The IPCC has given the green light to a special report by 2018 on the impacts of 1.5C global warming and emissions cuts needed to stay within that threshold. While the panel said the scientific community were “already mobilising” behind a 1.5C report, Myles Allen, professor at Oxford university’s Environmental Change Institute told the Guardian meeting the goal will be a significant challenge: “In a nutshell, it means we have to reduce emissions twice as fast as we would have done to limit warming to 2C – and that was already looking challenging.” IPCC chair Hoesung Lee told a press conference in Nairobi yesterday that the next comprehensive assessment will be published in 2022, “in good time for the global stocktake by governments in 2023”. Climate Home and BusinessGreen have more on the story. Carbon Brief has a run down of all the major decisions.

Corals within Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are likely to lose their ability to adapt with just half a degree of warming above current temperatures, a rise expected to happen in the next 40 years on current trends. Analysing 27 years worth of data, a new study shows corals are more prone to bleaching – where the coral loses its colour and grows more slowly – and less able to recover once they pass that threshold. Other outlets picking up on the new research include Reuters, TIME, New Scientist and ClimateHome. This year’s severe bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef is only the beginning, says The Washington Post.

Further tests are required on the reactor vessel at the new Flamanville-3 nuclear plant in Normandy to investigate ongoing problems with the steel casing, French energy firm EDF conceded yesterday. Having been a staunch supporter of the project, The Times says Emmanuel Macron, France’s economy minister, is “wavering in the face of growing doubts”. A spokesperson for Macron said that he still backed the plan but admitted that it involved “risks as well as opportunities”. The reactor at the much-delayed Flamanville plant is the same model as that planned for Hinkley Point in Somerset.

The head of Shell’s UK and Ireland operations has criticised the UK government for cancelling a competition to develop carbon capture technology in the last Autumn Statement. Attending an energy conference at the University of Aberdeen, Paul Goodfellow told the BBC he thinks carbon capture and storage is “a viable technology that should be used to help with decarbonisation.” But with the technology in early stages, there is “a collaborative approach needed between industry and government.”

New methods to scrub impurities from recycled steel to serve the aerospace and car industries could be the only way to save jobs in the UK’s steel industry, according to a Cambridge professor. Julian Allwood said current plans to rescue the steel industry did not go far enough because they did not utilise the latest technology. The steel market could continue to grow with all future demand growth could be met by recycling the existing stock of steel, he says, making it futile for the UK to attempt to compete against low-wage economies for mass market steel.

After the construction of the Gordonbush wind farm in Sunderland, the number of golden plovers dropped nearly 80 per cent, according to a new report from the RSPB and the British Trust for Ornithology. The researchers found the birds were affected during the first two years of operation rather than in the construction phase, suggesting breeding adults were being displaced elsewhere. Aeden Smith, head of planning for RSPB Scotland, said the findings highlight the importance of the sites chosen for developments, adding that the vast majority of wind farms pose no significant risk to our wildlife. BBC News and The Scotsman have the story.

Tributes have been paid to Professor Sir David MacKay who has passed away yesterday at Addenbrooke’s Hospital aged 48 after a battle with cancer. MacKay served as Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change between 2009 and 2014 and rose to prominence with the publication of his 2008 book Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air. Former Labour leader Ed Milliband paid tribute yesterday, calling the Cambridge professor a “passionate, original and brave” man. Carbon Brief sends our deepest condolences to David’s family and friends.

With some commentators quick to blame green energy costs for the woes of the British steel industry, such claims are “highly misleading” and the crisis at Tata steel shouldn’t be used to “score points” in a wider political debate, write the economist Lord Stern and head of the UK”s Committee on Climate Change, Lord Deben. The real difficulty facing the steel industry is overcapacity in world markets, particularly in China, which has driven prices down 60% in the last four years. Opportunity for UK industry in a world acting to reduce greenhouse emissions rests on understanding the nature of the UK’s competitive advantage and the jobs, skills and investment needed to realise it, they write.

With floods devastating large swathes of the country for the second time in recent years, the implications of climate change are becoming increasingly clear in the UK, writes the Labour MP for Wigan and shadow secretary of state for energy and climate change, Lisa Nandy, in the Huffington Post: “On the political right, climate sceptics and advocates of limited government have united to try to halt investment in clean energy and wider efforts to tackle climate change. In the UK, investment in renewable energy is already beginning to fall off a cliff as a consequence. With a government bound by a powerful combination of political and economic forces, the left’s response becomes critical.”

Just 0.5C additional warming could see corals of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) lose their in-built tolerance to bleaching, a new study warns. Corals within the GBR have developed a protective mechanism to adapt to sharp increases in sea surface temperatures in recent decades, the researchers say. But further increases in temperature may result in this tolerance being lost, the paper says, which may increase the rate of degradation of the GBR.

While there have been dramatic advances in understanding of climate science, support for research into the implications of climate change for society has been more modest and research progress slower, a new paper says. The authors outline three areas where progress on climate economics is sorely needed: refining the social cost of carbon, improving understanding of the consequences of particular policies, and better understanding of the economic impacts and policy choices in developing economies.

Up to 40% of the carbon in the fine roots of temperate forest trees may have been taken up from the atmosphere by the leaves of one of their neighbours, a new study suggests. Although the transfer of nutrients from one tree to another is known to occur when the roots of two individuals graft together, the study shows that the exchange of carbon can happen without grafting. The exchange is likely due to underground networks of a certain type of fungi, which has formed a symbiotic relationship with the roots of trees, the researchers say.