whistleblowers must not be ignored”. 

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

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