Daily Briefing: El Niño ‘strongest for 70 years’ | China emissions fall | Heathrow ‘risk’

03.09.26

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News

El Niño ‘supersized’ as countries race to prepare for extreme weather, UN warns

Esme Stallard, Mark Poynting, Becky Dale, Yvette Tan, Tiffanie Turnbull and Nikita Yadav, BBC News

The World Meteorological Organization has released the latest data on the looming El Niño event, showing that it could be the “strongest for more than 70 years and last until at least February 2027”. It continues: “In the Pacific’s key monitoring region, surface temperatures have been well over 2C above average in recent weeks, putting it on track to be declared a ‘very strong’ event. But it is expected to surpass even that marker. Monthly sea surface temperatures could get close to 4C above average, forecasts suggest.” The Independent quotes António Guterres, the outgoing UN secretary-general: “El Nino is being supersized before our eyes…The science leaves no room for doubt: the planet is in uncharted waters and those waters are heating up. Sea surface temperatures are rising, temperatures keep climbing, and the world is in the danger zone of extreme weather. The race now is between rising risks and our commitment to take climate action and protect people. We must win that race.” The Guardian, citing Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor Dr Zeke Hausfather, says “the event is near certain to shatter temperature records, according to the latest forecasts”.

Loss and damage fund urged to hold emergency meeting on Nepal

Joe Lo, Climate Home News

Following last week’s flash flooding in Nepal, board members of the UN’s loss and damage fund are “coming under pressure” to “respond quickly to climate disasters rather than just financing longer-term projects”, according to Climate Home News. The outlet reports that “developing-country board members gathered online and eight signed a letter, seen by Climate Home News, asking the fund’s board to hold a meeting to respond to the request”. Separately, Mafalda Duarte, executive director of the UN’s Green Climate Fund, tells Agence France-Presse that “the devastation caused by the Nepal flood disaster should return political focus to climate change”. There is continuing coverage, in the Times of India and Bloomberg, of comments by Nepal’s foreign minister, Shisir Khanal, who is asking for compensation from the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters.

Meanwhile, outlets continue to link the disaster to climate change. The Associated Press reports that, “as climate change warms the Himalayas, disasters like the Nepal floods are becoming more frequent”. The climate-sceptic Daily Telegraph has an article under the headline: “Climate change or a Chinese mega dam? The Nepal floods have become an ideological battleground.” It says: “The consensus is that climate change, which is disproportionately affecting the region, is making such disasters more likely. But that is not to say rising temperatures are solely to blame in this instance.” BBC News reports that “extreme rainfall is intensifying: the region is warming faster than the global average, a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, and the monsoon is delivering more rain in fewer, heavier bursts”.

MORE ON MOUNTAINS

CNN reports that, in January 2025, “the Trump administration cut off funding for a long-running natural hazards program that aimed to identify and monitor landslide hotspots in Nepal”.
Two government sources have told Reuters that “Nepal plans to rebuild an early-warning system for landslides on part of its border with China, installing seismic sensors, cameras and a satellite link”.
Wood Mackenzie’s Yuxi Wang tells Bloomberg that dams in Tibet could face “construction delays from extreme weather events” and operate “more poorly…in a warmer world”.
CGTN says that monitoring systems can detect glacial lake outbursts in a matter of days, but warning times for glacier collapses, such as the one in late August, would be needed “on the order of minutes”.
The New York Times reports that Himalayan glaciers are “absorbing more heat and melting at dangerous rates”, in part because they are “darkened by soot from vehicles and factories”.
Scientific American explains how the super El Niño “could turbocharge warming in the Himalayas”.

UK: Heathrow expansion ‘a risk we cannot afford to take’, says mayor

James Kelly, BBC News

London mayor Sadiq Khan has “formally opposed plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport, arguing the expansion threatens environmental targets and transport networks”, reports BBC News. According to the broadcaster, Khan said that “he saw no evidence the proposals were compatible with a credible path to net-zero”. The London Standard covers new research by the University of Manchester, commissioned by Friends of the Earth, which finds that “allowing a third runway to be built at Heathrow would ‘overshoot’ the UK’s legally binding climate targets”. The outlet continues: “The UK aviation industry is already forecast to exceed legally binding limits in the seventh carbon budget, part of the national plan to reach net-zero by 2050…[The report] also highlighted that, based on existing evidence, sustainable aviation fuels, such as used cooking oil, would not be able to close the gap between carbon emissions and targets.”

MORE ON UK

The Times reports that climate activist group Just Stop Oil has taken to the streets for the first time in 17 months, “bringing Parliament Square to a standstill during Andy Burnham’s first PMQs”.
BusinessGreen: “Pubs, bars, restaurants and food providers paid £680 more per month on average for their energy as they ramped up air conditioning during the UK’s record-breaking heatwaves this summer, Zero Carbon Company finds.”
The Daily Telegraph: “Labour ‘failing to deliver on net-zero jobs promise’.”

Europe: Gas prices surge after Middle East strikes, sparking winter fears

Emma Powell, The Times

“Fresh strikes in the Middle East have pushed European gas prices to their highest level in more than three years,” reports the Times. The newspaper says the increase in gas prices “raises the prospect of further increases in energy costs for households in Britain, which already face an average £60 increase in their annual bill from October after a rise in the quarterly price cap to £1,723 a year, a three-year high”. The Wall Street Journal notes that “the European Union’s gas storage facilities are only 65% full, their lowest level toward the end of summer in at least 15 years”. The Daily Telegraph adds: “Analysts warned that prices were set to rise further in the weeks before Europe begins to refill its storage facilities to prepare for winter.”

MORE ON EUROPE

Reuters: “Europe’s General Court on Wednesday rejected a challenge ‌by NGOs Global Legal Action Network and CAN Europe to a European Commission decision setting ⁠EU member states’ annual greenhouse gas emission allocations for 2023 to 2030.”
Reuters covers a warning from the French finance ministry, which says that the summer’s drought and heatwaves could shave 0.1 percentage points off the country’s economic growth this year, mainly due to lost farming revenue.
The Financial Times: “Sweden’s first female prime minister and the frontrunner to return to power in upcoming elections aims to make the Scandinavian country a pioneer of green industry again after its struggles in batteries and steel.”
Euractiv reports that “countries responsible for half of the EU’s greenhouse gas output made little progress on reducing emissions last year, and may even be backsliding, official inventories show”.
EuroNews reports that a senior European Commission official said that “climate policy must survive, because we want to survive in Europe”.
Reuters: “Climate shocks hit EU maize heartland in Hungary and Romania.”

China rejects G20 criticism of its export strategy

Alan Rappeport and Jim Tankersley, The New York Times

The Group of 20 nations were unable to agree on a communiqué on Tuesday because of “resistance” from China, according to US treasury secretary Scott Bessent, reports the New York Times. China had rejected parts of the joint statement that included language on “ensuring efficient supply chains for critical minerals” and “the risks of an overreliance on exports for growth”, adds the newspaper. China also objected to the phrase “non-market policies” and “resisted calls for the IMF and OECD to improve data needed to analyse non-market policies”, according to the Financial Times, citing EU and US officials. Bloomberg and Reuters also carry quotes from Bessent on the meeting outcomes.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reports that an EU delegation led by the bloc’s top trade officials will visit China later this month, where they will “assess whether Beijing is willing to make the sort of concessions that could see them avoid sliding into a damaging tit-for-tat exchange in the autumn”. Germany looks to agree on a “package of measures in the coming weeks to counter what it sees as unfair Chinese trade practices”, according to finance minister Lars Klingbeil, reports Bloomberg. An editorial by the state-supporting newspaper Global Times argues that recent comments by EU climate action commissioner Wopke Hoekstra “lay bare a troubling policy inclination” where geopolitical considerations overshadow the “economic logic of the energy transition”. It adds that the EU’s attempt to reduce its dependence on China’s low-carbon technologies “would only slow the energy transition and erode the bloc’s industrial competitiveness”.

MORE ON CHINA

The Guardian, Inside Climate News and Bloomberg cover new analysis for Carbon Brief, which finds that China’s CO2 emissions fell by 1% in the second quarter of 2026.
China and Egypt have agreed to deepen “localisation cooperation” in EVs and renewables and to strengthen cooperation in addressing climate change, according to a joint statement carried by Jiemian.
Researchers at the thinktank CICIR write in Qiushi that “new energy development” globally is showing a trend of “decline in the west and a rise in the east”.
The NEA says that building a new-energy system is a transformation in “structure, technologies and services”, requiring a “systematic approach”, says BJX News.
China has issued measures to provide “diversified investment” in scientific innovation in the ecological and environmental sector, reports Xinhua.
Reuters: “Russia’s Putin renames planned ‘Power of Siberia 2’ pipeline to ‘Power of Baikal’ pipeline, minister says.”

Pacific island nations seek to turn geopolitics into funding to offset climate change harm

Charlotte Graham-McLay, The Associated Press

There is ongoing coverage of yesterday’s UN report on climate “overshoot”. The Associated Press reports that officials at the annual Pacific Islands Forum summit have responded to the report: “Wednesday’s report finally admitted that the world would cross the 1.5C threshold ‘in the next few years,’ while recommending efforts to bring down the temperature. The leaders gathered in Palau said that would be too late.” It adds: “The summit’s host urged climate funding instead of geopolitics squabbles.” The Financial Times notes that the forum had previously declared climate change as “the single greatest threat” to regional security. Meanwhile, Agence France-Presse reports that Australia’s prime minister Anthony Albanese attended that Pacific Islands Forum, where he said that “a top climate meeting being held in Fiji and Tuvalu next month [the pre-COP] will ‘elevate’ the global challenge, despite only a handful of leaders so far confirming they will attend”.

US: Chevron to double Venezuela oil production with $7bn pledge

Malcolm Moore, Ana Rodríguez Brazón and Joe Daniels , Financial Times

“Chevron has committed to more than double its oil production in Venezuela over the next five years in a $7bn plan,” reports the Financial Times. The newspaper says the US government “has been pushing international companies to invest in Venezuela as it attempts to increase the supply of US-controlled oil from the country”. Al Jazeera reports that “Venezuela is home to the world’s largest proven oil reserves – an estimated 303bn barrels, or about 17% of the global total”. However, it adds that “the country’s oil is heavy, sour crude and extracting and refining it is costly”. The outlet notes that, last week, the Trump administration announced a deal that would give the US control of more than one-fifth of Venezuela’s proven oil reserves.

MORE ON US

BBC News has a feature on Alejandro Betancourt, the “colourful oil baron behind US-Venezuela oil deal”.
The Independent reports that “millions of homes and businesses across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic face an increased threat of power outages on Wednesday as intense heat places severe strain on electricity networks”.
The Los Angeles Times: “After a tumultuous year, California lawmakers sent several important energy and environment bills to the governor’s desk in the final hours of the legislative session.”
The Daily Telegraph reports on the “red tape and cost of drilling for oil” in Greenland under the headline: “Trump’s Greenland oil grab freezes over.”
The Los Angeles Times: “Earth is sizzling, but climate isn’t a hot topic for Democrats in this year’s campaigns.”
Semafor reports that the price of oil jumped by more than 5% after Iran responded to US strikes with its own attacks on US military bases in Bahrain, Iraq and Jordan.

Comment

Keeping to 1.5C of warming is no longer possible – but we must still limit the overshoot

Laurence Tubiana, Climate Home News

Laurence Tubiana – a key architect of the Paris Agreement and CEO of the European Climate Foundation [which funds Carbon Brief] – unpacks yesterday’s UN report on climate overshoot in Climate Home News. She writes: “Some will argue that exceeding 1.5C means the Paris Agreement has failed and that it is no longer a useful threshold. I disagree.” She explains that “overshoot does not move the goalposts” and that “1.5C remains the benchmark we must work to return to”. She outlines the negative consequences of overshoot and says “our priority must be to transition away from fossil fuels and rapidly cut emissions, including short-lived climate pollutants like methane”. She argues there is a “limited” role for “sustainable carbon dioxide removal”, while solar radiation management brings “new complex risks”. She concludes: “Overshoot is not just an engineering challenge. We need a full-scale response across societies, economies and political systems to prepare to navigate a more uncertain climate.”

MORE COMMENT

Sumnima Udas, an MP in Nepal, writes in Time that the “climate disasters we face are the essence of climate injustice” and that “we need climate finance that actually reaches Nepal”.
In the Climate Cafe substack, scientists Richard Richels, Henry Jacoby, Richard Rood, Bud Ward, Kristie Ebi and Gary Yohe urge readers to “say no to climate doomism”.
Simon Mundy, the moral money editor at the Financial Times, writes that Indonesia’s “solar push” highlights the “momentum” and “obstacles” around a green energy transition.
“Exiled journalist” Arturo McFields, a contributor at the Hill, writes that “the US-Venezuela oil agreement marks an unprecedented geopolitical victory for the US”.
Reuters energy columnist Rob Bousso writes that Trump’s plans risk “derailing Venezuela oil recovery”.
An editorial in the climate-sceptic comment pages of the Wall Street Journal, under the subheading “Albany’s raid on fossil-fuel firms is unconstitutional”, discusses a court case, in which a federal judge struck down a law that would make companies pay reparations for their CO2 emissions.

Tory attempts to repeal the UK Climate Act are tin-eared

John Gummer, The Financial Times

John Gummer, a Conservative peer who served as environment secretary of state over 1993-97 and is a former chair of the UK’s Climate Change Committee, writes in the Financial Times that the Conservative’s attempts to repeal the UK Climate Change Act are “utter insensitivity”. He notes that the Conservatives “introduced the act” in 2008, saying “how different the understanding shown by Conservative leaders [is] today”. Gummer argues that the act has “been the Conservative party’s greatest contribution to the British people this century”. He continues: “Now, in the very year when people in Britain finally discovered that climate change is not a future threat, but an immediate danger, the leadership seeks to betray all that their predecessors achieved”. He also argues that repealing the act is “economic betrayal” that will “send investment elsewhere”.

MORE UK COMMENT

Pippa Heylings MP, climate and energy spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, writes in LBC that it “it beggars belief” that the Conservatives are trying to scrap the Climate Change Act, in light of the UK’s recent wildfires and heatwaves.
Chris O’Shea, CEO of Centrica, writes in the Times that “lack of gas storage puts UK’s energy security at risk”.
The Financial Times Lex column says that rising temperatures in the UK could see more UK homeowners adding window shutters or awnings to their houses.
An editorial in the climate-sceptic Sun misleading claims: “Net-zero has saddled Britain with the highest electricity costs in the world [false], making the PM’s plans for ‘reindustrialisation’ a pipe dream.”

Research

A “viewpoint” paper explores the political and legal implications of defining the term “particularly vulnerable” for loss-and-damage finance | Climate and Development
The present-day Southern Ocean CO2 sink may “lose its effectiveness during climate mitigation” | Science Advances
A review of attribution studies in east Africa finds that more than half detect a “clear anthropogenic influence” on extreme events | WIREs Climate Change

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