Welcome to DeBriefed from Carbon Brief.
An essential guide to the week’s most important developments on climate change.

Intensifying hurricanes

STILL POWERFUL: Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida on Wednesday “weakening but still extremely powerful,” the Guardian reported, with “catastrophic winds likely to cause significant property damage” and leaving “nearly 3 million homes and businesses… without power.” At least 16 people were killed across the state, officials told CBS News. Bloomberg noted that the US “has been hit by five hurricanes so far this year.”

2.5 TIMES MORE FREQUENCY: Record-breaking sea temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are a major cause of the intense hurricanes devastating the region this year, Carbon Brief reports (see more below). The Independent reported on a new World Weather Attribution analysis, which found that hurricanes as intense as Hurricane Helene, the second-deadliest U.S. storm in recorded history, which made landfall just days before Milton, “are now about 2.5 times more common” due to human-induced climate change.

GLOBAL CRISIS: Elsewhere, “unprecedented” floods in Niger killed 339 people and displaced more than 1.1 million, Radio France Internationale said. [saw] more than 40 people killed and thousands displaced.” Floods and landslides in Bosnia have killed at least 22 people, Le Monde reported. Finally, in Bangladesh, five people have died and more than 100,000 people have been stranded by floods, according to Reuters.

Oil rush

AMBITION LEFT: BP will abandon its “ambitious target” of cutting oil and gas production by 40% by 2030, the Times reported. This step is expected to be formalized in February. The newspaper added that BP “is conflicted[ing] to close a valuation gap” with industry competitors and faces pressure from investors to increase fossil fuel production and “stop investing in more ill-conceived wind projects.” (Any new fossil fuel project worldwide is incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.)

RACE TO THE BOTTOM: India will “radically reform regulations and invite foreign oil giants to explore both onshore and offshore [opportunities]as the country “struggles to extract as much oil as possible while there is still a market,” according to the Financial Times. The newspaper noted that oil companies hope India’s strong economic growth forecasts will “support future demand.”

UNLIKELY CHAMPIONS: In the US, oil companies are lobbying Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump “not to scrap provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act,” according to the Wall Street Journal, as many of them benefit from the law that provides billions of dollars in “tax credits that are essential for their investments in renewable fuels, carbon capture and hydrogen”.

• NO SHOWS: Ahead of COP29, the EU has called for a phase-out of “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that do not address energy poverty or just transitions,” ENDS Europe reported. Meanwhile, Bank of America, BlackRock, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank and other financial institutions will “skip” COP29, according to the Financial Times.
• STREAMLINE: Colombia, host of COP16, is urging the United Nations to combine the COPs on climate change, biodiversity and desertification to avoid “wasting time” and creating “synergies” in countries’ climate plans, according to Reuters.
• NEW RULES: The UN has developed a mandatory mechanism that aims to prevent carbon credit project developers from violating human rights or causing environmental damage with their activities, Climate Home News reports.
• ‘CATASTROPHIC’ Descent: Wildlife populations have declined at a “catastrophic” average rate of 73% over the past fifty years, according to a World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF) report in the Washington Post.
• TWO EXTREME: The World Meteorological Organization found that 2023 was the “driest year in more than three decades for the world’s rivers,” according to the Associated Press. At the same time, the Financial Times reported that rising temperatures in September ‘brought heavy extreme rainfall’.

The amount of new renewable energy capacity, in gigawatts, that will be added globally between 2024 and 2030 is 2.6 times greater than total additions between 2017 and 2023, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency.

• The presence of permafrost almost halves the riverbank erosion rate in an Arctic river, according to a study published in Nature.
• Research in Nature Climate Change has shown that even if global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the impact of climate change will increase inequality by an average of 1.4 points of the Gini index by the end of the century , the most common measure of income inequality, will increase.
• A new study in Nature Climate Change estimates that climate change will increase the risk of whale sharks, the world’s largest fish, crossing global shipping lanes and colliding with ships.

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

The amount of heat stored in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico reached record levels this month amid an unprecedented marine heat wave. These temperatures, themselves 200 to 500 times more likely due to climate change, played a key role in intensifying the hurricanes that devastated the US this year, a new study from Carbon Brief finds. Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which hit the U.S. within two weeks of each other, became more powerful as they passed over the Gulf as hotter ocean water transferred more energy to the storms and caused them to intensify more quickly.

How Scotland is protecting its ancient stone circles from climate change

This week, Carbon Brief explores what climate change means for a 5,000-year-old monument in Orkney.

Orkney, in the north of Scotland, is famous for its Neolithic monuments, including the Ring of Brodgar, Scotland’s largest stone circle.

Historic Environment Scotland (HES), a government agency that maintains Scotland’s historic sites, is encouraging tourists to help monitor the monument for signs of the impact of climate change through the citizen science program Monument Monitor.

Carbon Brief interviews Dr Mairi Davies, climate change policy manager at HES, about the impact of climate change on the site and the effectiveness of citizen science in combating it.

Carbon Brief: What impact has climate change had on the Ring of Brodgar?

Mairi Davies: In 2019 we organized a workshop in Orkney to apply the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI), a methodology developed to rapidly assess climate impacts across all types of World Heritage sites, to the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage site (HONO ). , including the Ring of Brodgar.

HONO was determined to be extremely vulnerable to the impacts of three major climate drivers: sea level change; precipitation change; and storm intensity and frequency change.

Increased visitor numbers on the Ring of Brodgar are interacting with changes in rainfall patterns – mainly increased rainfall, but also periods of very dry weather – which has led to severe and increasing erosion of visitor numbers, threatening the fabric of the site .

CB: What inspired HES to turn to citizen science to monitor these impacts? And has it been effective?

MD: We provide a diverse range of properties, many of which are located in remote areas. Although we make regular inspection visits, we cannot be everywhere at once.

Since its launch in 2018, Monument Monitor has been a really useful tool for supporting conservation work in the sites we care for, and for promoting engagement with both visitors and local communities. Using photos sent to us by visitors, we have been able to model how climate change is affecting flooding at Machrie Moor Standing Stone Circle in Arran, as well as measure the impact of increased visitor numbers at Clava Cairns… On the Ring of Brodgar, Visitor photos help us capture how well the site can drain after increasing incidents of extreme weather.

CB: What more needs to be done to protect Scotland’s Neolithic heritage from climate impacts?

MD: Over recent years at the Ring of Brodgar we have undertaken an extensive programme… to create more resilient footpaths for visitors. Balancing access to the Ring of Brodgar, especially to the Inner Ring, and nature conservation is now a key management issue for the area, with periods of partial closure of the area required to allow areas of footpaths to recover.

Projects such as SCAPE (Scotland’s Coastal Archeology and the Problem of Erosion) work with the public to investigate and promote the eroding archaeological remains on Scotland’s coasts.

More broadly, HES will continue its work with communities and partners across Scotland to investigate the impacts of climate change on our historic sites and support climate change adaptation. Our Climate Impact Guide identifies many of the risks and hazards of climate change facing Scotland’s historic environment and provides owners, local communities and caretakers of historic sites with routes to… increase resilience to climate change.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

THE FUTURE OF EUROPE: The Columbia Energy Exchange podcast spoke with European Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson about the EU’s energy strategy following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

BY THE NUMBERS: The Associated Press interviewed the founder of consulting firm Rystad Energy about why he believed technology is the key to “mitigating climate change.”
CHINA NDC: An op-ed in Foreign Policy argued that China should avoid setting “weak” targets in its 2035 climate commitments, adding that it is “in China’s own interest” to include ambitious goals.

• Ellen MacArthur Foundationeditor-in-chief | Salary: £39,000. Location: Cowes, Isle of Wight or remote
• Oxford Economicschief economist – climate advice | Salary: unknown. Location: Oxford or London
• Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environmentpolicy analyst and research advisor to Prof. Lord Nicholas Stern | Salary: £40,229-£48,456. Location: London
• BloombergBloomberg Green Editor | Salary: $120,000-160,000. Location: New York

DeBriefed is published by Daisy Dunne. Send your tips or feedback to [email protected].
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