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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”.
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".
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’.”
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.”
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 “
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