research about climate change 2022

An official website of the United States government

Here’s how you know

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

The IPCC Climate Change 2022 Impacts Report: Why it matters

Large-scale reduction in carbon dioxide pollution key to climate change response, scientists say.

This week some 270 top scientists from 67 countries, including two NOAA scientists, are completing the final details of a large-scale report: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation & Vulnerability, the second part of the Sixth Assessment Report offsite link . The report will describe how climate change is already affecting the world’s human and natural systems.

View of the Chukchi Borderlands where the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic ocean basins meet. (Image credit: Caitlin Bailey/Global Foundation for Ocean Exploration)

Additional Resources

United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change offsite link

NOAA’s Climate.gov

NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program

NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center

On Monday, February 28, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change offsite link (IPCC) will release its latest report, which will focus on climate solutions and regional and local adaptation. It will also assess the feasibility of various adaptation strategies to curb current and predicted impacts of climate change.

The IPCC was established 34 years ago to provide actionable information on climate change for decision makers. IPCC reports are the result of a unique collaboration of scientific expertise and political consensus. The new report will reaffirm that the science pertaining to climate change is settled, and the most important response to climate change is large-scale reduction in carbon dioxide pollution that drives global warming.

...we have to act, we need a whole of society approach, no one can be left out, no household, no businesses, no government... Debra Roberts , Co-chair of the IPCC Working Group II report

To learn more about why this new report matters and what went into creating it, NOAA interviewed NOAA authors, Libby Jewett, director of the NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program, and Kirstin Holsman, a research scientist from NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center. They served on an international team of authors who assessed scientific literature to prepare the new IPCC report’s chapter on North America.

The authors underwent a rigorous selection process offsite link , and have spent three years working with fellow scientists to provide the best available science on climate change impacts, vulnerabilities and adaptation in North America. Holsman is also an author of the report’s cross-chapter paper on Polar Regions.

Watch: The below video interview features NOAA scientists Libby Jewett and Kirstin Holsman  — contributors to the latest IPCC report.

In a recent briefing on the new report, Debra Roberts, co-chair of the IPCC Working Group II report and head of Sustainable and Resilient City Initiatives in eThekwini Municipality in Durban, South Africa, said the report will tell a story about how today’s civilization has been built on ways of life that have accelerated the decline of nature to the detriment of humans and ecosystems. The report’s authors will lay out a clear case for a major turnaround that will better integrate the world’s economic and environmental systems for a sustainable future.

Hans-Otto Pörtner, co-chair of the IPCC report and an expert on climate impacts on natural systems, said the report would call out the major barriers to creating a sustainable future in the face of rising temperatures and accelerating climate change impacts on every sector and every person on Earth.

“We have an education gap and an implementation gap,” Pörtner said. “The traffic rules to move toward more sustainable lives are not reaching people.” 

Added Roberts: “There is a strong message across all the IPCC reports that we have to act, we need a whole of society approach, no one can be left out, no household, no businesses, no government, and it's that whole of society scale that we haven’t put in place that is urgently needed.”

Media contact

Monica Allen,  monica.allen@noaa.gov , (202) 379-6693

Related Features //

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

• Publications
• Our Methods
• Short Reads
• Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

Americans Divided Over Direction of Biden’s Climate Change Policies

Several climate policies receive bipartisan support, despite republicans and democrats differing on overall approach, table of contents.

• Large majorities of Americans remain broadly supportive of several policies to address climate change
• Majorities of Americans say the federal government is doing too little to protect water and air quality, address climate change
• About seven-in-ten Americans say their local community has experienced extreme weather in past year
• 55% of U.S. adults oppose phasing out gasoline cars by 2035
• Younger Republicans more open to federal action, policy proposals to address climate change than older Republicans
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology
• Appendix: Detailed charts and tables

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand how Americans view climate, environmental and energy issues. For this analysis, we surveyed 10,282 U.S. adults from May 2 to 8, 2022.

Everyone who took part in the survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way, nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used for this report , along with responses, and its methodology .

More than a year into Joe Biden’s presidency, the public is divided over the administration’s approach to climate change: 49% of U.S. adults say the Biden administration’s policies on climate change are taking the country in the right direction, while 47% say these climate policies are taking the country in the wrong direction.

Climate change has been among the top priorities of the Biden administration , whose actions on the issue include rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement and passage of an infrastructure bill with funding for renewable energy. More recent legislative efforts on climate have stalled in Congress, and a Supreme Court decision in June curtailed the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate power plant emissions.

Ratings of Biden’s approach to climate change – and the federal government’s role dealing with the issue – are deeply partisan. A majority of Republicans and independents who lean to the GOP (82%) say Biden’s climate policies are taking the country in the wrong direction. Among Democrats and Democratic leaners, most say Biden is moving the country in the right direction on climate policy (79%).

But in a sign of Democratic frustration with progress tackling climate change, there’s discontent within the party even among those who say Biden’s policies are taking the country in the right direction. Among Democrats who back the direction of the administration’s climate policies, 61% say the administration could be doing a lot more on climate; far fewer (37%) say they are doing about as much as can be expected. 

While the public is divided over Biden’s approach to climate change, a majority of Americans continue to see room for more federal action on the issue: 58% say the federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of global climate change, compared with just 18% who say it is doing too much (22% say it is doing about the right amount). Here again, partisan differences are wide, with Democrats much more likely than Republicans to say the federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change (82% vs. 28%).

Despite these polarized attitudes, the Pew Research Center survey of 10,282 U.S. adults conducted from May 2 to 8, 2022, finds broad public agreement on some specific policies to address climate change. A large majority of Americans (90%) say they favor planting about a trillion trees to absorb carbon emissions to help reduce the effects of climate change, and 79% favor providing a tax credit to encourage businesses to develop technology to capture and store carbon emissions. Both of these policies are backed by sizable majorities of Republicans and Democrats alike.

The survey, fielded before the Supreme Court’s decision limiting the EPA’s authority to regulate power plant emissions , finds 72% of Americans favor requiring power companies to use more energy from renewable sources, like wind and solar, and 68% back taxing corporations based on the amount of carbon emissions they produce. Partisan gaps are more pronounced on these approaches to reduce the effects of climate change, but they are not absolute. About half of Republicans – including majorities of moderate Republicans – say they favor these approaches to limiting emissions, as do most Democrats.

Climate change is making extreme weather events more frequent and severe . A majority of Americans (71%) say their community has experienced at least one of five forms of extreme weather in the past year, including severe weather such as floods or intense storms (43%), long periods of unusually hot weather (42%), droughts or water shortages (31%), major wildfires (21%), or rising sea levels that erode shorelines (16%).

Large shares of Americans who say their communities have been impacted see climate change as contributing to these extreme weather events. For example, among the 42% of Americans who say they have experienced unusually hot weather in the last year, 61% say climate change contributed a lot and 30% think it contributed a little. Across all five forms of extreme weather included in the survey, more than eight-in-ten of those who say they’ve been impacted view climate change as having contributed a lot or a little to the event.

Other key findings include:

A 55% majority opposes phasing out the production of new gasoline cars and trucks by 2035, while 43% are in favor. Opposition is slightly higher today than it was in April 2021, when 51% opposed and 47% favored this idea. Partisans remain far apart on this proposal: 82% of Republicans and those who lean to the GOP say they oppose phasing out the production of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035, while 65% of Democrats and Democratic leaners say they favor this.

42% of U.S. adults say they are very or somewhat likely to seriously consider purchasing an electric vehicle (EV). About as many (45%) say they are not too or not at all interested in an EV. Interest in purchasing an EV is about the same as it was in the spring of 2021, before gas prices in the U.S. rose sharply from an average of $2.95 in April 2021 to $4.55 in May 2022. Roughly seven-in-ten of those at least somewhat likely to consider an EV in the future cite saving money on gas as well as helping the environment as reasons why.

By 53% to 45%, Americans are more likely to view stricter environmental laws as worth the cost than to say they cost too many jobs and hurt the economy. However, this view is less widely held today than it was in September of 2019, when about two-thirds (65%) said stricter environmental laws and regulations were worth the cost. Partisan divisions on this measure have widened over the last few years. Three-quarters of Republicans now say stricter environmental laws hurt the economy, up 20 percentage points from 2019. Among Democrats, 21% now say stricter environmental laws and regulations hurt the economy, up from 14% in 2019.

Younger Democrats are more likely than older Democrats to express frustration with the administration on climate change. Among Democrats ages 18 to 29, 26% say the Biden administration’s climate policies are taking the country in the wrong direction, compared with just 9% of Democrats 65 and older. And among Democrats who say the Biden administration is taking things in the right direction, those ages 18 to 29 are also more likely than those 65 and older to say the Biden administration could be doing a lot more on climate change (73% vs. 54%).

Lower-income adults as well as Black and Hispanic adults are especially likely to report environmental problems in their communities. A majority of Americans see at least one of the environmental issues mentioned in the survey, such as water pollution and excessive waste and landfills, as a problem in their area. Lower-income adults and Black and Hispanic adults are more likely to see these problems in their communities than others in the U.S. For instance, 61% of lower-income adults say air pollution is a big or moderate problem in their local community, compared with smaller shares of middle- (45%) and higher-income adults (38%).

Within the GOP, younger adults are more likely than older adults to see a need for federal government action or offer policy support on environmental and climate issues. About two-thirds (64%) of Republicans ages 18 to 29 favor requiring power companies to use more energy from renewable sources; Republicans 65 and older are much less likely to support this policy (42%). This general pattern of greater support among younger Republicans is seen across many – but not all – climate and environmental policy questions.

While Americans have mixed reactions to the Biden administration’s overall approach to climate policies, there continues to be broad public support for a range of specific proposals aimed at reducing the effects of climate change.

An overwhelming majority of U.S. adults (90%) support planting about a trillion trees to absorb carbon emissions. Majorities of Americans also support tax credits to businesses for developing carbon capture and storage technologies (79%) and requiring power companies to use more renewable energy (72%). About two-thirds favor taxing corporations based on their carbon emissions (68%) and incentives to increase the use of hybrid and electric vehicles (67%).

There is near consensus among both Democrats and Republicans in favor of planting large numbers of trees to help absorb carbon emissions (91% and 89%, respectively).

Majorities from both parties also support providing tax credits to businesses for developing carbon capture and storage technologies (88% of Democrats and 70% of Republicans).

Democrats and Republicans are more divided over other climate measures. For example, 90% of Democrats favor requiring power companies to use more energy from renewable sources. In comparison, about half of Republicans favor this idea (49%), while an equal share say they oppose it.

Overwhelming majorities of Democrats also favor taxing corporations based on their carbon emissions and providing incentives for the use of electric vehicles. Slightly fewer than half of Republicans support these two measures (46% each).

Republican support for both measures has fallen since 2020. The share of Republicans who support taxing corporations based on the amount of carbon emissions they produce is down from 55% to 46% today. Support for providing tax credits to businesses for developing carbon capture technology is down 8 points, from 78% to 70%. See Appendix for more details .

On balance, Americans think the federal government is doing too little to address several key areas of environmental protection, such as air and water quality, and to reduce the effects of climate change.

A majority (63%) says the federal government is doing too little to protect water quality of rivers, lakes and streams. About half as many (31%) say the federal government is doing about the right amount in this area; a very small share (5%) say it is doing too much.

Majorities also think the federal government is doing too little to protect air quality (58%), reduce the effects of climate change (58%) and protect animals and their habitats (56%). For each of these areas of environmental protection, significantly smaller shares say the federal government is doing about the right amount.

When it comes to protecting open lands in national parks and nature preserves, opinion is more evenly divided: 47% say the federal government is doing too little, while 44% say it is doing about the right amount in this area.

Small shares say the federal government is doing too much across these five areas of environmental protection, though the share who say this about reducing the effects of climate change (18%) is slightly higher than for other areas.

Republicans and Democrats disagree over how much the federal government is doing to protect key aspects of the environment

Democrats remain much more likely than Republicans to say the federal government is doing too little across key aspects of the environment.

On climate change, about eight-in-ten Democrats (82%) say the federal government is doing too little, while just 13% say it is doing the right amount and few (4%) say it is doing too much. By contrast, larger shares of Republicans say the federal government is doing too much to address climate change than say it is doing too little (37% to 28%); 33% say it is doing about the right amount.

Large partisan differences also are seen across other areas of environmental protection. When it comes to protecting air quality, 77% of Democrats think the federal government is doing too little, compared with 34% of Republicans.

For more details on these views over time, see the Appendix .

On balance, Americans think stricter environmental laws are worth the cost – but a growing share see too much economic downside

When asked for their overall views, slightly more Americans say stricter environmental laws and regulations are worth the cost (53%) than say they cost too many jobs and hurt the economy (45%).

The share of Americans who say stricter environmental laws and regulations cost too many jobs and hurt the economy is up 12 percentage points since 2019, when 33% expressed this view.

Rising concern about the economic impact of environmental laws has primarily grown among Republicans (though this view has also grown somewhat among Democrats).

Three-quarters of Republicans now say stricter environmental laws hurt the economy, up 20 points from 2019. Among Democrats, 21% now say stricter environmental laws and regulations hurt the economy, up from 14% in 2019.

Most Americans report that their local community has experienced some form of extreme weather in the past year. The most common experiences are severe weather, like floods or intense storms (43% say their community has experienced this in the past year) and long periods of unusually hot weather (42%). Smaller shares say that in the past 12 months their local community has experienced droughts or water shortages (31%), major wildfires (21%) or rising sea levels that erode beaches and shorelines (16%). In all, 71% of Americans say they experienced at least one of these five kinds of weather events in the past year.

There are pronounced regional differences in experiences with extreme weather. Those living in the West are especially likely to say their local community has faced droughts or water shortages (68%), long periods of unusually hot weather (62%) and major wildfires (59%). Among Westerners, those living in the Mountain states (77% in this region stretching from Idaho to New Mexico) are more likely to report droughts in their local community in the past year than those in the Pacific states (63% of those in California, Oregon and Washington).

Those in the Northeast, Midwest and South are more likely than those in the West to say their local community has experienced severe weather events such as floods and intense storms in the past year.

In general, partisanship shapes how people view their weather experiences, but the size of the partisan gap depends on the type of weather event. Democrats are 25 percentage points more likely than Republicans to report their local community experienced long periods of unusually hot weather (54% vs. 29%). There are more modest gaps between the shares of Democrats and Republicans who say their local community experienced droughts (34% and 27%, respectively) and major wildfires (24% vs. 19%).

These partisan differences tend to hold across regions. However, there are some notable exceptions. For instance, in the West, similar majorities of Republicans (67%) and Democrats (68%) say their local community has experienced droughts or water shortages in the last year. See Appendix for more details .

Most Americans who say their local community has experienced extreme weather in the last year believe climate change was a contributing factor

Among the 42% of Americans who say their local community has experienced long periods of unusually hot weather, 61% say climate change contributed a lot to this event, while another 30% say climate change contributed a little. Just 8% do not see climate change as having played a role.

Similarly, among those who say their local community experienced major wildfires, 58% think climate change contributed a lot and 28% say climate change contributed a little.

In fact, large shares of those who report experiencing any of these five forms of extreme weather in the past year – including droughts, floods or intense storms, and rising sea levels – believe climate change contributed either a lot or a little.

Black and Hispanic Americans are particularly likely to report local environmental problems

Broad shares of Americans report environmental problems in their local area. A majority (59%) say too much garbage, waste and landfills is a big or moderate problem in their own community. About as many (56%) say pollution of lakes, rivers and streams is a big or moderate problem in their community.

Roughly half of U.S. adults (49%) say air pollution is at least a moderately big problem in their communities. Fewer say that access to safe drinking water (41%) and lack of green space (37%) in their communities are problems.

Black and Hispanic Americans continue to be more likely than White Americans to report each of these environmental problems in their communities. For example, 63% of Black Americans and 57% of Hispanic Americans say safety of drinking water is at least a moderate problem in their local community, compared with only 33% of non-Hispanic White Americans. There are significant gaps by race and ethnicity when it comes to other environmental problems, including air pollution.

Studies on environmental pollution have found that Black and Hispanic Americans are exposed to air pollution from a wide variety of sources, including construction and industry, more than White Americans.

Firsthand experiences with environmental problems also differ across levels of family income. Those with lower incomes are more likely to report environmental issues in their communities than those in middle- and upper-income families. For instance, a majority of lower-income Americans (58%) say the safety of drinking water is at least a moderate problem in their local community, compared with 37% of those in middle-income and 25% of those in upper-income families. Lower-income communities are among those at the greatest risk for unsafe drinking water.

Those who live in urban areas are more likely than those in rural or suburban areas to say that these environmental issues affect their communities. The divide between rural and urban Americans is widest on the problem of air pollution. More than six-in-ten of those who live in urban areas (64%) say air pollution is a big or moderate problem for their communities, compared with 47% of those in suburban areas and 38% of those who live in rural areas.

Americans lean against the idea of phasing out gas-powered vehicles by 2035: 55% say they oppose phasing out the production of new gasoline cars and trucks by 2035, compared with 43% who support this proposal.

The Biden administration has proposed regulatory efforts on emission standards that would increase the sale of electric vehicles so that half of all new cars and trucks sold in the U.S. are electric by 2030. Last month, the European Parliament supported a proposal to effectively ban new gas cars and trucks by 2035.

Support for phasing out gas-powered vehicles in the U.S. is down slightly from last year, when 47% of Americans favored this idea and 51% were opposed.

Democrats and Republicans continue to be deeply divided over whether to end the production of cars and trucks with internal combustion engines. About two-thirds of Democrats favor phasing out gasoline-powered cars and trucks by 2035 (65%). In contrast, just 17% of Republicans support this idea, while an overwhelming majority (82%) oppose it.

Among Democrats, a large majority of liberals (77%) favor phasing out the production of new gas-powered cars and truck by 2035. Moderate and conservative Democrats are more closely divided: 55% favor this idea, while 44% oppose it.

About four-in-ten Americans would seriously consider an electric car for their next purchase

When asked how likely they would be to seriously consider purchasing an electric vehicle (EV), 42% of Americans say they would be very or somewhat likely to seriously consider purchasing an electric vehicle. A slightly larger share (45%) say they would be not too or not at all likely to do this (13% say they do not plan to purchase a vehicle in the future).

The share of Americans who are very or somewhat interested in purchasing an electric car or truck is about the same as in April 2021, the last time this question was asked. Gas prices are up sharply since then , from an average of $2.95 in April 2021 to $4.55 in May 2022.

Those most inclined to consider an EV purchase in the future include younger adults, urban dwellers, Democrats and those who already own a hybrid or all-electric vehicle.

Across age groups, a majority of adults ages 18 to 29 (55%) say they are very or somewhat likely to consider an electric vehicle the next time they buy a vehicle. Smaller shares of adults ages 50 to 64 (34%) or 65 and older (31%) say the same.

Democrats are more inclined than Republicans to say they are at least somewhat likely to consider purchasing an EV. Younger adults within each party are more inclined than older adults to say this.

Those living in urban areas (53%) are more likely than those in suburban areas (44%) to report interest in purchasing an electric vehicle. Those living in rural areas are among the least likely to say this (27%).

The survey asked Americans who say they are at least somewhat likely to consider an electric vehicle about the reasons for their interest.

Among this group, large majorities say helping the environment (73%) and saving money on gas (71%) are major reasons why they would seriously consider purchasing an electric car. Those considering an electric car are far less likely to say keeping up with the latest trends in vehicles is a major reason they would be likely to purchase an electric vehicle (10%).

Among those who say they would seriously consider purchasing an electric vehicle, most Democrats (82%) say helping the environment is a major reason they would consider doing this; 17% say this is a minor reason and just 1% say this is not a reason. Among Republicans, a far smaller share of those interested in electric vehicles (46%) say helping the environment is a major reason why they would buy an electric vehicle, 41% say this is a minor reason and 13% say this is not a reason.

However, Republicans and Democrats agree that saving money on gas is a major reason to buy an electric car. Among those who would seriously consider purchasing an electric car, 73% of Republicans and 70% of Democrats say saving money on gas is a major reason why.

Across a range of questions about climate, energy and the environment, younger Republicans tend to be more supportive of federal government action and policy measures in these areas than older Republicans.

Republican adults under 30 are far more likely than older Republicans, ages 50 and older, to say the federal government is doing too little on key aspects of the environment. The age divide is widest when it comes to how much the government is doing on climate change: 47% of Republicans ages 18 to 29 say the federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change, compared with just 18% of Republicans 65 and older.

Republicans under 30 are also about twice as likely as Republicans 65 and older to say the federal government is doing too little to protect air quality (47% vs. 23%).

In addition, younger Republicans are more likely than older Republicans to support a range of policies aimed at reducing the effects of climate change. A 58% majority of Republicans ages 18 to 29 say they favor providing incentives to increase the use of hybrid and electric vehicles, compared with 35% of Republicans 65 and older. And younger Republicans are 22 points more likely than older Republicans to say they support requiring power companies to use more energy from renewable sources (64% vs. 42%).

Similarly, there are large age differences among Republicans over energy priorities. A majority of Republicans under 30 say that developing alternative energy sources such as wind, solar and hydrogen technology should be the more important priority for addressing America’s energy supply; a majority of Republicans 65 and older instead say that expanding exploration and production of oil, coal and natural gas should be the more important priority. For more on these patterns, see “ Gen Z, Millennials Stand Out for Climate Change Activism, Social Media Engagement With Issue .”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

Fresh data delivery Saturday mornings

Sign up for The Briefing

Weekly updates on the world of news & information

• Climate, Energy & Environment
• Political Issues

About 3 in 10 Americans would seriously consider buying an electric vehicle

How americans view national, local and personal energy choices, electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the u.s., how republicans view climate change and energy issues, how americans view future harms from climate change in their community and around the u.s., most popular, report materials.

1615 L St. NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20036 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries

Research Topics

• Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

© 2024 Pew Research Center

Inside the Greenhouse

• Statement of Method
• World print
• Africa print
• Europe print
• Latin America print
• Middle East print
• North America print
• Oceania print
• Australia print
• Canada print
• Denmark print
• Finland print
• Germany print
• India print
• Japan print
• Korea print
• New Zealand print
• Norway print
• Russia print
• Spain print
• Sweden print
• Intl Wire Services
• US Television
• Monthly Summaries
• Citing Datasets & Summaries
• Research Outputs
• Support MeCCO

Monthly Summaries 2022 Year End Retrospective

Special issue 2022 a review of media coverage of climate change and global warming in 2022.

Flooding in Pakistan and Sudan with connections made to climate change, clandestine bombings of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea, heatwaves in China and across Europe, elections in Australia and Brazil seen to be won by candidates with ambitions to advance climate policy action, releases of Working Group 2 and Working Group 3 of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Reports, the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in the US Congress with significant funds for climate action, increased sales of electric vehicles, solar panels and heat pumps, growth in renewable energy alongside record levels of global coal consumption, impacts on fossil gas availability and prices due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, all have illustrated that climate change or global warming are not a single nor merely an environmental issue, but are intersectional matters – at times threat multipliers – that weave through most critical concerns in our shared world. Developments and events like these in 2022 also have pointed to the reality that changes in the climate lead to ongoing collective action challenges in 2023 and beyond. The fact is that changes in the climate are consequences of shared behaviors that have cut to the heart of how we live, work, play, pray, and relax in today’s society.

At the global level, across the full year of 2022, media attention dropped 11% from 2021 among the sources tracked by our Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) team. Yet, 2022 coverage was up 38% from 2020, and up 7% from 2019. Going back over our 19 years of global-level monitoring (beginning January 2004), 2022 coverage was up from all other years besides 2021, making it the year with the second-highest amount of coverage of climate change or global warming overall.

Reflections on 2022 garnered media attention on many challenges, problems, and opportunities associated with human-caused climate change. Among them, Washington Post correspondents Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis noted , “The amount of excess heat buried in the planet’s oceans, a strong marker of climate change, reached a record high in 2022, reflecting more stored heat energy than in any year since reliable measurements were available in the late 1950s…that eclipses the ocean heat record set in 2021 — which eclipsed the record set in 2020, which eclipsed the one set in 2019. And it helps to explain a seemingly ever-escalating pattern of extreme weather events of late, many of which are drawing extra fuel from the energy they pull from the oceans”. Meanwhile, Guardian environment editor Damian Carrington wrote , “The world’s oceans were the hottest ever recorded in 2022, demonstrating the profound and pervasive changes that human-caused emissions have made to the planet’s climate. More than 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions is absorbed in the oceans. The records, starting in 1958, show an inexorable rise in ocean temperature, with an acceleration in warming after 1990”.

Atmospheric warming – despite the fact that La Niña years like 2022 dampen warming – also joined record levels, earning media attention, too. For example, New York Times journalists Henry Fountain and Mira Rojanasakul reported , “The world remained firmly in warming’s grip last year, with extreme summer temperatures in Europe, China and elsewhere contributing to 2022 being the fifth-hottest year on record, European climate researchers said this week. The eight warmest years on record have now occurred since 2014, the scientists, from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, reported, and 2016 remains the hottest year ever. NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also issued analyses of global temperatures for 2022 on Thursday, and their findings were similar. NASA’s analysis ranked 2022 as tied with 2015 for fifth warmest, while NOAA had last year as the sixth warmest”. Capturing regional records in Europe, Niels de Hoog and Ashley Kirk wrote in The Guardian that , “Twelve European countries broke monthly temperature records in 2022 as the continent recorded its hottest ever summer, new analysis shows. Of 27 European countries analysed by the Guardian, 12 recorded their highest ever temperature anomaly for at least one month in 2022. In each case, the anomalies were more than 1.9C above the average temperature recorded between 1991 and 2020 for at least one month” and “parts of western Europe, the Middle East, central Asia and China, New Zealand, north-west Africa and the Horn of Africa had their warmest year on record. Temperatures were also more than 2C above the 1991-2020 average in parts of northern central Siberia and along the Antarctic peninsula”.

An editorial in The Scotsman summed it up by asserting , “It was a year of records being smashed” and “Following the failures at the COP26 and COP27 summits to make sufficient progress on reducing fossil fuel use, the task of stabilising the world’s climate will become ever more difficult and the risk of a genuinely existential crisis ever more real. This is the legacy we are bequeathing to future generations”.

Figure 1. Media coverage of climate change or global warming in seven different regions around the world, from January 2022 through December 2022.

Of note, in 2022 some regions broke the record for the volume of mentions of ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ compared to the same months in the 18 previous years of our monitoring of print media outlets.

Figure 2. Relative rankings of the volume of media coverage of climate change or global warming in seven different regions around the world, from January 2022 through December 2022 compared to previous years.

For example, in Africa the volume of stories in the months of February and March 2022 were at their highest recorded, while this was the case in Asia in May and August 2022, in Europe in July 2022, in the Middle East in August 2022, and across the world in the month of May 2022. Meanwhile, coverage was relatively high in Latin America throughout most of 2022.

Throughout 2022, we continued our monitoring of media coverage of climate change or global warming. We continued to expand our work, now tracking stories in 14 languages (English, Arabic, Korean, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Finnish, Russian, Swedish, Danish, German, and Portuguese) across television, radio, and newspapers in seven regions on this planet. In October 2022, we added four new sources in Korea – Chosun Ilbo , Dong-a Ilbo , Maeil Business Newspaper , and Hankyoreh – thanks to the work of two new team members Dr. Kyungsun Lee and Dr. Kyotaek Hwang.

In partnership with the University of Colorado Libraries, on our website , we continue to provide 25 open-source downloadable datasets (as Excel files) that accompany our 50 monthly downloadable figures (as PNG, JPEG, PDF, or SVG vector images) capturing coverage across these media and at different scales.

Figure 3. Map of the media sources we monitor for coverage of climate change or global warming across seven different regions around the world.

What follows are stories we detected that media paid attention to in terms of key events, issues, moments, movements, and developments through political , scientific , cultural , ecological, and meteorological themes that transpired month to month in 2022. These January through December month-to-month explainers/summaries have also been posted each month on our website . In aggregate, this is our sixth annual review of coverage.

Back to top of page  

Smoke from forest fires is seen over Kyzyl-Sir, Russia in August 2021. The UN Weather agency has certified a 100.4 degree reading in Verkhoyansk, Russia last year as the highest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic. Photo: Nikolay Petrov/AP.

January media attention to climate change or global warming in newspapers around the globe dropped 13% December 2021. Furthermore, coverage decreased 11% from a year before (January 2021). Meanwhile, January 2022 global radio coverage of climate change or global warming dipped 67% from December 2021, while coverage in international wire services went down 20% from the previous month. Compared to the previous month coverage was down in all regions, but held steady in Latin America: Europe (-3%), Africa (-6%), Asia (-8%), the Middle East (-20%), North America (-26%), and Oceania (-34%). Figure 1 shows trends in newspaper media coverage at the global scale – organized into seven geographical regions around the world – from January 2004 through January 2022. 

At the country level, United States (US) print coverage diminished 21% while television coverage also decreased 37% from the previous month. Meanwhile, compared to the previous month, coverage decreased in all 14 countries that we at the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) monitor, except in Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom (UK) where coverage was up 2% in the three countries. For example, coverage dropped 7% in Norway, 12% in Japan, 12.5% in Sweden, 17% in Finland, 37% in New Zealand, 41% in India, 41% in Australia, 48% in Denmark, and 65% in Canada in January 2022. Coverage in January 2022 in these countries was also down from a year before in most cases, with exceptions in Finland (+6%), Spain (+10%), and Australia (+16%) while holding steady in Germany.

In January, many climate change or global warming stories in January focused on scientific themes. Among them, studies revealing continued increases in greenhouse gas emissions in 2021 along with ongoing increases in temperatures around the globe made news. For example, Guardian journalist Bibi van der Zee reported , “More than 400 weather stations around the world beat their all-time highest temperature records in 2021, according to a climatologist who has been compiling weather records for over 30 years. Maximiliano Herrera keeps track of extreme weather around the world, and publishes an annual list of records broken in the previous year. He and many other climatologists and meteorologists who follow these issues closely expect that 2021 will probably not be the hottest year in history…But it is likely to be in the top five or six, continuing the long-term upward trend. The past six years have been the six hottest on record”. Meanwhile, New York Times journalist Raymond Zhong noted , “Last year was Earth’s fifth hottest on record, European scientists announced on Monday. But the fact that the worldwide average temperature didn’t beat the record is hardly reason to stop worrying about global warming’s grip on the planet, they said. Not when both the United States and Europe had their warmest summers on the books. Not when higher temperatures around the Arctic caused it to rain for the first time at the Greenland ice sheet’s normally frigid summit. And certainly not when the seven hottest years ever recorded were, by a clear margin, the past seven. And, as is now the norm, a sheaf of new heat records have been broken, according to Herrera. Ten countries – Oman, UAE, Canada, the United States, Morocco, Turkey, Taiwan, Italy, Tunisia and Dominica – broke or tied their national highest record, 107 countries beat their monthly high temperature record, and five beat their monthly low temperature record”. As a third example, New York Times journalists Krishna Karra and Tim Wallace wrote (in an article with many visual representations), “Temperatures in the United States last year set more all-time heat and cold records than any other year since 1994…Heat waves made up most of these records. All-time heat records were set last year at 8.3 percent of all weather stations across the nation, more than in any year since at least 1948, when weather observations were first digitally recorded by the U.S. government. The world has been warming by almost two-tenths of a degree per decade. Extreme-temperature events can often demonstrate the most visible effects of climate change”. And, Guardian journalist Aliya Uteuova noted , “2021 was the fourth hottest year for the US on record and winter is the fastest-warming season in 38 out of 49 American states, excluding Hawaii, since 1970”.

Furthermore, an Advances in Atmospheric Sciences study found that records were set not just in the atmosphere but also in the oceans. This generated media attention. For example, Washington Post correspondent Kasha Patel reported , “The warmth of the world’s oceans hit a record. Again. A new analysis, published Tuesday in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, showed that oceans contained the most heat energy in 2021 since measurements began six decades ago — accelerating at a rate only possible because of human-emitted greenhouse gases. Since the late 1980s, Earth’s oceans warmed at a rate eight times faster than in the preceding decades…The team analyzed data from a worldwide network of buoys in seven ocean basins. Overall, it found that the upper 2,000 meters (6,562 feet) of Earth’s oceans absorbed more than 227 excess zettajoules of energy, compared with the 1981-2010 average. Last year broke the previous record set in 2020 by at least 14 zettajoules”.

In other scientific findings making news, a study in the journal Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology published in January noted that climate change is harming human fetuses and babies. For example, Guardian journalist Damian Carrington reported , “The climate crisis is damaging the health of foetuses, babies and infants across the world, six new studies have found. Scientists discovered increased heat was linked to fast weight gain in babies, which increases the risk of obesity in later life. Higher temperatures were also linked to premature birth, which can have lifelong health effects, and to increased hospital admissions of young children. Other studies found exposure to smoke from wildfires doubled the risk of a severe birth defects, while reduced fertility was linked to air pollution from fossil fuel burning, even at low levels. The studies, published in a special issue of the journal Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology , spanned the globe from the US to Denmark, Israel and Australia”.

January media accounts also featured cultural stories relating to climate change or global warming. For example, Washington Post journalist Steven Mufson reported , “The public relations giant Edelman vaulted to the top of its profession with clever campaigns that burnished the images of leading corporations. Now, under fire for its work on behalf of fossil fuel companies, Edelman is scrambling to bolster its own reputation. On Wednesday, more than 450 scientists called on public relations and advertising firms, including the prestigious Edelman, to stop working for oil and gas companies. The firms’ ad campaigns for these companies, the scientists said, “represent one of the biggest barriers to the government action science shows is necessary to mitigate the ongoing climate emergency.” A group of 100 activists and former Edelman employees partnered with Clean Creatives, a campaign pressuring PR and ad agencies to quit fossil fuels, to issue the same demand. The question for the PR and ad business is whether this emboldened coalition of academics and advocates can turn fossil fuel companies into social pariahs — a sort of New Tobacco”.

Also, in January several stories ran about climate change misinformation on social media. For example,  The South China Morning Post carried a story that noted , “The climate is changing, but misinformation about it on the major social media platforms is not. Climate change falsehoods, hoaxes and conspiracy theories are still prevalent on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube despite pledges to crack down, a new report says. Social media posts and videos denying climate change, disputing its causes or underplaying its effects not only can still be found on these platforms, but they are often also missing warning labels or links to credible information, according to Advance Democracy, a research organisation that studies misinformation. Climate scientists say they’re frustrated by the lack of progress in stemming the tide of climate change misinformation. For years, they’ve urged social media companies to identify, flag and take down the misinformation and the accounts that spread it”.

And the film ‘Don’t Look Up’ released at the end of December 2021 generated media attention and discussion in January. For example, New York Times journalist Maya Salam wrote , “In “Don’t Look Up,” a satirical incision from Adam McKay with only humor as an anesthetic, these themes are lampooned in equal measure and in no uncertain terms. Though heavy with metaphors — most important, the comet signifying climate change — its message is clear and not open to interpretation: Wake up! That the movie amassed 152 million hours viewed in one week, according to Netflix, which reports its own figures, suggests a cultural trend taking shape. There’s a hunger for entertainment that favors unflinching articulation and externalization over implication and internalization — to have our greatest fears verbalized without restraint, even heavy-handedly, along with a good deal of style and wit”.

January media accounts about climate change or global warming also were infused with several ecological and meteorological stories. For instance, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) assessment of extreme weather events attracted reporting. Associated Press journalist Seth Borenstein reported , “The United States staggered through a steady onslaught of deadly billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in an extra hot 2021, while the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions last year jumped 6% because of surges in coal and long-haul trucking, putting America further behind its 2030 climate change cutting goal. Three different reports released Monday, though not directly connected, paint a picture of a U.S. in 2021 struggling with global warming and its efforts to curb it. A report from the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm, on Monday said that in 2021 America’s emissions of heat-trapping gas rebounded from the first year of the pandemic at a faster rate than the economy as a whole, making it harder to reach the country’s pledge to the world to cut emissions in half compared to 2005 by 2030. And last year was the deadliest weather year for the contiguous United States since 2011 with 688 people dying in 20 different billion-dollar weather and climate disasters that combined cost at least $145 billion, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday. That was the second highest number of billion-dollar weather disasters — which are adjusted for inflation with records going back to 1980— and third costliest…Scientists have long said human-caused climate change makes extreme weather nastier and more frequent, documenting numerous links to wild and deadly weather events. They say hotter air and oceans and melting sea ice alter the jet stream which brings and stalls storm fronts, makes hurricanes wetter and stronger, while worsening western droughts and wildfires”. Meanwhile, CNN reporter Rachel Ramirez added , “As in the US, extremes are becoming more frequent and more intense around the world due to the climate crisis. A recent report by the World Meteorological Organization found that an extreme weather event or climate disaster had occurred every day on average somewhere in the world over the last 50 years, a five-fold increase in frequency over that period. Globally, the economic toll of these disasters has climbed seven-fold since the 1970s, the WMO reported”.

As a second example in January, a report from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) concluded that the summer of 2021 was the hottest and most extreme in Europe. Journalist Teresa Guerrero, from the newspaper El Mundo noted , “A summer that was not only marked by the heat waves suffered by Greece, Spain or Italy, but also by numerous and destructive extreme weather events: devastating fires in Greece, Turkey and other countries of the Mediterranean area and the heavy floods in Central Europe in July that affected Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands and in which more than 200 people died. "These events are a stark reminder of the need for us to change our habits, take decisive and effective steps towards a sustainable society and work to reduce net carbon emissions," said Carlo Buontempo, Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, during the presentation of the results”. On the other hand, there was an unusual episode of heat at the beginning of the year in Spain”. Victoria Torres Benayas, a journalist for El País wrote , “In the space of a year, two consecutive winters, Spain has experienced a historic snowfall, the hardest cold wave in 45 years, and a heat wave in January. Is it due to the natural variability of the weather without anthropogenic causes, as the deniers allege, is this normal? It is not, say experts who, in the absence of attribution studies, link it "without a doubt" to climate change”.

Last, political and economic themed media stories about climate change or global warming continued in January. A subset of stories continued to focus on investing and climate change. For example, Guardian correspondent Julia Kollewe wrote , “Larry Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock, the world’s biggest investment fund manager, said pushing climate policies was about profits, not being “woke”. In his annual letter to CEOs , Fink said businesses, cities and countries that do not plan for a carbon-free future risked being left behind. He argued that the pursuit of long-term returns was the main driver behind climate policies, after being criticised for seeking to influence companies. “Stakeholder capitalism is not about politics. It is not a social or ideological agenda. It is not ‘woke’,” he wrote. “We focus on sustainability not because we’re environmentalists, but because we are capitalists and fiduciaries to our clients””.

As a second example, in the European political arena there was a debate on whether to include gas and nuclear energy as green technologies. This issue appeared on the front pages of various European newspapers. In the newspaper El País , journalists Ignacio Fariza and Xosé Hermida narrated , “The Spanish Government rejects the European Commission's proposal that both nuclear energy and combined cycle plants, fueled by natural gas, be considered green technologies. In the European arena, the biggest proponent of nuclear receiving the label of green energy is France, a country in which nuclear power plants provide two thirds of the electricity consumed. The most influential voice of environmentalists in the German Executive, Deputy Chancellor Robert Habeck, was quick on Saturday to express his discontent with the Brussels draft”. On the other hand, in the economic field, the Davos Forum once again had climate change as the main challenge according to the Global Risk Report”. Furthermore, journalist Piergiorgio M. Sandri wrote in La Vanguardia , “What is the greatest concern of businessmen and global leaders in 2022? Maybe the pandemic? The escalation of inflation? A possible puncture of the debt bubble? None of all this. What most worries the economic elite of the planet has little to do with the progress of the economy or health evolution: it is climate change. The climate first appeared as a risk in 2011: today it is the number one priority”.

Wildfires tearing through a forest in the Chefchaouen region of northern Morocco. Credit: Fadel Senna/AFP/Getty Images.

February media attention to climate change or global warming in newspapers around the globe – while it is a shorter month – dropped 7% from January 2022. Furthermore, coverage decreased 16% from a year before (February 2021). Meanwhile, February 2022 global radio coverage of climate change or global warming dipped 4% from January, while coverage in international wire services went down 6% from the previous month. Compared to the previous month coverage was down in five regions, and up in three regions: North America (-6%), Asia (-10%), Europe (-17%), the Middle East (-22%), Latin America (+5%), Oceania (+11%) and Africa (+49%). Figure 1 shows trends in newspaper media coverage at the global scale – organized into seven geographical regions around the world – from January 2004 through February 2022. 

At the country level, United States (US) print coverage diminished 8% while television coverage also decreased 24% from the previous month. Looking at each print outlet, coverage in The New York Times increased 7% and increased 12% in The Wall Street Journal , but decreased 22% in The Washington Post , 33% in USA Today and 34% in The Los Angeles Times . Looking at each television outlet, coverage on Fox News was up 23% and coverage on ABC jumped 58%. But coverage went down 12% on CNN , 37% on PBS , 53% on MSNBC , 80% on CBS and 95% on NBC .

Meanwhile, compared to the previous month, coverage decreased in several countries that we at the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) monitor: Canada (-2%), Finland (-6%), Japan (-8%), Norway (-11%), Germany (-12%), New Zealand (-19%), the United Kingdom (UK) (-24%), Spain (-25%) and Sweden (-29%). Meanwhile, coverage increased 2% in Denmark, 23% in Australia and Russia (see Figure 2) and 33% India.

While coverage was curiously up in Russian print media, the general downward trend of media attention paid to climate change in February 2022 can be attributed in part to global media attention transfixed on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As such, Figure 3 shows many front pages on February 28, the day that the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its second working group report of the Sixth Assessment Report on ‘Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’. While these reports have often generated substantial media attention (for example, see our August 2021 explainer documenting high levels of coverage of the first working group report on ‘The Physical Science Basis’), there was moderate coverage (as we explain further below) but not abundant coverage through these 126 newspaper, television and radio sources that we monitor.

That said, in February, nonetheless many climate change or global warming stories in February focused on scientific themes, including the UN IPCC second working group report of the Sixth Assessment Report on ‘Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’. To begin the month, a study examining the ongoing and extreme drought in the US West garnered media attention. For example, ABC News reporter Julia Jacobo reported , “Southwest experiencing driest conditions in at least 1,200 years due to climate change…The megadrought that has been plaguing the Southwestern U.S. for at least two decades is causing the region to experience its driest conditions in 1,200 years, according to new research. Researchers analyzed tree ring patterns, which provide insights about soil moisture levels over long timespans, and found that the current megadrought has exceeded the severity of one experienced in the late 1500s and is the driest since the year AD 800”.

Also in early February, a study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that predicted sea level rise of one foot in the next 28 years in the US will make some coastal areas uninhabitable while putting hundreds of thousands of homes at risk from frequent flooding. For example, Washington Post journalists Sarah Kaplan and Brady Dennis noted , “The shorelines of the United States are projected to face an additional foot of rising seas over the next three decades, intensifying the threat of flooding and erosion to coastal communities across the country, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Human-caused climate change, driven mostly by the burning of fossil fuels, has accelerated global sea level rise to the fastest rate in more than 3,000 years. The report by NOAA, NASA and five other federal agencies — updating a study from 2017 — predicts that ocean levels along U.S. coasts will increase as much by 2050 as they did over the past century. This amount of water battering the coasts “will create a profound increase in the frequency of coastal flooding, even in the absence of storms or heavy rainfall,” NOAA said”.

In mid-February, a United Nations report that found that climate change was driving a global increase in extreme wildfires drove media coverage. For example, journalist Rachel Ramirez from CNN reported , “Wildfires have intensified around the globe, providing a stark reminder of how the climate crisis is upending lives and inflicting billions of dollars a year in damage. And it will only get worse, according to dozens of global fire experts. A report released Wednesday by the UN Environment Programme suggests it’s time we “learn to live with fire” and adapt to the uptick in the frequency and severity of wildfires that will inevitably put more lives and economies in harm’s way. The number of extreme wildfire events will increase up to 14% by 2030, according to the report’s analysis. By 2050, the increase will climb to 30%. Even with the most ambitious efforts to slash heat-trapping emissions, the report shows that those near-term consequences are locked in”.

But then on the last day of the month (February 28), the UN IPCC second working group report of the Sixth Assessment Report on ‘Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability’ did generate substantial media stories across radio, television and newspaper outlets. For example, USA Today journalists Dinah Voyles Pulver and Doyle Rice reported , “Life in some locations on the planet is rapidly reaching the point where it will be too hot for the species that live there to survive, international climate experts said in a report Monday…The report assesses scientific literature documenting the devastating effects of human-caused climate change on society and ecosystems worldwide. The group studied the vulnerability of people and ecosystems to the changing climate and how adaptation could help reduce the risks, said Pörtner and co-chair Deborah Roberts of South Africa”. Meanwhile, Guardian correspondent Fiona Harvey noted , “Climate breakdown is accelerating rapidly, many of the impacts will be more severe than predicted and there is only a narrow chance left of avoiding its worst ravages, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said. Even at current levels, human actions in heating the climate are causing dangerous and widespread disruption, threatening devastation to swathes of the natural world and rendering many areas unlivable, according to the landmark report published on Monday. “The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, a co-chair of working group 2 of the IPCC. “Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a livable future””.

Next, several political and economic themed media stories about climate change or global warming continued in February. To begin, news of the European Commission’s announcement of a proposal to classify some nuclear and gas-fired power plants as ‘climate friendly’ circulated widely. For example, Wall Street Journal reporter Joe Wallace wrote , “Hopes are rising that Europe will avoid a winter energy crisis that some feared would play to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s advantage as Moscow prepares for a possible invasion of Ukraine. A record influx of liquefied natural gas, combined with mild and windy weather, has slowed withdrawals from the region’s heavily depleted underground gas-storage caverns. A boost to flows of gas from Russia via Ukraine is helping, too”. Meanwhile, CNN journalists Ivana Kottasová and Angela Dewan reported , “The European Commission is coming under criticism after unveiling a long-delayed proposal to designate natural gas and nuclear power "sustainable" sources of energy Wednesday. Including the energy sources on the EU's green list could unlock a wave of private investment into new nuclear and gas projects. But the plans have angered climate activists and could still be blocked by European lawmakers, who are also deeply divided over the issue along national and political lines. EU Financial Services Commissioner Mairead McGuinness, presenting the proposal to journalists in Brussels after more than a year of horse-trading between member states, was forced to deflect accusations of EU "greenwashing" and concede that the proposal was ‘imperfect’”. And, El País journalist Bernardo de Miguel noted , “Nuclear, yes, why not. And the gas too. After months of hesitation and consultations with the capitals, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, managed to approve this Wednesday the draft regulation that will classify nuclear and gas as energies that can contribute to the fight against change climate and, therefore, deserving of a green label that can attract multi-million dollar investments. Von der Leyen has assumed the controversial decision knowing that it contradicts the opinion of the majority of the technicians consulted and that it exposes itself to a complaint by several EU partners before the European Court of Justice”.

Also, the increasingly covered US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission generated news interest in early February as it adopted a proposal to now consider gas infrastructure’s impacts on climate change on affected BIPOC and low-income communities. For example, Washington Post journalist Maxine Joselow reported , “The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will now consider how pipelines and related natural gas projects affect climate change and environmental justice communities, the commission ruled in a 3-to-2 vote on Thursday. The ruling marks the first time that FERC, an independent agency that regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, oil, and natural gas, has updated its policy for reviewing gas projects since 1999. Environmental advocates hailed the move, saying it will provide a crucial new avenue for blocking new fossil fuel infrastructure and staving off the worst effects of the climate crisis. But conservatives and industry groups slammed the decision, asserting that it will prevent millions of Americans from accessing affordable energy”.

Meanwhile, news of the European Renewable Energy Index increases – relating to the European Commission’s strategy to reduce dependence on Russian oil and gas imports – circulated in February. For example, Washington Post journalists Michael Birnbaum and Steven Mufson reported , “For years, Europe’s dependence on Russian energy has held it back from taking powerful action against Kremlin mischief. But now, the Russia-Ukraine conflict is forcing a change unlike any before, driving the European Union to make plans for a permanent, far-reaching break from Russian oil and gas, European policymakers said. The strategy to split from Russian energy — in the works before the invasion of Ukraine and expected to be announced by the European Commission next week — would give Europe a freer political hand against Russia than it has had in the past. It would take years and come with a hefty bill for European taxpayers. And it comes with the crucial backing of Germany, a nation so entangled with Russia that one of its former chancellors, Gerhard Schröder, is the chairman of Rosneft, Russia’s biggest oil company…Longer term, Russian energy officials have already been trying to sell more gas to China, since they acknowledged that Europe’s climate plans have set it on a path toward buying less Russian fossil fuel”. Similarly, concerns about the price of energy in February generated various news about the energy transition. For example, the journalist Pilar Blázquez wrote in La Vanguardia , “Brussels predicts that the price of electricity will remain high beyond spring. Energy prices are still at an unprecedented level and are responsible for half of the eurozone's inflation”. As a second example, journalist Camilla Hodgson noted in Financial Times , “The gas crisis casts a shadow over the road to COP27 in Egypt. Rising energy prices may work against climate leaders developing green policies in time for the upcoming November summit in Sharm el-Sheikh”.

Relatedly, the then-impending Russian invasion of Ukraine sent shockwaves through the international oil and gas industry. This generated many media accounts. For example, New York Times journalist Hiroko Tabuchi reported , “Russian troops hadn’t yet begun their full-on assault on Ukraine late Wednesday when the rallying cry came from the American oil and gas industry. “As crisis looms in Ukraine, U.S. energy leadership is more important than ever,” the American Petroleum Institute, the powerful industry lobby group, wrote on Twitter with a photo that read: “Let’s unleash American energy. Protect our energy security.” The crux of the industry’s argument is that any effort to restrain drilling in America makes a world already reeling from high oil prices more dependent on oil and gas from Russia, a rival and belligerent fossil fuel superpower. The industry’s demands have focused on reversing steps the Biden administration has taken to start reining in the production of fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change”.

February media accounts also featured cultural stories relating to climate change or global warming. For example, connections between climate change and the winter Olympics (that took place in Beijing in February) were made in several news stories. For example, CNN journalist Amy Woodyatt reported , “Although the Summer Games are often heralded as a melting pot – 11,417 athletes from 206 countries and regions across 33 sports participated in Tokyo 2020 – the Winter Games are nowhere near as diverse, with 91 delegations taking part at Beijing 2022. That’s five times more than the number of teams represented in the first Winter Games in Chamonix, France in 1924. But athletes from Africa, South Asia, as well as those from smaller island nations still find themselves struggling to qualify for competition in the Winter Olympics due to warmer climates, the prohibitively high cost of equipment, lack of infrastructure and limited opportunities to practice and compete”. Meanwhile, US National Public Radio reporter Jaclyn Diaz noted , “Outside of the window of a passing train from Beijing to Yanqing are rows and rows and rows of trees. This succession of perfectly arranged seedlings and saplings stretches for acres. Some look hardly more than three twigs tied together on the ground — and at serious risk of falling victim to a gust of wind. But at the base of each tree is a system of ropes and wood keeping them standing. Much of this obviously recent tree planting is tied to the 2022 Winter Olympics. Authorities in Beijing and Zhangjiakou (locations for the Games' venues) said before the Games that they had planted more than 80,000 hectares (about 198,000 acres) of forest and green areas combined. China is also in the midst of a years-long "greening" effort. Trees are being planted in and around Beijing to cut down on choking sandstorms from the Gobi Desert. Put together, the Chinese government and Olympic officials paint the tree planting as a win for the environment and one that offsets climate change and carbon emissions from these Games. The reality is much different, researchers and environmental experts say”.

Last, February media accounts about climate change or global warming with ecological and meteorological themes proliferated. For instance, news of endangered Australian koalas due to climate change appeared in a number of media accounts. For example, The Associated Press reported , “Koalas were declared officially endangered Friday in eastern Australia as they fall prey to disease, lost habitat and other threats. Federal Environment Minister Susan Ley downgraded their conservation status across the country’s east coast, in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, on a recommendation by the government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee…“There have been many pressures on the koala. The Black Summer fires, of course, was a tipping point. But we know the koala is vulnerable to climate change and to disease,” Ley told reporters”. Meanwhile, New York Times journalist Manan Luthra added , “The announcement, by the country’s environment minister, came two years after a parliamentary inquiry predicted that koalas could be extinct by 2050 without urgent government intervention”.

In mid-February, mudslides from torrential rains near Rio de Janeiro – with links made to a changing climate – appeared in media accounts. For example, BBC journalist Katy Watson reported , “More than 100 people have died in landslides and flash flooding in the Brazilian city of Petrópolis, officials say. The city, which is located in the mountains north of Rio de Janeiro, was hit by torrential rainfall. Houses in hillside neighbourhoods were destroyed and cars swept away as floodwaters raced through the city's streets. Search and rescue teams are combing the mud for survivors…It is the latest in a series of heavy rains to hit Brazil in the past three months, which scientists say are being made worse by climate change”.

Last, media stories of drought in continental Europe appeared in February. For example, in Spain an editorial in the newspaper La Vanguardia noted, “Spain is a traditionally dry country. The impact of climate change accelerates this dryness with the progressive increase in temperatures and the decrease in rainfall. The result is less water available for further consumption. But there is still no awareness of the seriousness of this situation and the need to adopt urgent measures to improve efficiency in water consumption”. This issue was also addressed in another editorial in the newspaper El País , which commented, “Water restrictions are the last remedy in a severe drought situation like the current one and no expert rules it out today for spring. Nor do the meteorologists have any indication that the situation will change. The hydrological year started very badly in October and continues badly. After an autumn with very low rainfall, winter has not brought the amount of rain and snow that would be necessary, so it is not expected that the aquifers will be filled in spring with melting ice. In the last four months it has rained 36% less than the average for the same period between 1981 and 2010 and the reserves of the swamps are dangerously close to the levels of the extreme drought of 2017-2018.”

Dominika Zarzycka / Getty Images.

March media attention to climate change or global warming in newspapers around the globe increased 19% from February 2022. However, coverage decreased 7% from a year before (March 2021). Meanwhile, March 2022 global radio coverage of climate change or global warming dipped again from the previous month, this time is was down 2%. Meanwhile, coverage in international wire services increased 14% from February 2022. Compared to the previous month coverage bounced back and increased in all regions except Latin America (-4%): Asia (+14%), Europe (+17%), Africa (+19%), North America (+24%), the Middle East (+26%), and Oceania (+36%). Figure 1 shows trends in newspaper media coverage at the global scale – organized into seven geographical regions around the world – from January 2004 through March 2022. 

At the country level, United States (US) print coverage increased 22% while television coverage actually dropped 10% from the previous month. Looking at each print outlet, coverage increased 9% in The Washington Post , while The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal both increased 21%, there was an increase of 31% in The Los Angeles Times and there was a jump of 162% in USA Today . Looking at each television outlet, it was a more mixed picture: coverage on Fox News was up 16% while it increased 40% on PBS while doubling on CBS and quintupling on NBC (after a steep drop in February. Meanwhile, coverage decreased on ABC and MSNBC 21%, and 59% on CNN .

Meanwhile, compared to the previous month, coverage decreased in Russia (-57%). But, among the rest of the countries that we at the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) monitor, coverage increased from February everywhere else: Japan (+5%), Denmark (+8%), Finland (+10%), Germany (+12%), Spain (+19%), India (+22%), Australia (+23%), the United Kingdom (UK) (+29%), Norway (+42%), Sweden (+47%), Canada (+61%), and New Zealand (+115%).

Many climate change or global warming stories focused on scientific themes in the month of March. To begin the month, a new study on increased pollen levels and a longer allergy season – with links to climate change – generated several news stories. For example, Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein (appearing on ABC News ) noted , “Climate change has already made allergy season longer and pollen counts higher, but you ain’t sneezed nothing yet. Climate scientists at the University of Michigan looked at 15 different plant pollens in the United States and used computer simulations to calculate how much worse allergy season will likely get by the year 2100. It’s enough to make allergy sufferers even more red-eyed. As the world warms, allergy season will start weeks earlier and end many days later — and it'll be worse while it lasts, with pollen levels that could as much as triple in some places, according to a new study Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. Warmer weather allows plants to start blooming earlier and keeps them blooming later. Meanwhile, additional carbon dioxide in the air from burning fuels such as coal, gasoline and natural gas helps plants produce more pollen, said study co-author Allison Steiner, a University of Michigan climate scientist. It's already happening. A study a year ago from different researchers found that from 1990 to 2018, pollen has increased and allergy season is starting earlier, with much of it because of climate change. Allergists say that pollen season in the U.S. used to start around St. Patrick’s Day and now often starts around Valentine’s Day. The new study found that allergy season would stretch even longer and the total amount of pollen would skyrocket. How long and how much depends on the particular pollen, the location and how much greenhouse gas emissions are put in the air”.

Yet in March, Russia's invasion of Ukraine limited print newspapers from publishing the results of IPCC Working Group II that was released on the final day of February. Some newspaper coverage around the world addressed it. For example, Spain is one of the European countries most vulnerable to global warming. Climate change will generate 8,000 deaths a year from extreme heat in this country. The journalist Teresa Guerrero narrated in El Mundo , “According to the IPCC, crop losses due to drought and extreme heat have tripled across Europe in the last 50 years and are projected to increase with continued warming, with most of these losses occurring in southern Europe, as the most suitable agricultural areas will move north. Droughts cost Spain already annual losses of around 1,500 million euros.”

Further into March, a publication in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences entitled ‘Tripling of western US particulate pollution from wildfires in a warming climate’ grabbed news attention. For example, CNN journalist Rachel Ramirez reported , “Only a few months into 2022 and it’s already a dreadful year for wildfires. More than 14,781 separate wildfires have scorched over half a million acres as of this week, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, the largest number of fires year-to-date the agency has recorded in the past decade. But many of these recent fires haven’t been igniting in California or the Pacific Northwest – which have endured several devastating fire seasons in a row – they’ve been popping up in places like Colorado and Texas, and have burned hundreds of thousands of acres in the past few weeks alone. Earlier in March, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted drought conditions would expand eastward this spring and worsen in some locations – conditions that are now priming the landscape in the Southern Plains for dangerous, fast-moving fires…Climate researchers have said two major factors have contributed to the West’s multiyear drought: the lack of precipitation and an increase in evaporative demand, also known as the “thirst of the atmosphere.” Warmer temperatures increase the amount of water the atmosphere can absorb, which then dries out the landscape. That’s also true for places like Colorado and interior Texas, away from the Gulf Coast, Swain said. When the atmosphere extracts moisture from the soil without returning that water in the form of precipitation, there’s going to be less water available to those plants”.

Several political and economic themed media stories about climate change or global warming continued in March. To begin, in the legal arena a group called ‘ClientEarth’ sued Shell for ‘failing to properly prepare for the net zero transition’ and this drew media attention. For example, CNN journalist Angela Dewan reported , “Environmental lawyers ClientEarth said they were preparing legal action against the directors of Shell over the company's climate transition plan, in what they said would be the first such case of its kind. The lawyers from ClientEarth — which is a Shell shareholder — said they are seeking to hold the oil and gas company's 13 directors personally liable for what they consider to be a failure to adequately prepare for the global shift to a low-carbon economy. They say that the board has failed to adopt and implement a climate strategy that aligns with the 2015 Paris Agreement, claiming that amounts to an alleged breach of the directors' duties under the UK Companies Act. ClientEarth said it had written to Shell notifying it of its claim and was waiting for it to respond before filing papers at the High Court of England and Wales. For the case to proceed, ClientEarth would then need permission from the court to do so”.

Also in March, a report from the International Energy Agency about how to build resilience against shocks to fossil fuel supplies as well as impacts on climate change made news headlines. For example, CNN journalist Matt Egan reported , “Governments around the world must consider drastic steps to slash oil demand in the face of an emerging global energy crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the International Energy Agency warned on Friday. The energy watchdog detailed a 10-point emergency plan that includes reducing speed limits on highways by at least 6 miles per hour, working from home up to three days a week where possible and car-free Sundays in cities. The recommendations for advanced economies like the United States and European Union would aim to offset the feared loss of nearly one-third of Russia’s oil production due to sanctions leveled on Moscow. Other steps in the emergency plan include increasing car sharing, using high-speed and night trains instead of planes, avoiding business air travel when possible and incentivizing walking, cycling and public transportation. An oil pumpjack pulls oil from the Permian Basin oil field on March 14, 2022 in Odessa, Texas. If fully implemented, the moves would lower world oil demand by 2.7 million barrels per day within four months – equal to the oil consumed by all the cars in China, the IEA said. And the impact would be greater if emerging economies like India and China adopted them in part or in full. However, the emergency steps would disrupt or even slow down a world economy that remains largely addicted to fossil fuels, especially for transportation. The IEA is suggesting the headaches would be better than the alternative”. Furthermore, New York Times journalists Catrin Einhorn and Lisa Friedman wrote , “The International Energy Agency said countries should encourage use of mass transit and car pooling, among other things. That could also help the climate crisis…Clean energy is the ultimate solution to tackling global warming and reducing energy dependency on other countries, many experts say. But it can’t come online fast enough to meet immediate demand. To make matters worse, countries were already far behind on the emissions reductions needed to meet the Paris Agreement, a global pledge intended to avoid the worst effects of climate change. While Western nations try to deal with the humanitarian crisis and the energy problems resulting from the war in Ukraine, “we should not forget a third crisis, which is the climate crisis,” Dr. Birol of the International Energy Agency said. “And as a result, all of the 10 measures we put on the table not only address the crude oil market tightness, but also help to pave the way to reach our climate goals””.

Further into March, in the US the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed regulation to require corporations to disclose their exposure to climate change risks was found to be newsworthy across several media outlets. For instance, Washington Post reporters Maxine Joselow and Douglass MacMillan wrote , “The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday approved a landmark proposal to require all publicly traded companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and the risks they face from climate change. The proposed rule from the Wall Street regulator mandates that hundreds of businesses report their planet-warming emissions in a standardized way for the first time. It reflects the Biden administration’s broader push to confront the dangers that climate change poses to the financial system and the nation’s economic stability. At an open meeting, the SEC’s three Democratic commissioners voted to approve the proposal, while the sole Republican commissioner voted against it. SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who was nominated by President Biden, said the rule would provide “consistent, comparable information” to investors. Environmentalists hailed the rule as a crucial first step in forcing the private sector to confront the economic risks of a warming world, even as some said the SEC should have gone further in requiring all businesses to disclose the emissions generated by their supply chain and customers. Some conservatives and business groups have opposed the federal government mandating any climate disclosures, and observers expect them to challenge the SEC proposal in court”.

Also in March, an announcement of a US and EU joint task force to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels garnered media attention. For example, Associated Press correspondent Raf Casert reported , “With stunning speed, Russia’s war in Ukraine is driving Western Europe into the outstretched arms of the United States again, especially apparent when President Joe Biden offered a major expansion of natural gas shipments to his European Union counterpart Friday. Talking to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Biden said the core issue was “helping Europe reduce its dependency on Russian gas as quickly as possible.” And Europe, which relies on Moscow for 40% of the natural gas used to heat homes, generate electricity and drive industry, needs the help. An economic miscalculation with massive geopolitical consequences, many European Union nations let themselves become ever more reliant on Russian fossil fuels over the years, vainly hoping trade would overcome Cold War enmity on a continent too often riven by conflict. That longstanding practice meant the 27-nation bloc could not simply stop Russian energy imports as part of Western sanctions to punish Moscow for the invasion a month ago. And changing energy policy is about as cumbersome as turning around a liquefied natural gas carrier on a rough sea. In reality, it will take years. This is where Biden stepped in Friday. Under the plan, the United States and a few like-minded partners will increase exports of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to Europe by 15 billion cubic meters this year. Those exports would triple in the years afterward, a necessary move if the EU can back up its claim to be rid of Russian imports in five years…Although the U.S.-EU initiative will likely require new facilities for importing liquefied natural gas, the White House said it is also geared toward reducing reliance on fossil fuels in the long run through energy efficiency and alternative sources of energy. But climate campaigners criticized the agreement and called instead for the U.S. and EU to focus on renewable energy and reducing fossil fuel demand”.

Furthermore, journalist Victor Martínez wrote in El Mundo , “Russia has historically been the great energy supplier of Europe through its coal, oil and gas. Until now, a reliable and vital partner for a continent weighed down by its enormous dependence on foreign energy. But these links have now become Europe's great weakness in its campaign of economic punishment of the Government of Vladimir Putin for the invasion of Ukraine”. The newspaper El País dedicated the editorial "Energy crisis and Europe" to him: “Russia's attack on Ukraine exposes the fragilities of the Union and will affect its plans against climate change. The energy price crisis, generated by the war, adds to the energy transition process undertaken by the European Union, which has led to the establishment of decarbonization objectives of 55% by 2030 and to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050. The delay in starting this transition is now being paid in two bills: that of the climate crisis, which is having worse effects than expected, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just pointed out, and that derived from Russian dependency.” In this way, the ecological transition is slowed down.

March media accounts also featured cultural stories relating to climate change or global warming. For example, stories of highways, Amazon deforestation and climate change were part of the media landscape. To illustrate, Washington Post journalist Terrence McCoy reported , “Stretches of the highway have been improved in recent years, making travel easier and unleashing a surge of deforestation. Many in the rainforest want the government to complete the job. President Jair Bolsonaro, who has worked to ease and undermine environmental regulations to promote development, says paving the highway would fulfill “a wish of the Amazonian people.” His vice president, a general in reserve, said he’d eat his own military beret if current officials don’t get it done. For many in Manaus, a city of 2.2 million cut off from Brazil’s main highway system, the road symbolizes something close to freedom — a lifeline that connects them to the rest of the country and paves the path toward development… In a region of both vast resources and pervasive poverty, many say the time has come to use what’s there for the taking, to seize the better life long denied by isolation and geography, to push back against federal laws and environmentalists who seem to care far more for trees than people. The outcome of the emotional political clash, scientists say, has implications not only for the rest of the forest but the world. The Amazon is a crucial bulwark against global warming, helping to slow the inexorable march of climate change. But researchers warn that finishing the highway and subsequent state roads would open up its core to destruction”.

Last, March media accounts about climate change or global warming with ecological and meteorological themes proliferated. For instance, Associated Press journalists Sam Metz and Felicia Fonseca reported , “A massive reservoir known as a boating mecca dipped below a critical threshold on Tuesday raising new concerns about a source of power that millions of people in the U.S. West rely on for electricity. Lake Powell’s fall to below 3,525 feet (1,075 meters) puts it at its lowest level since the lake filled after the federal government dammed the Colorado River at Glen Canyon more than a half century ago — a record marking yet another sobering realization of the impacts of climate change and megadrought. It comes as hotter temperatures and less precipitation leave a smaller amount flowing through the over-tapped Colorado River. Though water scarcity is hardly new in the region, hydropower concerns at Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona reflect that a future western states assumed was years away is approaching — and fast”.

Also in March, heat waves in various parts of the world such as the Arctic prompted several news accounts making links to a changing climate. For example, Guardian journalist Fiona Harvey wrote , “Startling heatwaves at both of Earth’s poles are causing alarm among climate scientists, who have warned the “unprecedented” events could signal faster and abrupt climate breakdown. Temperatures in Antarctica reached record levels at the weekend, an astonishing 40C above normal in places. At the same time, weather stations near the north pole also showed signs of melting, with some temperatures 30C above normal, hitting levels normally attained far later in the year. At this time of year, the Antarctic should be rapidly cooling after its summer, and the Arctic only slowly emerging from its winter, as days lengthen. For both poles to show such heating at once is unprecedented. The rapid rise in temperatures at the poles is a warning of disruption in Earth’s climate systems. Last year, in the first chapter of a comprehensive review of climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of unprecedented warming signals already occurring, resulting in some changes – such as polar melt – that could rapidly become irreversible. The danger is twofold: heatwaves at the poles are a strong signal of the damage humanity is wreaking on the climate; and the melting could also trigger further cascading changes that will accelerate climate breakdown. As polar sea ice melts, particularly in the Arctic, it reveals dark sea that absorbs more heat than reflective ice, warming the planet further. Much of the Antarctic ice covers land, and its melting raises sea levels”.

Also in March, the collapse of the Glenzer Conger ice shelf holding back two glaciers sparked many media stories. For example, Guardian journalist Donna Lu reported , “An ice shelf about the size of Rome has completely collapsed in East Antarctica within days of record high temperatures, according to satellite data. The Conger ice shelf, which had an approximate surface area of 1,200 sq km, collapsed around 15 March, scientists said on Friday. East Antarctica saw unusually high temperatures last week, with Concordia station hitting a record temperature of -11.8C on 18 March, more than 40C warmer than seasonal norms. The record temperatures were the result of an atmospheric river that trapped heat over the continent…Prof Matt King, who leads the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, said because ice shelves are already floating, the Conger ice shelf’s break-up would not in itself impact sea level much. He said that fortunately the glacier behind the Conger ice shelf was small, so it would have a “tiny impact on sea level in the future”. “We will see more ice shelves break up in the future with climate warming,” King said. “We will see massive ice shelves – way bigger than this one – break up. And those will hold back a lot of ice – enough to seriously drive up global sea levels””.

Smoke and steam rise from a coal processing plant in Hejin in central China's Shanxi Province. Photo: Sam McNeil/AP.

April media attention to climate change or global warming in newspapers around the globe increased 4% from March 2022. However, coverage was down 13% from a year before (April 2021). Meanwhile, coverage in international wire services increased 23% and radio coverage was up 28% from March 2022. Compared to the previous month coverage decreased in Africa (-102%), the Middle East (-32%) and slightly in Asia (-2%), but increased slightly in North America (+2%) and the European Union (EU) (+2%), while coverage was up more substantially in Latin America (+13%) and Oceania (+14%). Figure 1 shows trends in newspaper media coverage at the global scale – organized into seven geographical regions around the world – from January 2004 through April 2022. 

At the country level, United States (US) print coverage decreased 2% while television coverage actually increased 86% from the previous month. Among other countries that we at the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) monitor, coverage dropped in Finland (-7%), Norway (-15%), Spain (-18%), Japan (-18%), and Denmark (-23%). However, coverage in April 2022 increased in the United Kingdom (UK) (+1%), India (+8%), New Zealand (+8%), Sweden (+9%), Canada (+12%), Germany (+27%) (see Figure 2), Australia (+41%), and Russia (+69%).

Many climate change or global warming stories focused on scientific themes in the month of April. To begin the month, United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) report on ‘Mitigation and Policy’ drew significant media attention after its April 4 release. For example, Associated Press journalists Frank Jordan and Seth Borenstein reported , “Temperatures on Earth will shoot past a key danger point unless greenhouse gas emissions fall faster than countries have committed, the world’s top body of climate scientists said Monday, warning of the consequences of inaction but also noting hopeful signs of progress. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change revealed "A litany of broken climate promises" by governments and corporations, accusing them of stoking global warming by clinging to harmful fossil fuels. “It is a file of shame, cataloguing the empty pledges that put us firmly on track toward an unlivable world,” he said”.

As a second of many examples, PBS Newshour reporter Isabella Isaacs-Thomas noted , "We have the knowledge, money, technology and affordable clean energy that we need to cut our carbon emissions in half by 2030. That’s the good news from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group III report released Monday. What’s standing in the way is lack of political will and sufficient funding to make the necessary rapid, widespread, cross-sector changes a reality, according to the report. The authors warn that “it’s now or never” if humanity wants to achieve its long-standing goal of curbing global warming to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, which will “impossible” without swift and sweeping greenhouse gas emissions. But funding is currently three to six times lower than it needs to be to ensure that the global average temperature does not rise beyond 2 degrees Celsius. The money needed to bridge that gap does exist, the report emphasizes, and making it available is a matter of “stronger alignment of public sector finance and policy””.

While the Russian invasion of Ukraine may have somewhat stymied climate change coverage in April, newspapers still dedicated many column inches to the findings. As yet another example, in a front page story Guardian journalist Fiona Harvey wrote , “The world can still hope to stave off the worst ravages of climate breakdown but only through a “now or never” dash to a low-carbon economy and society, scientists have said in what is in effect a final warning for governments on the climate. Greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, and can be nearly halved this decade, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to give the world a chance of limiting future heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels”.

In further science-themed climate change news in April, attention paid to findings of record-breaking methane emissions fueled media stories. For example, journalist Victoria Albert from CBS News reported , “The atmospheric concentration of methane — a greenhouse gas that contributes significantly to global warming — increased by a record amount in 2021 for the second year in a row, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday. Levels of carbon dioxide also increased at a "historically high rate," NOAA said. A preliminary analysis showed atmospheric methane levels increased by 17 parts per billion (ppb) in 2021, which NOAA said was "the largest annual increase recorded since systematic measurements began in 1983." Atmospheric methane levels averaged 1,895.7 ppb in 2021, which is approximately 162% higher than pre-industrial levels. This graph shows globally-averaged, monthly mean atmospheric methane abundance determined from marine surface sites since 1983. Values for the last year are preliminary. NOAA's findings also provided alarming news about carbon dioxide, which it said was the primary contributor to human-caused global warming. Last year was the 10th year in a row that saw a more than 2 parts per million increase, which NOAA said is the "fastest sustained rate of increase in the 63 years since monitoring began." Approximately 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide were emitted due to human activity in 2021, NOAA said”.

Several political and economic themed media stories about climate change or global warming continued in April. To begin, the Russian war in Ukraine garnered media stories that linked energy and Russian oil and gas exports to climate change or global warming. For example, Wall Street Journal reporter Julia-Ambra Verlaine noted , “Natural-gas prices extended their climb Thursday, bucking seasonal trends as demand from overseas continues to pressure inventories. U.S. natural-gas futures for May delivery rose 4.3% Thursday to $7.3000 per million British thermal units—a 96% rise in the year to date. While natural gas stockpiles rose modestly during the week ended April 8, they remain nearly 25% below last year’s levels and 18% below the five-year average for this time of year, according to data released Thursday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration”.

As the month of April wore on, Russian oil giant Gazprom’s actions to cut off Poland and Bulgaria from oil and gas supplies – along with connections to climate change – grabbed media attention. For example, Associated Press journalists Vanessa Gera and Monika Scislowska wrote , “Polish and Bulgarian officials said Tuesday that Moscow is cutting off natural gas deliveries to their countries due to their refusal to pay in Russian rubles, a demand made by President Vladimir Putin after sanctions were levied against his nation over the invasion of Ukraine. Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom informed the two EU and NATO member nations that gas supplies will be suspended starting Wednesday, their governments said. The suspensions would be the first since Putin’s announcement last month that “unfriendly foreign buyers” would have to transact with Gazprom in rubles instead of dollars and euros. Only Hungary has agreed to do so, with other countries rejecting the demand as an unacceptable, one-sided breach of contracts and a violation of sanctions. If deliveries are halted to other countries as well, it could cause economic pain in Europe, driving natural gas prices up and possibly leading to rationing — but it would also deal a blow to Russia’s own economy. Wednesday’s cutoffs will affect deliveries of Russian gas to Poland through the Yamal-Europe pipeline, according to Polish state gas company PGNiG, and to Bulgaria via the TurkStream pipeline, that country’s Energy Ministry said. The Yamal-Europe line carries gas from Russia to Poland and Germany, via Belarus. Poland has been receiving some 9 billion cubic meters annually, fulfilling some 45% of the country’s need. PGNiG said it was considering legal action over Moscow’s payment demand. But Climate Minister Anna Moskwa said Poland is prepared to make do after having worked to reduce its reliance on Russian energy sources. Several years ago the country opened its first terminal for liquefied natural gas, or LNG, in Swinoujscie, on the Baltic Sea coast, and later this year a pipeline from Norway is to become operational”.

Beyond the conflict in Ukraine, April contained political news about climate change in the French presidential campaign. For example, Expansión published an article by journalist Sara White entitled , “Macron opts for green credentials in the fight against Le Pen”. She wrote, “The president accentuates his support for renewable energy to appeal to leftist voters and environmentalists, but he faces criticism for his record”.

April media coverage about climate change or global warming with ecological and meteorological themes also kept pace with science stories. For instance, heavy rainfall across southeast Africa – with linkages made to climate change – drew attention. For example, Associated Press journalist Wanjohi Kabukuru reported , “Extreme rainfall in southeast Africa has become heavier and more likely to occur during cyclones because of climate change, according to a new analysis released Monday by an international team of weather scientists. Multiple tropical storms that pummeled Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique earlier this year were analyzed by the World Weather Attribution group, who determined that the storms were made worse by the increase in global temperatures. In just six weeks between January and March the region saw a record three tropical cyclones and two tropical storms make landfall. The heavy rains, storm surges and floods left more than 230 people dead and displaced hundreds of thousands across the region. The countries remain vulnerable to devastating weather this year, with cyclone season set to end in May”.

Also, in late April heatwaves in India and Pakistan were connected with climate change in several media accounts. For example, New York Times journalists Hari Kumar and Mike Ives reported , “Across a wide swath of the Indian subcontinent, scorching temperatures have damaged harvests. People are suffering from heat stroke. And the lights are flickering in some cities amid surging demand for air-conditioning. Now, the heat wave that has been pummeling India and Pakistan for weeks is expected to intensify over the weekend. In some hard-hit areas, it may be weeks before the region's annual monsoon sweeps in to provide relief…Heat-related watches were in effect on Thursday afternoon for all but a few of India’s 28 states, encompassing hundreds of millions of people and most of the country’s major cities. An alert — one notch up in severity — was in effect for the northwestern state of Rajasthan   The subcontinent’s scorching weather is a reminder of what lies in store for other countries in an era of climate change. Climate scientists say that heat waves around the world are growing more frequent, more dangerous and lasting longer. They are certain that global warming has made heat waves worse because the baseline temperatures from which they begin are higher than they were decades ago”.

Finally, ecological and meteorological stories related to climate change or global warming were generated when a report on the state of the climate in Europe by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) was published. For example, journalist Antonio Cerrillo wrote in La Vanguardia , “Climate change has already caused an average rise in temperatures of 2.2 °C in Europe. The increase experienced in the Old Continent is much higher than the world average of the planet, estimated between 1.1°C and 1.2°C since pre-industrial times. The Old Continent recorded in 2021 its hottest summer since there are records, according to the Copernicus service”.

April media coverage featured cultural stories relating to climate change or global warming. Some related to political stories about the ongoing war in Ukraine. For example, El País journalist Manuel Planelles wrote that the “War in Ukraine threatens global fight against climate change”, noting “Increased support for fossil fuels and oil and gas extraction contradict efforts against warming. Experts warn of the impacts of the conflict for multilateralism”. El País also published an editorial with the title “For the energy transition”, as a European bet on “the path to disassociate its economy from the current dependence on gas and oil supplies from Russia”, concluding, "The best way to guarantee energy sovereignty is to stop depending on fossil fuels”.

Furthermore, climate misinformation across social media made news. For example, Guardian journalist Alex Hern reported , “Pinterest is to block all climate misinformation, as the image-focused social network seeks to limit the spread of false and misleading claims. Under the new policy the site is committing to take down content that distorts or denies the facts of the climate crisis, whether posted as adverts or normal “organic” content. Pinterest is defining misinformation broadly: the company will take down content that denies the existence or effects of climate change or its human causes, as well as content that “misrepresents scientific data” in order to erode trust in climate science and harmful, false or misleading content about natural disasters and extreme weather events”. As a second example, New York Times reporter Tiffany Hsu noted , “Pinterest will prohibit ads and posts that feature climate misinformation in its latest attempt to block harmful content on its virtual pinboard service, the company said…The ban includes any content that denies the existence or impacts of climate change, or denies that humans influence global warming and that the phenomenon is supported by scientific consensus. Inaccurate posts about natural disasters and extreme weather events will also be removed, as will misrepresentations of scientific data through omission or cherry-picking meant to erode trust in climate science. Searches about sustainability are on the rise on Pinterest, with queries about “zero waste lifestyle” surging 64 percent in the past year”.

Stories were not limited to Pinterest, but also drew attention to Twitter. For example, CNN journalist Ramishah Maruf reported , “Twitter is banning misleading advertisements that go against the scientific consensus of climate change, the company announced on Friday, which was Earth Day. “We believe that climate denialism shouldn’t be monetized on Twitter, and that misrepresentative ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis,” Twitter said in a blog post. Those denying the effects of climate change have targeted sites such as Twitter and Facebook, enabling them to reach hundreds and thousands of those platforms’ users with false claims. The announced change did not indicate whether Twitter would ban or delete the accounts of users who post climate change misinformation. Twitter’s blog post cited the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose recent report called for “immediate and deep emissions reductions” to combat the impacts of global warming. The tech giant said it is working toward adding more “reliable, authoritative context” to conversations about the climate on its platform. Twitter’s move follows action taken by other tech companies. Earlier this month, Pinterest announced it will prohibit users from sharing climate misinformation on its site, banning the content outright. It will also remove posts that deny climate change. And last year, Google, announced it was banning ads on content from climate change deniers on its platform, as well as prohibiting advertisements that deny climate change. Separately, hours after Twitter’s policy update, European policymakers reached agreement on sweeping tech regulations that included stricter rules on how platforms regulate misinformation and illegal content on social media and other platforms. Big Tech has been facing increased pressure to combat the spread of climate misinformation on their platforms”.

Relating to those stories, media coverage associated with US Earth Day on April 22 prompted culturally-themed stories. For example, Washington Post journalist Douglas MacMillan reported , “As big businesses face more pressure to act on climate change, corporations have unleashed a tsunami of environmental pledges, net-zero commitments and sustainability certifications, all designed to show they are part of the solution. Often, critics say, these claims are just “greenwashing” — environmental marketing with little or no substance behind it. One recent review of 500 commercial websites by Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority found 40 percent of environmental claims to be misleading in some way, such as using terms like “sustainable” without defining them or omitting pertinent information about environmental harms. “Carbon neutral” usually does not mean a firm has zero carbon emissions. A green certification label on a product’s packaging may have no connection to a standard-setting group. For the average consumer, it can be difficult to assess which companies are taking meaningful steps to combat climate change, said Frederic Hans, a climate policy analyst at the NewClimate Institute, an independent, Germany-based organization that promotes measures to slow Earth’s warming”.

Finally, in April there were stories of scientists calling for activism to demand action against climate change. For example, journalist Teresa Guerrero from the Spanish newspaper El Mundo noted, “Coinciding with the publication of the last part of the IPCC report, the main scientific analysis on climate change, researchers from 25 countries grouped in the Scientific Rebellion movement launch non-violent civil disobedience actions to demand measures against the climate crisis”.

The Abbot Point coal terminal in Queensland. Australia spends billions each year on subsidies for fossil fuel industries. Photo: David Maurice Smith/New York Times.

May media attention to climate change or global warming in newspapers around the globe increased 13% from April 2022. Additionally, coverage was up 20% from the year before (May 2021). Meanwhile, coverage in international wire services increased 9% and radio coverage was up 19% from April 2022. Compared to the previous month coverage increased in all regions except Latin America. While dropping in Latin America 5% coverage increased in Africa (+1%), North America (+1%), the Middle East (+9%) Asia (+10%), and the European Union (EU) (+10%), while coverage was up more substantially in Oceania (+14%). Figure 1 shows trends in newspaper media coverage at the global scale – organized into seven geographical regions around the world – from January 2004 through May 2022.

At the country level, United States (US) print coverage increased 2% while television coverage actually decreased 15% from the previous month. Among other countries that we at the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) monitor, (May 2022) coverage dropped only in Germany (-6%) while it stayed steady in Canada compared to the previous month. Coverage increased in the remaining 14 countries monitored: Japan (+3%), Sweden (+8%), the United Kingdom (UK) (+12%), Canada (+12%), India (+17%), Russia (+19%), Finland (+20%), Spain (+34%)  (see Figure 2), Australia (+35%), Norway (+48%), New Zealand (+71%), and Denmark (+74%).

Many climate change or global warming stories focused on scientific themes in the month of May. To begin, coral bleaching and links to climate change made news through new research. For example, journalist Tori B. Powell from CBS News reported , “Ninety-one percent of reefs surveyed along the Great Barrier Reef in Australia were affected by coral bleaching to some degree during the summer of 2021-22, according to a government study. Researchers say climate change is "the greatest threat to the Reef" and that the warming ocean is a key factor behind the recent mass bleaching event. "Climate change is escalating, and the Reef is already experiencing the consequences of this," the study stated…In the annual Reef Summer Snapshot – conducted by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the Australian Institute of Marine Science, and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization – scientists conducted surveys of 719 reefs across regions. Aerial surveys revealed that 654 reefs displayed coral bleaching”. Also in May, several studies linked soil loss with food and climate challenges. For example, CNBC journalist Andrea Miller reported , “Soil can be considered black gold, and we’re running out [of] it.” The United Nations declared soil finite and predicted catastrophic loss within 60 years. “There are places that have already lost all of their topsoil,” Jo Handelsman, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “A World Without Soil,” told CNBC. The impact of soil degradation could total $23 trillion in losses of food, ecosystem services, and income worldwide by 2050, according to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. “We have identified 10 soil threats in our global report … Soil erosion is number one because it’s taking place everywhere,” Ronald Vargas, the secretary of the Global Soil Partnership and Land and Water Officer at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, told CNBC. According to the U.N., soil erosion may reduce up to 10% of crop yields by 2050, which is the equivalent of removing millions of acres of farmland. And when the world loses soil, food supply, clean drinking water and biodiversity are threatened. What’s more, soil plays an important role in mitigating climate change: Soil contains more than three times the amount of carbon in the earth’s atmosphere and four times as much in all living plants and animals combined, according to the Columbia Climate School”.

May media coverage also featured many cultural stories relating to climate change or global warming. For example – among several stories on the topic – New York Times journalist David Gelles wrote , “John Doerr, one of the most successful venture capitalists in the history of Silicon Valley, is giving $1.1 billion to Stanford University to fund a school focused on climate change and sustainability. The gift, which Mr. Doerr is making with his wife Ann, is the largest ever to a university for the establishment of a new school, and is the second largest gift to an academic institution, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Only Michael R. Bloomberg’s 2018 donation of $1.8 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, ranks higher. The gift establishes the Doerrs as leading funders of climate change research and scholarship, and will place Stanford at the center of public and private efforts to wean the world off fossil fuels.” Also, cultural attention was paid in May to climate researchers themselves taking action in the face of a changing climate. For example, Washington Post reporter Casey Quackenbush wrote , “As time runs out for the planet to avert a future of climate chaos, scientists around the world are throwing down the gauntlet. Climate change science has been settled for decades, yet policymakers have yet to take sweeping action, and greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb to record highs. Climate scientists began to publicly make policy recommendations based on their research in the late ’80s, and their warnings have become increasingly strident. In April, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said emissions must peak by 2025 to avoid catastrophic consequences. Now this inaction is driving some scientists to engage in civil disobedience, while others are striking against the IPCC, calling for a halt of further reports until governments mobilize. It’s a dire situation that’s taking a toll on the mental health of scientists, and raising the question of what climate advocacy scientists should engage in as politicians imperil the planet.” Finally, infrastructure and climate change continued to make news stories in May. For example, Los Angeles journalist Dánica Coto reported , “Lax oversight, dwindling budgets, and permits illegally issued by the government have led to an increase in construction in protected areas and regions, some of them prone to flooding or landslides. The ongoing probe into homes built illegally in Puerto Rico’s second-largest estuary, where officials say more than 3,600 mangrove trees were cut, has led to public hearings, the launch of a criminal investigation by Puerto Rico’s Justice Department and to scrutiny of similar cases. Environmentalists warn that these cases are leaving the U.S. territory even more vulnerable to climate change amid wetter and more intense hurricane seasons.”

Several political and economic themed media stories about climate change or global warming continued in May. To begin, the Australian election – with connections made to the candidates’ climate stances – garnered media attention around the globe. For example, Australian-based New York Times journalist Damien Cave reported , “A few minutes after taking the stage to declare victory in Australia’s election on Saturday, Anthony Albanese, the incoming Labor prime minister, promised to transform climate change from a source of political conflict into a generator of economic growth. ‘Together we can end the climate wars,’ he told his supporters, who cheered for several seconds. ‘Together we can take advantage of the opportunity for Australia to be a renewable energy superpower.’ With that comment and his win — along with a surge of votes for candidates outside the two-party system who made combating global warming a priority — the likelihood of a significant shift in Australia’s climate policy has suddenly increased.” As a second example, NBC News correspondent Patrick Galey reported , “One topic dominated Australia’s election: climate change. Following a string of climate-related catastrophes in recent years, Australian voters this weekend returned the opposition Labor Party to power, with incoming Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vowing to ‘end the climate wars’ and turn Australia into a ‘renewable energy superpower.’ Analysts said the result showed how the public is increasingly demanding great climate commitments from leaders in a shift that could hold lessons for lawmakers in other developed countries. ‘This was the climate change election for Australia,’ said Ben Oquist, executive director of the Australia Institute, an independent think tank based in Canberra, the capital of Australia. ‘A decade of electoral frustration spilled over into a wave of support for candidates that supported stronger climate action,’ he said.”

Additional stories in May 2022 relating to political themes included those circulating about climate change or global warming and Ukraine. For example, the European Union presented a plan of 195,000 million euros to divest itself of Russian oil and gas in 2027. Journalists Valentina Pop, Alice Hancock and Sam Fleming narrated an article in Expansión.com (published in Financial Times ) wrote, “Today the energy independence plans are published and EU environmental protection, known as RePower EU, including plans to install solar panels on all buildings…The RePower EU draft suggests that the changes of behavior could reduce the global consumption of EU gas by 5% in the short term, and that the measures adopted by the industry could save up to 35,000 million cubic meters of natural gas by 2030.” The war in Ukraine influenced other economic and climate change issues that captured news attention. For example, Máster Brooke wrote an article published in La Expansión “BlackRock warns it will vote against more climate resolutions this year.” Furthermore, there was abundant news coverage about climate change and renewable energy in May. Spanish media discussed ambitions of 100% renewable electricity. For example, journalists Manuel Planelles and Ignacio Fariza wrote in El Pais , “The expansion of photovoltaic and wind power allowed almost the entire peninsular demand to be covered punctually with clean energy on the first Saturday in April. It was for a short time…But it's a true picture of what's to come.”

May media coverage about climate change or global warming with ecological and meteorological themes also kept pace with science stories. For instance, heatwaves and floods throughout South Asia – with links to a changing climate – grabbed media attention. As an example of the latter, New York Times journalists Karan Deep Singh and Saif Hasnat reported , “Heavy pre-monsoon rains in India and Bangladesh have washed away train stations, towns and villages, leaving millions of people homeless as extreme weather events, including heat waves, intense rainfall and floods, become more common in South Asia…Climate scientists have said that India and Bangladesh are particularly vulnerable to climate change because of their proximity to the warm tropical waters of the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, which are increasingly experiencing heat waves. The rising sea temperatures have led to ‘dry conditions’ in some parts of the Indian subcontinent and ‘a significant increase in rainfall’ in other areas.”

Also in May, ecological and meteorological themed stories related to climate change or global warming  touched on temperature rise around the world. From El País journalist Manuel Planelles , experts from the Met Office (the UK's meteorological agency) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) maintained that “in the next five years there is a probability of around 50% that the average global temperature of the planet's surface will exceed 1, 5 degrees in any of those five years.” Planelles also noted, “Global warming is advancing steadily and is approaching the safety thresholds established by the nations of the world when they signed the Paris Agreement in 2015.” In May 2022, there was also coverage of high temperatures regionally. For example, Spanish newspaper La Vangardia reported , “Summer is forty days longer now than it was in the 1980s. According to a study by the AEMET (Agencia Estatal de Meteorología), every ten years summer is brought forward by almost 2.7 days in Seville due to the effects of climate change. This month of May, where there should have been milder temperatures, is a great example of this phenomenon. For a few years now, what was the exception has become common: an exaggerated heat during spring. In fact, summer is eating spring.” Furthermore, journalist Antonio Cerrillo wrote in La Vanguardia , “The climate crisis robs us of spring. Summer has lengthened an average of 30 days in 50 years in Spain.”

Joe Biden addresses the Major Economies Forum at the White House. António Guterres told the conference fossil fuels ‘don’t make political or economic sense’. Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images.

June media attention to climate change or global warming in newspapers around the globe was down 3% from May 2022 and down 8% from June 2021. Coverage in international wire services increased 2% and radio coverage was up 13% from May 2022. Compared to the previous month coverage increased in Asia (+8%), Latin America (+22%), Africa (+24%), and the Middle East (+34%), while coverage decrease in North America (-2%), the European Union (EU) (-2%), and Oceania (-62%). Figure 1 shows trends in newspaper media coverage at the global scale – organized into seven geographical regions around the world – from January 2004 through June 2022. 

Figure 1. Newspaper media coverage of climate change or global warming in print sources in seven different regions around the world, from January 2004 through June 2022.

At the country level, United States (US) print coverage decreased 3% while television coverage increased 16% from the previous month. Among other countries that we at the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) monitor, coverage dropped in Sweden (-3%), India (-5%), Russia (-6%), the United Kingdom (UK) (-12%), Germany (-13%), Norway (-19%), New Zealand (-34%), Denmark (-34%), and Australia (-40%). However, coverage in June 2022 increased in Canada (+2%), Finland (+12%), Japan (+15%) (see Figure 2), and Spain (+17%).

Figure 2. Japan newspaper coverage of climate change or global warming in Asahi Shimbum , Yomiuri Shimbun , and Mainichi Shimbun from January 2000 through June 2022.

Many climate change or global warming stories focused on scientific themes in the month of June. To begin, a study published in early June made connections between life expectancy, air quality, and climate change. This generated media attention. For example, Washington Post journalist Claire Parker wrote , “Breathing is more dangerous than smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol. That’s according to the latest report from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, which says that air pollution now takes more than two years off the global average life expectancy — more than cigarettes, alcohol, or conflict and terrorism. The annual report, known as the Air Quality Life Index, or AQLI, was released Tuesday. It found that particulate air pollution — a mixture of contaminants such as smoke, fumes, dust and pollen — has remained high, even as the coronavirus pandemic slowed the global economy and brought blue skies to some of the world’s most polluted areas. At the same time, evidence of the health risks associated with pollution has grown, the index says, adding that world leaders aren’t treating the problem with the urgency it deserves…“Among the fossil fuels, coal is the champion in terms of producing particulate air pollution that causes people to lead shorter and sicker lives today, and increasing the rate of climate change,” he said. Air pollution is “deeply intertwined” with climate change, the report says, so tackling it can kill two birds with one stone. “Policy can simultaneously reduce dependence on fossil fuels that will allow people to live longer and healthier lives and reduce the costs of climate change,” the researchers wrote”.

Then in mid-June, a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine about vulnerability of children and fetuses to the effects of burning fossil fuels grabbed media attention. For example, CNN reporter Rachel Ramirez noted , “When Aaron Bernstein became a pediatrician 15 years ago, it didn't occur to him that the climate crisis would grow into a critical health problem for his young patients. But over the years he started to notice more children visiting emergency rooms for heat-related illnesses, and some even suffered from climate-induced mental health issues…Frederica Perera, lead author of the review and the founding director of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health at Columbia University, said the purpose of the study was to not only show the link between the planet's heavy reliance on fossil fuels and children's health, but to also point out the available solutions that could prevent climate change-fueled disasters from putting the world's youngest people at risk…And as parts of the world continue to ramp up fossil fuel production, which will worsen the already accelerating crisis, Perera said she hopes the paper would motivate physicians and healthcare providers, who are a "trusted voice" around the world, to take on a larger role in advocating for climate policies to protect children from a warming planet.

Also in June, stories of record high carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere in the month of May made news. For example, Associated Press journalist Seth Borenstein reported , “The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has shot past a key milestone -- more than 50% higher than pre-industrial times -- and is at levels not seen since millions of years ago when Earth was a hothouse ocean-inundated planet, federal scientists announced Friday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said its long-time monitoring station at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, averaged 421 parts per million of carbon dioxide for the month of May, which is when the crucial greenhouse gas hits its yearly high. Before the industrial revolution in the late 19th century carbon dioxide levels were at 280 parts per million, scientists said, so humans have significantly changed the atmosphere. Some activists and scientists want a level of 350 parts per million. Industrial carbon dioxide emissions come from the burning of coal, oil and gas. Levels of the gas continue to rise, when they need to be falling, scientists say. This year’s carbon dioxide level is nearly 1.9 ppm more than a year ago, a slightly bigger jump than from May 2020 to May 2021”.

June media coverage also featured many cultural stories relating to climate change or global warming. Social movements of various kinds pushing for climate action peppered coverage throughout the month. For example, New York Times correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman reported , “a different brand of activist — young, mostly female and mostly from Eastern Europe — who believes that the Ukraine war is a brutal manifestation of the world’s dependence on fossil fuels. They have joined two causes — antiwar activism and climate change — to take full advantage of this moment when the world’s attention is focused on Ukraine…They circulate around the continent, riding trains, staying in cheap hotels, powering themselves on cornflakes and almond milk, trying to corner Europe’s top politicians and business people. While perhaps not as famous as Greta Thunberg, they are cut from the same hardy cloth and work closely with her Fridays for Future movement. Their message, which Ms. Thunberg and Ms. Lasota emphasized in a recent video, is that humankind’s addiction to fossil fuels is driving misery and bloodshed. They point not only to Russia but also to Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and other petrostates with long histories of conflict and repression. “These things are connected,” Ms. Thunberg said. “More and more fossil fuel expansion means more power to autocrats. This enables them to start wars like the one in Ukraine”.”

Furthermore, in June several news reports surfaced that discussed punishments for climate protestors. For example, in Australia, New York Times journalist Yan Zhuang wrote , “When climate protesters took to the streets of Sydney this week, including blocking one of its busiest traffic tunnels for over an hour, they faced the fury of government officials who labeled them “professional pests” and warned that they’d see “the book being thrown at them.” The 24 people arrested during the protests this week face up to two years in jail and fines of up to $15,000 under a new state law passed in April covering protests that disrupt economic activity. Previously, the penalty was a fine of up to $400, with no jail time. Human rights activists and legal groups are now questioning whether the law imposes an overly harsh punishment for nonviolent protests and is primarily being used against climate activists”.

Then, in the month of June, there was media coverage of citizen initiatives related to the climate. For example, several Spanish outlets ran stories about proposals of the Citizen Assembly for Climate. For example, journalist Antonio Cerrillo wrote in La  Vanguardia , “the independent civic think tank made up of 100 people chosen at random and promoted by the Government, proposes in its final conclusions that the administrations promote teleworking and the four-day working week” and also “recommend that electricity companies be forced to make most of their production from renewable sources and that the macro-farms of industrial livestock be reduced and that domestic flights be ‘minimized’ when there is an alternative by train and that the law against waste in the food system”.

Several political and economic themed media stories about climate change or global warming continued in June. To begin, media stories emanated from the Summit of the Americas early in the month. For example, Washington Post journalist Maxine Joselow reported , “President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday will announce two initiatives at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles aimed at tackling climate change and boosting clean energy in a region often overlooked in U.S. foreign policy. The initiatives showcase the White House's push to promote cooperation on climate change across the Western Hemisphere, even as Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador skips the summit in a blow to Biden's pleas for regional unity. Harris will unveil the first initiative, dubbed the U.S.-Caribbean Partnership to Address the Climate Crisis 2030, before meeting with Caribbean leaders on Thursday. The goal of the partnership is to “elevate U.S. cooperation with Caribbean countries to support climate adaptation and strengthen energy security, while building the resilience of critical infrastructure and local economies to the climate crisis,” according to a White House fact sheet. The second major program, dubbed the Renewable Energy in Latin America and the Caribbean initiative, calls for reaching 70 percent installed capacity for renewable energy generation in the region's electricity sector by 2030. Five new countries — Barbados, Jamaica, Guyana, Argentina and Brazil — will announce their intent to participate on Thursday, joining 15 existing members”.

Following that meeting, media coverage emanated from the Major Economies Forum – a climate conference organized by the White House – making links between climate challenges and several connected issues. For example, Guardian journalist Fiona Harvey reported , “António Guterres compared fossil fuel companies to the tobacco companies that continued to push their addictive products while concealing or attacking health advice that showed clear links between smoking and cancer, the first time he has drawn such a parallel. He said: “We seem trapped in a world where fossil fuel producers and financiers have humanity by the throat. For decades, the fossil fuel industry has invested heavily in pseudoscience and public relations – with a false narrative to minimise their responsibility for climate change and undermine ambitious climate policies. They exploited precisely the same scandalous tactics as big tobacco decades before. Like tobacco interests, fossil fuel interests and their financial accomplices must not escape responsibility.”

Similarly, climate-related discussions from the Group of 7 (G7) summit earned media attention in June. In particular, the formation of a ‘Climate Club’ generated news stories. For example, journalist Carmen Valero from El Mundo noted , “a new intergovernmental forum has been proposed by Germany with the aim of accelerating the application of measures to curb climate change and with a focus on the industry sector. "We note with concern that at this time neither global climate ambitions nor their implementation is sufficient to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement through the reduction of greenhouse gases," they said in a statement. The members of the Climate Club, which will be established before the end of the year, will collaborate to mitigate climate change, in particular by promoting the energy transition and accelerating the coal phase-out process.” Also, discussion of climate change and the ongoing invasion of Ukraine also prompted news accounts. For example, journalist La Vangardia journalist Celeste López wrote , “There is not one [challenge], there are three: the war in Ukraine, which has depleted the continent of cereals, climate change (four years of drought have destroyed agriculture) and COVID-19 (the flow of humanitarian aid is minimal)”.

At the end of June, a US Supreme Court decision to strike down an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tool to regulate carbon dioxide from power-generation plants garnered many news stories. For example, PBS Newshour anchor Judy Woodruff reported , “Many environmental advocates acknowledged today the decision is the EPA — in the EPA case is a significant blow in the government's efforts to limit greenhouse gases in the near term”. She interviewed US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan who commented, “I am deeply disappointed in the Supreme Court's decision today, actually very frustrated. The decision does constrain what we do. But let me be clear. It doesn't take us out of the game. We still will be able to regulate climate pollution. And we're going to use all of the tools in our toolbox to do so. The constraint that we're seeing today just prevents us as a country from making the progress as quickly as we need to. Climate action presents an opportunity for this country to ensure global competitiveness, create jobs, lower costs for families and protect people's health and well-being, especially those who have suffered from the burden of inaction for far too long. And so, yes, today's action is a disappointing action. It's devastating in many ways, as the president has said, but it doesn't take us out of the game. And we're going to continue to use every tool we have to keep pace with tackling the climate crisis”. Meanwhile, among several media reports around the US and the world, Washington Post correspondent Maxine Joselow pointed out , “the decision did not go as far as many climate advocates had feared. In particular, the majority did not take away the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants, vehicle tailpipes or other major sources of planet-warming pollution. Instead, the justices said the agency cannot resurrect President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, a now-defunct rule that would have forced utilities to engage in “generation shifting,” or switching from coal-fired power generation to natural gas or renewable energy”.

June media coverage about climate change or global warming with ecological and meteorological themes also kept pace with science stories. For instance, heavy flooding in Asia – with connections to climate change – earned media interest. As an example, Guardian journalist Helen Davidson wrote , “Record-breaking rains that have battered parts of China and east Asia in the last week are expected to worsen, with authorities warning of an increased risk of floods. In the first week of China’s flood season, extreme rainfalls have caused floods and landslides, destroyed roads and infrastructure, and led to the deaths of at least 15 people. Floods, landslides and disruptions to water and electricity were reported in Shaoguan, in northern Guangdong province, and more than 800,000 people in Jiangxi were reportedly affected by torrential rains that have so far hit 80 of the province’s counties and damaged more than 76,000 hectares (188,000 acres) of cropland…China experiences extreme weather events, in particular flooding during the rainy seasons, but the climate crisis is exacerbating the severity and impact”. As a second example, Associated Press journalists Aniruddha Ghosal and Al-Emrun Garjon wrote , “Scientists say climate change is a factor behind the erratic and early rains that triggered unprecedented floods in Bangladesh and northeastern India, killing dozens and making lives miserable for millions of others. Although the region is no stranger to flooding, it typically takes place later in the year when monsoon rains are well underway. This year’s torrential rainfall lashed the area as early as March. It may take much longer to determine the extent to which climate change played a role in the floods, but scientists say that it has made the monsoon — a seasonable change in weather usually associated with strong rains — more variable over the past decades. This means that much of the rain expected to fall in a year is arriving in a space of weeks”.

Also in June, many media stories covered early summer heatwaves across several Northern Hemisphere regions on the planet, such as in Europe and North America. For example, CNN reported , “Spain is seeing its hottest early summer temperatures, one area of France banned outdoor events, and drought stalked Italian farmers as a heatwave sent Europeans hunting for shade and fretting over climate change. Such was the heat that England's upscale Royal Ascot Racecourse even saw a rare change of protocol: guests were allowed to shed hats and jackets once the royals had passed…Mediterranean nations are more and more concerned about how climate change may affect their economies and lives”. As another example, Washington Post journalist Matthew Cappucci reported , “A stubborn and unrelenting dome of excessive heat and humidity is languishing over the Lower 48 for the third calendar week in a row, bringing record temperatures and heat index values topping 110 degrees in spots. Heat advisories and excessive-heat warnings blanket the Upper Midwest, including Milwaukee and Detroit, a prelude to even more intense heat pushing into the South and Southeast. More than 55 million Americans are predicted to face triple-digit highs this week, and overnight lows could remain in the upper 70s to lower 80s in spots. That will contribute to heat stress that could be dangerous for vulnerable populations. The National Weather Service is calling the combination of heat and humidity “extreme” and “dangerous.” …There are no immediate signs of the heat relenting. Instead, the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center continues to forecast odds of above-average temperatures through the end of June and perhaps into July. Warm weather and high pressure “heat domes” are a staple of any summer, but their intensity and duration are exacerbated by human-induced climate change.”

Figure 3. Front pages of European newspapers El País (Spain), Le Monde (France) and Suddeutsche Zeitung (Germany) covering heat waves in June.

As another example that provided a larger context regarding these early summer northern hemisphere heat waves, New York Times journalist Raymond Zhong wrote , “Millions of Americans are once again in the grips of dangerous heat. Hot air blanketed Europe last weekend, causing parts of France and Spain to feel the way it usually does in July or August. High temperatures scorched northern and central China even as heavy rains caused flooding in the country’s south. Some places in India began experiencing extraordinary heat in March, though the start of the monsoon rains has brought some relief. It’s too soon to say whether climate change is directly to blame for causing severe heat waves in these four powerhouse economies — which also happen to be the top emitters of heat-trapping gases — at roughly the same time, just days into summer. While global warming is making extreme heat more common worldwide, deeper analysis is required to tell scientists whether specific weather events were made more likely or more intense because of human-induced warming. (A team of researchers who studied this spring’s devastating heat in India found that climate change had made it 30 times as likely to occur.) …Simultaneous weather extremes in numerous locations aren’t just meteorological curiosities. Individual heat waves can lead to illness and death, wildfires, and crop failures. Concurrent ones can threaten global food supplies, which have been under perilous strain this year because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While heat waves are shaped by complex local factors such as urbanization and land use, scientists no longer have much doubt about whether climate change is making them worse. Soon, the world’s most devastating heat waves may simply have no historical analogue from the time shortly before humans starting pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, some scientists argue, rendering obsolete the question of whether climate change is a main driver”.

Furthermore, La Vanguardia journalist Antonio Cerrillo noted , “the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned of that the current situation, which has brought temperatures above 40ºC in Spain and France, "is a foretaste of the future" extreme weather that awaits humanity if there is no climate action by governments. The forecast is that more extreme weather events will occur due to global warming in a scenario of high greenhouse gas emissions.”

A board warns passengers about high temperatures and their impact on rail traffic at Euston train station in central London on July 19. Photo: Niklas Halle'n/AFP/Getty Images.

July media attention to climate change or global warming in newspapers around the globe was up 14% from June 2022 and up 1% from July 2021. Coverage in international wire services increased 11% and radio coverage was up 13% from June 2022. Compared to the previous month, coverage decreased in Asia (-8%), Latin America (-16%), Africa (-144%), and the Middle East (-26%), while coverage increased in North America (+27%), the European Union (EU) (+28%), and Oceania (+17%). Figure 1 shows trends in newspaper media coverage at the global scale – organized into seven geographical regions around the world – from January 2004 through July 2022. 

Figure 1. Newspaper media coverage of climate change or global warming in print sources in seven different regions around the world, from January 2004 through July 2022.

At the country level, United States (US) print coverage increased 51% while television coverage increased 122% from the previous month.

July saw significant media coverage about climate change or global warming with ecological and meteorological themes. To begin, early in July low snow levels and avalanches at high elevations with links to climate change generated several media stories. For example, Guardian journalist Helena Horton reported , “The snow at the highest observatory in the world to be operated all-year-round is expected to completely melt in the next few days, the earliest time on record. Scientists at the Sonnblick observatory in the Austrian Central Alps, which is 3,106 metres (10,190ft) above sea level, have been shocked and dismayed to see the snow depleting so quickly. Some years the peak is covered in snow all summer. But this year it has melted more than a month before the previous record time, which was 13 August in 1963 and 2003.  The heating climate in Europe, where there have been scorching heatwaves, has caused much of the snow and ice on the mountains to melt unusually quickly. This had a tragic outcome this week at the Marmolada mountain in Italy, where at least seven people died after a glacier collapsed, causing an avalanche. Scientists linked the disaster to the climate crisis, as the ice has become weakened due to sustained heat”.

Throughout July, extreme heat as well as flooding events across several continents grabbed media attention. For example, Guardian environment editor Damian Carrington reported , “The UK and continental Europe are sweltering in a heatwave due to last until at least the weekend, and the climate crisis is playing a clear role in intensifying extreme temperatures…Scientists are clear that human-caused global heating is making every heatwave more intense and more likely. “When it comes to summer heat, climate change is a complete gamechanger and has already turned what would once have been called exceptional heat into very frequent summer conditions,” said Dr Friederike Otto, of Imperial College London. “Every heatwave we experience today has been made hotter because of the fossil fuels we have burned over the last decades in particular””.

As heatwaves and flooding continued, The Associated Press reported , “Flooding and extreme high temperatures have caused multiple deaths in eastern China as summer heat descends earlier than usual. Record-high temperatures have been reported in Zhejiang province, just east of the global business hub of Shanghai, topping out above 42 degrees Celsius (107 degrees Fahrenheit) on Wednesday…Floods have also struck much of the country, with three people reported killed and five missing in Sichuan province’s Pingwu county as of midday Wednesday. One person was reported dead and eight missing in Heilongjiang in the northeast. Experts say such extreme weather events are becoming more likely because of climate change. Warmer air can store more water, leading to bigger cloudbursts when it’s released”.

Furthermore, stories connecting to wildfires also fueled coverage. For example, New York Times correspondents Aurelien Breeden and Isabella Kwai wrote , “Britain is bracing for its hottest day ever as a heat wave sweeps across Europe. Crews in the south of France were battling wildfires on Saturday that had consumed more than 22,000 acres and prompted the evacuation of 12,000 people, the local authorities said. The wildfires are among dozens across Europe, driven by a heat wave that has gripped parts of the continent and threatens to bring record-breaking temperatures to Britain early next week. The most serious fires in France were in the Gironde area, near the city of Bordeaux, where more than 1,200 firefighters had been deployed…Climate scientists have said that global warming is making extreme temperatures more common, but they are investigating whether specific weather events are intensifying or becoming more likely because of human-induced warming of the climate”.

As a second example, El Mundo journalist María Crespo reported , “Fires spread in Portugal and France. More than 30,000 hectares burned in Portugal exceed the total area burned last year. In France, almost 10,000 people have been evicted”. As a third example, El País journalist Victoria Torres wrote , “Experts warn that the current episode of high temperatures, enhanced by climate change, will be "extraordinary" and may exceed the dimension of the worst suffered in Spain”.

Then, the news of the United Kingdom’s hottest day on record – hitting 40 o C (or 104 o F) – garnered media attention around the world. For example, Washington Post journalist William Booth reported , “Has it ever, in human history, been this hot in the British Isles? Maybe not. If you want to mark an unnatural, scary, real-world data point for climate change, it is here in Britain, right now, which saw its hottest day on record Tuesday. Temperatures in six locations reached 40 Celsius or higher, with London Heathrow and St. James Park hitting 40.2 Celsius — or 104.3 Fahrenheit. It’s an extreme-weather episode, a freak peak heat, not seen since modern record keeping began a century and a half ago. Hitting 40C, for British climate scientists, is a kind of a unicorn event that had appeared in their models but until recently seemed almost unbelievable and unattainable this soon. Cairo? Karachi? Phoenix? They are world-beating furnaces. But London? The high-latitude city — with its recorded history dating back to the Romans — had probably never before experienced temperatures such as those on Tuesday. Surely no Britons alive now — or their Britain-based great- or great-great-grandparents — had felt 40C without traveling abroad. Queen Victoria, William Shakespeare, Henry VIII? They probably never faced down a 40C day within the British Isles. This nation was not built to withstand such heat. Its homes, workplaces, roads, rails, hospitals and infrastructure were constructed for temperate weather — Shakespeare’s “other Eden, demi-paradise” — not this inferno. Britain has some of the most extensive weather records in the world, logged via diaries, observation and instruments as far back as the Age of Enlightenment, including daily records archived since the 1770s and monthly maximums and minimums dating back to the 1660s. Until Tuesday, the highest official temperature was 38.7C (101.7F), recorded at the Cambridge Botanic Garden on July 25, 2019. The Met Office reported that at least 34 observation sites across the country topped that previous maximum on Tuesday. Almost all the highest recorded temperatures have occurred in recent years”.

Similarly, in North America media stories of waves of heat with connections to climate change were abundant in July. For example, New York Times journalist Isabella Grullón Paz reported , “About 100 million Americans from California to New England were sweating through heat advisories and warnings from the National Weather Service on Wednesday, with a brutal heat wave across the central part of the country showing no signs of letting up…Heat warnings and advisories were in place for parts or all of 28 states. People in the Southeast and the Southern Plains faced the most oppressive temperatures”.

Figure 3. Front page coverage of ecological and meteorological challenges – such as heat waves, droughts and wildfires – with links to climate change or global warming in July 2022.

Several political and economic themed media stories about climate change or global warming continued in July. To begin, in the larger international context many stories pointed to shortcomings in climate policy action in many governments. For example, Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein noted , “For most of the major carbon-polluting nations, promising to fight climate change is a lot easier than actually doing it. In the United States, President Joe Biden has learned that the hard way. Among the 10 biggest carbon emitters, only the European Union has enacted polices close to or consistent with international goals of limiting warming to just a few more tenths of a degrees, according to scientists and experts who track climate action in countries”. Furthermore, Washington Post journalists Darryl Fears and Andrea Eger noted , “Many European nations are working to shift away from fossil fuels, but the combination of intense summer heat and energy shortages stemming from the war in Ukraine threatens to delay this transition. In the United States, President Biden is struggling to advance his environmental agenda in the face of intense opposition from Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.)”.

The United Nations Secretary General António Guterres’ comments at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue grabbed media attention. For example, New York Times reporter Jesus Jímenez wrote , “The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, issued a dire warning on Monday to representatives from 40 countries at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, calling for more concrete action to tackle what he called a “climate emergency.” “We have a choice,” Mr. Guterres said in a video message. “Collective action or collective suicide. It is in our hands…Half of humanity is in the danger zone from floods, droughts, extreme storms and wildfires,” Mr. Guterres said. “No nation is immune.” The Petersberg Climate Dialogue serves as a forum for discussing climate protection agreements before the U.N. climate change conference, known as COP27, in Egypt this November. In his address, Mr. Guterres highlighted the need to reduce emissions, treat climate adaptation with urgency, offer financial backing for developing countries, and create a “concrete global response” to help the most vulnerable. Mr. Guterres said that people in Africa, South Asia, and Central and South America are 15 times more likely to die from extreme weather events. “In facing this global crisis, we are failing to work together as a multilateral community,” Mr. Guterres said. “Nations continue to play the blame game instead of taking responsibility for our collective future. We cannot continue this way””.

Stories also focused on US Congressional debates on a spending package that could allow for significant climate action. With the US as the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, such policy action would impact ongoing international climate mitigation and adaptation ambitions. For example, USA Today journalists Kyle Bagenstose and Elizabeth Weise reported , “For more than a decade, congressional Democrats and a growing share of their political base have chased a dream: legislation to combat climate change, large enough to transform our society into one equipped to avert the worst catastrophes of a rapidly warming planet. On Wednesday, the dream made a giant leap toward reality. In a stunning reversal from when he appeared to kill a climate deal just two weeks ago, Sen. Joe Manchin, a conservative West Virginia Democrat, announced support for the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, a bill that would invest about $370 billion into a range of policies aimed at reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. That would make it the most substantial effort by the federal government to tackle climate change in history. A vote on the bill could come within a week, though supporters are bracing for any last-minute hurdles. Early reaction suggests the bill could transform the American energy and transportation sectors. Tens of billions of dollars would go toward supporting renewable energy development, lowering the costs of electric vehicles, building out public charging stations, weatherizing homes, plugging leaks of greenhouse gases from pipelines and wells, lowering emissions from the agricultural sector, and supporting communities near polluting industries. In total, the measures could, by 2030, reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 40% from where they were a quarter-century earlier. That would leave the nation within striking distance of the emissions reductions international scientists say are needed to avoid the worst effects of climate change. It could even set an example for other nations to also reduce emissions”.

In July, ongoing invasion of Ukraine had effects on European climate policy and this was captured in several news accounts. For example, the front page of El País on July 18 had as its main news: "The EU proposes to relax the control of polluting emissions". El País journalist Bernardo de Miguel wrote , “The EU will relax emissions controls to compensate for the lack of Russian gas with other more polluting energy sources. Brussels considers it essential to recover production with coal and even encourage it with public subsidies”.

Last, July media accounts also featured economic stories of the European Central Bank (ECB) encouragement for other banks to prepare for a climate crisis. For example, Expansión journalist Álvaro Sánchez reported , “The ECB estimates the losses of the big banks in the face of a climate crisis at 70,000 million. The agency believes that European banking is not preparing as it should in the face of climate risk (…)"Eurozone banks must urgently redouble efforts to measure and manage climate risk, filling current data gaps and adopting good practices that are already present in the sector," said Andrea Enria, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the ECB”.

July media coverage also featured many cultural stories relating to climate change or global warming. For example, the Tour de France was halted at times due to climate protests, and this sparked media coverage. For example, Guardian journalist Jeremy Whittle noted , “Senior officials from the Tour de France organisation were seen dragging climate crisis protesters into a ditch during the 10th stage of the race from Morzine to Megève. Despite being chained together around the neck, a small group of young protesters were dragged off the race route by tour officials. At around 36 kilometres from the finish, on a section of straight road, the protesters sat on the course and set off red flares. The stage breakaway and peloton were both halted until the road was cleared. Climate activists from the Derniere Renovation movement said, “Since the government doesn’t care about the climate crisis, we need to come and take over the Tour de France to refocus attention on what matters for our survival. We need to make our government react as they lead us to the slaughterhouse. Non-violent disruption is our last chance to be heard and avoid the worst consequences of global warming,” the group said”. Also, CNN reporters David Close and Matt Foster observed , “The statement said that the group “can no longer remain spectators of the ongoing climate disaster…Our goal is to force legislation to drastically reduce France's emissions, starting with energy reform, the area most likely to bring together social and climate justice today. This is our last chance to avoid catastrophic and irreversible consequences: deadly heat, extreme weather events, famines, mass migrations, armed conflicts... and this is for all the next generations of humans””.

Sports provided other news hooks in July, such as media coverage of climate change and golfing during the British Open. For example, New York Times journalist Alan Blinder wrote , “It is the rare golfer who does not fret over weather that could wash out a round or starve shots of distance. But along the North Sea on a blustery edge of Scotland, heralded for centuries as golf’s birthplace, this era’s greenskeepers fear a far more damning forecast. In that nightmare, what they call a perfect storm, striking at high tide and packing an easterly wind, would hit, likely speeding coastal erosion…golf has had little choice but to start weighing its own role in climate change — most notably through the vast, lush and thirsty courses that sometimes take the place of trees and then require fertilizer and mowing — while puzzling over how to preserve fairways and greens around the world. Scientists have spent years warning how a warmer planet, which can lead to more severe storms and to more sea-level rise, could change sports. Citing climate change, the International Olympic Committee’s president has said that Games organizers “may have to have a look into the overall calendar and whether there must be a shift.” Winter sports are facing a future of events on artificial snow, and activities like dogsledding and fishing are being transformed in the Arctic. Golf will not be an exception”.

Protestors took to the streets elsewhere in July too. For example, Guardian media editor Jim Waterson reported , “Extinction Rebellion protesters have smashed windows at the London headquarters of Rupert Murdoch’s media company, in protest at his outlets’ coverage of the climate crisis. Activists targeted the News UK building next to London Bridge station early on Tuesday morning, destroying glass panels and putting up posters reading “tell the truth” and “40 degrees = death” next to the entrance used by journalists at the Sun and the Times . Extinction Rebellion said it was taking nonviolent action to highlight the way that the record-breaking heat in the UK was being treated as an upbeat story in parts of the media”.

Many climate change or global warming stories focused on scientific themes in the month of July. To begin, early in July The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) released a report on climate change and extinction that grabbed media attention amid a busy news cycle during that time. For example, Associated Press correspondent Fabio Maisonnave reported , “Every day billions of people depend on wild flora and fauna to obtain food, medicine and energy. But a new United Nations-backed report says that overexploitation, climate change, pollution and deforestation are pushing one million species towards extinction…unless humankind improves the sustainable use of nature, the Earth is on its way to losing 12% of its wild tree species, over a thousand wild mammal species and almost 450 species of sharks and rays, among other irreparable harm. Humans use about 50,000 wild species routinely and 1 out of 5 people of the world’s 7.9 billion population depend on those species for food and income, the report said. 1 in 3 people rely on fuel wood for cooking, the number even higher in Africa”.

Further, connections between eating habits and climate change in a Boston Consulting Group report also generated media interest. For example, Guardian journalist Damien Carrington reported , “Investments in plant-based alternatives to meat lead to far greater cuts in climate-heating emissions than other green investments, according to one of the world’s biggest consultancy firms…for each dollar, investment in improving and scaling up the production of meat and dairy alternatives resulted in three times more greenhouse gas reductions compared with investment in green cement technology, seven times more than green buildings and 11 times more than zero-emission cars. Investments in the plant-based alternatives to meat delivered this high impact on emissions because of the big difference between the greenhouse gases emitted when producing conventional meat and dairy products, and when growing plants. Beef, for example, results in six-to-30 times more emissions than tofu”.

Villagers try to retrieve bodies from a minibus partly submerged in the Nabuyonga River in Namakwekwe, eastern Uganda. Photo: Badru Katumba/AFP/Getty Images.

August media attention to climate change or global warming in newspapers around the globe was down 4% from July 2022 and down 9% from August 2021. Coverage in international wire services increased 4% and radio coverage was up 12.5% from July 2022. Compared to the previous month, coverage increased in North America (+2%), the Middle East (+2%), Asia (+5%), and Africa (+38%), while coverage decreased in Latin America (-4%), the European Union (EU) (-10%), and Oceania (-25%). Figure 1 shows trends in newspaper media coverage at the global scale – organized into seven geographical regions around the world – from January 2004 through August 2022.

Figure 1. Newspaper media coverage of climate change or global warming in print sources in seven different regions around the world, from January 2004 through August 2022.

At the country level, United States (US) print coverage increased 1% while television coverage also decreased 6% from the previous month. Among other countries that we at the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) monitor, coverage dropped in Finland (-2%), India (-4%), Spain (-7%), Norway (-10%), Germany (-14%), the United Kingdom (UK) (-17%), New Zealand (-24%), and Australia (-26%). However, coverage in August 2022 increased in Canada (+7%), Sweden (+20%), and Denmark (+22%) (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. ­­Denmark newspaper coverage of climate change or global warming in Jyllandsposten , Politiken , and Berlingske Tidende from January 2000 through August 2022.

August saw significant media coverage about climate change or global warming with ecological and meteorological themes. To begin, early August saw flooding in Uganda with connections made with a changing climate in media accounts. For example, Guardian reporter Caroline Kimeu wrote , “At least 24 people have died and more than 5,600 people have been displaced by flash flooding in eastern Uganda. Two rivers burst their banks after heavy rainfall swept through the city of Mbale over the weekend, submerging homes, shops and roads, and uprooting water pipes. About 400,000 people have been left without clean water, and more than 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) of crops have been destroyed. Rescue efforts have been hampered by rainfall, with a number of areas still inaccessible…The head of communications at the office of the prime minister, Julius Mucunguzi, said: “The long-term solution is to protect the environment, stay clear of wetlands, riverbanks and avoid destroying river pathways. Climate change is evident. You can no longer predict when the rains will come and how intense they will be.” About 300km north of Mbale, the Karamoja region has experienced severe drought over the last few months. A World Bank report predicts that at least 86 million Africans will migrate within their own countries by 2050 as a result of climate change”.

August media stories about floods – with connections to climate change – also emerged through events in South Korea. For example, CNN correspondents Gawon Bae and Jessie Yeung reported , “Record downpours flooded homes, roads and subway stations in the South Korean capital Seoul this week, killing at least nine people, as forecasters warned of more rain to come. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol sent his condolences to the victims on Tuesday, saying he would conduct an on-site inspection and work to prevent additional damage. He also pointed out the need to review the country's disaster management system, since extreme weather is expected to become increasingly common due to the climate crisis”.

In August, several meteorological-themed media stories were published on climate change or global warming throughout Europe. For example, Spain suffered a summer of record extreme heat. El País journalist Manuel Planelles noted , “The country has suffered three episodes of soaring temperatures that have gone off the charts due to their harshness, geographic spread, and duration. Added to this is an also historical lack of rain and a devastating fire season. Between the months of June and August, there have been 42 days with a heat wave”. Meanwhile, La Vanguardia journalist Antonio Cerrilo reported , “This July will go down in history for its extreme temperatures and its serious consequences (deaths and fires). According to data from the Carlos III Health Institute (ISCIII) from July 1 to 29, it is estimated that 2,124 people have died as a result of high temperatures, an average of 72 per day”. A main theme of the front page of El País was titled “Extreme weather breaks into the Spanish political agenda”. El País journalists Manuel Planelles and Natalia Junqueras wrote , “The parties prepare their programs for the municipal and regional elections in the midst of an environmental crisis plagued by heat waves, fires and lack of water”.

Meanwhile, in August Europe continued to suffer its worst drought in the last 500 years. La Vanguardia journalist Joaquím Elcacho noted , “64% of the territory of EU countries is on warning or alert, with a serious impact on agriculture and livestock, ecosystems and the danger of the expansion of fires The data from Copernicus and the Drought Observatory add to the Report of the Joint Research Center of the European Commission (JRC). Data from this month of August indicate that 47% of the territory of the European Union is on alert due to drought and 17% on alert due to low rainfall”. One of the consequences, for example, is that the drought chokes traffic on the German river Rhine. Meanwhile, La Vanguardia journalist Mary Paz López wrote , “The lowering of the water level of the Rhine River due to the drought it is reducing transport and therefore affects the supply chain for the industry in Germany, especially in matters such as coal, crude oil and chemical products. The barges continue sailing, but with reduced load”.

In France and Spain there were also big fires that sparked media attention. For example, El Mundo journalist Nuria Lópes reported , “[France] is suffering one of the worst waves of fires in its history. More than 7,000 hectares destroyed, 10,000 residents evacuated and 1,100 firefighters fighting to put it out with European help”. Also, El País journalist Patricia Ortega noted about the burned Spain, “45 large fires and 250,000 hectares. This summer's fires have burned more mountains than ever before, breaking statistics and leaving a black blanket of ash on the affected towns”.

Figure 3. Examples of front page stories in UK and European newspapers in August 2022.

Several political and economic themed media stories about climate change or global warming continued in August. To begin, there were several media reports that unabated climate change will mean many challenges for the European economy. For example, El País journalist Álvaro Sánchez wrote , “The climate against the economy: heat and drought affect Europe. Agriculture, construction, tourism and energy face changes that can make the exceptional structural”.

Also in early August, an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report was covered by several media outlets. For example, Associated Press correspondent Wanjohi Kabukuru reported , “Richer countries failed to keep a $100 billion-a-year pledge to developing nations to help them achieve their climate goals, according to an analysis by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD. $83.3 billion in climate financing was given to poorer countries in 2020, a 4% increase from the previous year, but still short of the proposed goal. The United Nations-backed payment plan was first agreed in 2009 to help poorer nations adapt to the effects of climate change and reduce emissions. The pledge, which was originally set up as an annual commitment from its inception until 2020, has never been fulfilled. “We know that more needs to be done” to address the shortfall, admitted OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann. Who pays for tackling and adapting to climate change has been a key sticking point between richer nations and poorer ones since international climate negotiations began 30 years ago. Harsen Nyambe, who heads the African Union climate change and environment division, told the Associated Press the continent will continue to put pressure on richer nations to ensure the $100 billion-a-year agreement is fulfilled. He added that the funds will give the continent better access to required technology and will help nations transition to green energy in a fair way. But others believe that after decades of unmet promises, it’s unlikely that richer countries will start to step up”.

In mid-August, media coverage of US Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi traveling to Taiwan – with many reverberations therein – earned media coverage of China’s reaction regarding retaliatory stoppage of bilateral climate negotiation. For example, South China Morning Post journalist Echo Xie reported , “China’s decision to suspend cooperation with the United States on issues such as climate change and drug trafficking after Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan has raised questions about how long the situation will drag on and whether things can get worse. Officials from both sides have previously cited climate change and narcotics as examples of how they could try to work together despite confrontations in almost every other sphere, ranging from trade and the South China Sea to Xinjiang and Hong Kong”.

August media coverage also featured many cultural stories relating to climate change or global warming. For example, some celebrity Instagram posts led to greater scrutiny about private air travel. Among these stories, New York Times journalist Constant Méheut reported , “As France reels from a summer of extreme temperatures and soaring energy prices, prompting increasingly urgent calls to rein in polluters contributing to global warming, one high-flying culprit is finding itself in the cross hairs: the private jet. In recent days, France’s transportation minister called for flights by such planes to be restricted because of their outsized contribution to climate change, while a prominent lawmaker for the Green Party said he would soon introduce a bill to ban them altogether. The announcements have struck a chord in France, where weeks of severe drought and wildfires have brought home the realities of global warming, stoking a larger debate about consumer responsibility for addressing climate change. Calls for better conservation of energy are also growing in France, like in much of Europe, as the war in Ukraine squeezes supplies of gas and oil”.

Meanwhile, Washington Post journalist Allyson Chiu wrote , “Popular celebrities are no strangers to being at the top of rankings. But several big names recently found themselves featured on a new list: “Celebs with the Worst Private Jet CO2 Emissions.” The analysis of flight data, which was published online Friday by a U.K.-based sustainability marketing agency Yard, came on the heels of other celebrities such as Kylie Jenner and Drake weathering intense public criticism after it was revealed that their emissions-spewing private jets logged trips as short as 17 minutes and 14 minutes, respectively. Using data from a popular Twitter account that tracks celebrity jet movements based on public information, the report stated that planes affiliated with celebrities emitted an average of more than 3,376 metric tons of CO2 — roughly 480 times more than an average person’s annual emissions. The report, which was not peer-reviewed and features a prominent disclaimer about its analysis, includes the names of a handful of celebrities, at least two of whom have publicly disputed the list, saying that the flight data affiliated with them does not reflect their actual usage. Taylor Swift’s plane was identified by the report as the “biggest celebrity CO2e polluter this year so far,” racking up 170 flights since January with emissions totaling more than 8,293 metric tons. A plane affiliated with boxer Floyd Mayweather came in second, emitting about 7,076 metric tons of CO2, with one logged trip only lasting 10 minutes. Jay-Z, who could not be reached for comment, was listed third. After publication, a lawyer for Jay-Z told The Washington Post the rapper does not own the private jet in question; Rolling Stone reported that the flight data used in the analysis is from a plane tied to Puma and attributed to Jay-Z for his relationship with the brand”.

Finally, many climate change or global warming stories focused on scientific themes in the month of August. To begin, early in August a study in the journal Lancet Planetary Health earned media coverage in several outlets. For example, US National Public Radio correspondent Ayana Archie noted , “Rising nighttime temperatures may increase the mortality rate worldwide by up to 60% by the end of the century, according to a study whose authors say is the first research to estimate the impact of hotter nights on climate change-related mortality risks. More heat at night can disrupt sleep patterns as the body attempts to cool down, leading to adverse effects on the immune system. This could contribute to the probability of developing cardiovascular disease, chronic illnesses, inflammation and mental health challenges, the authors of the study concluded. By 2090, nighttime temperatures could double from an average of 68.7 degrees Fahrenheit to 103.5 degrees Fahrenheit in 28 cities across China, South Korea and Japan that the study examined”.

In mid-August a study in Communications Earth & Environment also earned media attention. For example, CBS News correspondent Li Cohen reported , “Scientists have known for years that the Arctic has suffered from more warming than the rest of the world. But a new study shows that it's much worse than previously thought. Researchers have long estimated that the Arctic warms twice as fast as the rest of the world — a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification — but a new study published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment on Thursday found that it's actually double that. The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than anywhere else on Earth. In some areas of the Arctic Ocean, the warming rate is even up to seven times as fast”.

Navigating floodwaters in the Dadu district of Sindh Province, of Pakistan. Photo: Fareed Khan/Associated Press.

September media attention to climate change or global warming in newspapers around the globe increased 5% from August 2022 yet remained 20% lower than September 2021 levels. Coverage in international wire services increased 10%, and radio coverage dipped 15% from August 2022. Compared to the previous month, coverage increased in Oceania (+7%), Asia (+18%), Latin America (+34%), and Africa (+39%), while coverage decreased in North America (-7%), the European Union (EU) (-9%), and the Middle East (-20%). Figure 1 shows trends in newspaper media coverage at the global scale – organized into seven geographical regions around the world – from January 2004 through September 2022.   

Figure 1. Newspaper media coverage of climate change or global warming in print sources in seven different regions around the world, from January 2004 through September 2022.

At the country level, United States (US) print coverage decreased 8% while television coverage also decreased 17% from the previous month. Among other countries that we at the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) monitor, coverage dropped in Denmark (-4%), Canada (-5%), Finland (-9%), Spain (-10%), the United Kingdom (UK) (-12%), Germany (-14%), Sweden (-20%), and Norway (-49%). However, coverage in September 2022 increased in Australia (+1%), Japan (+4%), India (+11%), New Zealand (+17%), and Russia (+24%) (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. ­­Russian newspaper coverage of climate change or global warming in Izvestiya , Rossiskaya Gazeta , Nezavisimaya Gazeta , and Komsomolskaya Pravda from January 2000 through September 2022.

The month of September was dominated by high levels of media coverage about climate change or global warming with ecological and meteorological themes. To begin, La Vanguardia journalist Antonio Cerrillo wrote , “How many additional deaths did the heat wave produce this summer in Spain, can we know? The Carlos III Health Institute estimates that, so far this year, there have been 30,861 more deaths than expected for that period. And of this total, 3,833 deaths are attributable to the high temperatures recorded in July and August, almost triple that of a year ago, when 1,356 people died from the heat in those two months. But according to some experts they could be more...” Furthermore, journalist Antonio Cerrillo also published in La Vanguardia an article titled ‘Autumn: hotter than normal’ that highlighted , “This summer has been the warmest so far and exceeded the climatic average by 2.2˚ and Arid zones are advancing at a rate of 1,500 km2 per year, at the expense of temperate zones”.

In September, devastating flooding across Pakistan – with links to climate change – made news. For example, Associated Press correspondent Munir Ahmed reported , “The rains started early this year — in mid-June — and swept away entire villages, bridges and roads, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. At one point, a third of the country’s territory was inundated with water. Authorities said the overall death toll reached 1,481 on Tuesday, with 54 more people dying in rain-related floods in the past 24 hours, with the majority of those deaths in the hard-hit province of Sindh. Experts have said that climate change has been blamed in large part for the deluge, the worst in recent memory. Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s minister for climate change, warned that the rains, which had abated late last month only to restart this week, are predicted to continue lashing much of the country in the coming weeks. Rehman also expressed fears the downpours would hamper ongoing rescue and relief operations in flood-hit areas, where swirling deluges from overflowing rivers, fast melting glaciers and floods have already affected 33 million people. So far, rescuers have evacuated 179,281 people from flood-hit areas”. As a second example – drawing in lives impacted and lives lost – New York Times journalists Christina Goldbaum and Zia ur-Rehman reported , “Mr. Jamali, 84, migrated from the outskirts of Jacobabad, a city in Sindh, to the port city of Karachi late last month after flooding consumed his small farm. The floods this year were the latest extreme weather calamity to uproot his family. The 2010 floods that hit Sindh also forced Mr. Jamali, along with his 18-member extended family, to migrate to Karachi, after their house was damaged. For five years, he saved money to reconstruct their home, he said. But in recent years, life in the district has become almost impossible to survive. Jacobabad is one of Pakistan’s most climate-change-hit districts and is considered one of the hottest places on earth. In May, the temperatures rose to 124 degrees Fahrenheit — 51 degrees Celsius — making it one of the hottest cities in the world. Then the flooding in August destroyed his home yet again”.

Later in the month of September, Hurricane Fiona caused catastrophic flooding on Puerto Rico. Many media accounts made connections to climate change. For example, NBC journalist Denise Chow reported , “Powerful storms battered three disparate, far-flung corners of the planet over the weekend, but they had one thing in common: They were made stronger and wetter by climate change. From Hurricane Fiona barreling over Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic to Typhoon Nanmadol pounding Japan, to the remnants of Typhoon Merbok wreaking havoc in Alaska, the past 72 hours have demonstrated the devastating effects of heavy rain and flooding. The three weekend storms add to a trend of wetter storms in a warmer future, said Michael Wehner, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory”.

Making that connection to an unusual cyclone hitting northwestern Alaska, several news accounts connected the event with a changing climate. For example, Washington Post journalists Zach Rosenthal and Jacob Feuerstein wrote , “A powerful ocean cyclone is blasting the western coast of Alaska — bringing major flooding to coastal communities and wind gusts to 90 mph. The National Weather Service in Fairbanks, which issued issue warnings for both the water and the wind, said the storm was “producing water levels above higher than any seen over at least 50 years”… In the Fourth National Climate Assessment, a comprehensive climate change report looking at impacts in the United States published in 2018 — scientists expressed concern that climate change has set the stage for greater impacts from large nontropical cyclones in Alaska. Warmer summers and oceans have caused a greater-than-normal seasonal loss of sea ice, which makes the region more vulnerable to ocean inundation”.

Then in late September, the powerful Hurricane Ian devastated Cuba before making landfall in the US states of Florida and South Carolina. Many news stories discussed how climate change fueled the storm. For example, Associated Press journalist Seth Borenstein reported , “Hurricane Ian is quickly gaining monstrous strength as it moves over oceans partly heated up by climate change, just like 30 other Atlantic tropical storms since 2017 that became much more powerful in less than a day. This turbocharging of storms is likely to become even more frequent as the world gets warmer, scientists say…Ian’s rapid intensification occurred after it traveled over Caribbean waters that are about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) warmer than normal, largely because of climate change. Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach said the warm water creates “a lot more rocket fuel for the storm.” Climate change has other effects. The buildup of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels is making storms slower and wetter. It exacerbates deadly storm surges through sea-level rise, worsens freshwater flooding and increases the proportion of monster Category 4 and 5 storms, like Fiona last week, several studies show. The current hurricane season had been uncharacteristically mild until about a week ago because of dry air in the Atlantic. Yet while storms aren’t necessarily more frequent, they are getting nastier because of global warming, experts say”.

As a second example among many stories about hurricane Ian, New York Times journalists Elena Shao, Nadja Popovich and Mira Rojanasakul reported , “New data from NASA reveals how warm ocean waters in the Gulf of Mexico fueled Hurricane Ian to become one of the most powerful storms to strike the United States in the past decade. Sea surface temperatures were especially warm off Florida’s southwest coast, allowing the storm to pick up energy just before crashing into the state north of Fort Myers. The storm brought fierce winds, unrelenting rains and catastrophic flooding to southwest Florida. As it moved inland, it lost power and was downgraded to a tropical storm, but grew into a hurricane again as it traveled across the warm Atlantic toward South Carolina. Storms usually weaken as they move over land and lose access to their main source of moisture and energy. Hurricane Ian was able to, over the course of its path, pull a lot of energy out of the ocean, which could have sustained it for longer than normal, said Christopher Slocum, a physical scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. September is the peak of hurricane season, spurred by temperatures in the Gulf that are warmer than at other times of the year, experts say. The climate phenomenon known as La Niña has also contributed to more favorable conditions for hurricanes in the North Atlantic over the past three years. However, waters off the coast were also two to three degrees Fahrenheit warmer than usual for this time of year, according to preliminary data from NASA…More than 90 percent of the excess heat from human-caused global warming over the past 50 years has been absorbed by the oceans, and a majority of it is stored in the top few hundred meters. Scientists say that while climate change has not necessarily increased the number of hurricanes, it has made them more powerful, as warmer ocean waters strengthen and sustain those storms. The proportion of the most severe storms — Categories 4 and 5 — has increased since 1980, when satellite imagery began reliably tracking hurricanes”.

While the bulk of news accounts relating to climate change focused on meteorological events in September, a steady stream of scientific themes emerged in September media stories. For instance, research published in the journal Science regarding methane flaring, venting and leaking prompted several news accounts. For example, Wall Street Journal reporter Eric Niiler wrote , “Emissions of methane from oil and natural gas wells are far higher than previously thought because a technique the facilities use to prevent the greenhouse gas from escaping into the atmosphere isn’t working as expected, scientists said in a study published Thursday in the journal Science. Called flaring, the technique involves burning natural gas that leaks from wells—much as a stove’s pilot light burns gas. The study, which involved testing the air around 300 flares in four states, showed that many flares were unlit or operating inefficiently. As a result, emissions from the flaring facilities of methane—the principal constituent of natural gas—are five times greater than previous estimates by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That means overall methane emissions from U.S. oil and gas production are about 10% higher than previous EPA estimates, according to the study”.

Meanwhile, several political and economic themed media stories about climate change or global warming continued in September. To begin, InfluenceMap’s published examinations of  major oil and gas companies’ public communications messaging revealed that rhetoric  contrasted materially with ongoing investment activity. For example, CNN journalist Lauren Kent reported , “Big oil companies are spending millions to portray themselves as taking action on climate change, but their investments and lobbying activities don't live up to their planet-friendly claims, according to a new report. An analysis from London-based energy and climate think-tank InfluenceMap found that the amount of climate-positive messaging used by five major oil and gas companies -- BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies -- is inconsistent with their spending on low-carbon activities. The report comes as scientists have grown increasingly urgent in their warning that the world must slash the use of fossil fuels to prevent catastrophic consequences of the climate crisis. It also comes amid fresh criticism of oil companies' growing profits as consumer energy costs soar. The think tank analyzed 3,421 items of public communications materials for 2021 across the five companies and found that 60% of their messaging contained at least one "green" claim. InfluenceMap then calculated the amount of money the energy companies expected to spend on green investments last year and found on average just 12% of their capital expenditure budgets were going toward what the companies themselves consider low-carbon or renewable activities”.

Meanwhile, the Global Registry of Fossil Fuels released a ‘Carbon Tracker and Global Energy Monitor’ database that generated several media stories. For example, Guardian journalist Oliva Milman reported , “Burning the world’s proven reserves of fossil fuels would emit more planet-heating emissions than have occurred since the industrial revolution, easily blowing the remaining carbon budget before societies are subjected to catastrophic global heating, a new analysis has found. An enormous 3.5tn tons of greenhouse gas emissions will be emitted if governments allow identified reserves of coal, oil and gas to be extracted and used, according to what has been described as the first public database of fossil fuel production. The database, which covers around three-quarters of global energy production, reveals that the US and Russia each have enough fossil fuel reserves to single-handedly eat up the world’s remaining carbon budget before the planet is tipped into 1.5C (2.7F) or more of heating compared to the pre-industrial era”.

Last, several September media accounts featured political stories relating to climate change or global warming. For example, Carlos III would accede to the British crown after the death of Elizabeth II, nicknamed the Green King, for his tireless environmental activism, as the article stated “How Carlos III thinks”. For example, La Vanguardia journalist Alexis Rodríguez noted , “The green floods his activism. Vehemently. Even with thick words. She worries about climate change. He supports organic farming. And green energy. And all this from his youth. To that end he founded The Prince's Charities when he was barely in his twenties. He keeps at it. At the most recent climate conference COP26 of Glasgow, Scotland, last year, for example, the still Prince Carlos called on world leaders who should adopt a “position of war” to face the global threat of change climate and biodiversity loss. The new monarch, at the COP26 in Glasgow, invited world leaders “that they should adopt a “position of war” to face the global threat of climate change and the loss of biodiversity”.

Last, in September media coverage also featured many cultural stories relating to climate change or global warming. To begin, coverage continued regarding the use of private planes. For example, El País journalist Clemente Álvarez wrote , “France has put the planes of the richest at the center of the debate, which, although globally contribute little to climate change, represent one of the most extreme cases of inequality in the way they pollute”. Meanwhile, La Vanguardia journalist Antonio Cerrillo noted , “PSG striker Kylian Mbappé burst out laughing a few days ago when his coach, Christophe Galtier, was questioned by a journalist about whether the club planned to use the train on certain routes, instead of the plane, to reduce the carbon footprint. Hearing the question, a theatrical Galtier smiled, shook his head and pinched his nose, before blurting out, "The company that organizes our tours is trying to see if we can travel by sailboat." The mocking response triggered Mbappé’s fit of laughter; and, although the coach apologized the next day, criticism has been heaped on the star striker, accused of "lack of respect, contempt and disdain" towards policies to reduce emissions and mitigate global warming”.

Meanwhile, human rights and climate change concerns combined in several September news accounts as Egypt gets set to host the next round of United Nations climate negotiations. For example, an Associated Press wire story reported , “Amnesty International accused Egypt on Wednesday of attempting to cover up a decade of “unrelenting violations of human rights” in order to improve its international standing ahead of hosting the world climate summit. Egypt’s human rights record has come under intensified scrutiny ahead of the November global COP27 summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Dozens of international rights groups have called on Egypt to end its crackdown on civil society and protect freedom of expression. Wednesday’s 48-page report by Amnesty urged the Egyptian government to implement changes and stop abuses, citing a relentless clampdown on dissent, rollback of personal freedoms and mass incarcerations after President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi came to power in 2013. Rights groups estimate that thousands of political prisoners are held in Egyptian jails”.

Last, perhaps both a cultural and political economic story generated many media accounts in late September. The apparent sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 methane gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea – and the release of climate change-inducing methane gas into the atmosphere – generated several news stories. For example, Guardian correspondents Karen McVeigh and Philip Oltermann noted , “Scientists fear methane erupting from the burst Nord Stream pipelines into the Baltic Sea could be one of the worst natural gas leaks ever and pose significant climate risks. Neither of the two breached Nord Stream pipelines, which run between Russia and Germany, was operational, but both contained natural gas. This mostly consists of methane – a greenhouse gas that is the biggest cause of climate heating after carbon dioxide. The extent of the leaks is still unclear but rough estimates by scientists, based on the volume of gas reportedly in one of the pipelines, vary between 100,000 and 350,000 tonnes of methane. Jasmin Cooper, a research associate at Imperial College London’s department of chemical engineering, said a “lot of uncertainty” surrounded the leak”.

Climate activists lie after painting "stop funding fossil fuels" on the square in front of the Euro sign in Frankfurt. Photo: Michael Probst/AP.

October media coverage of climate change or global warming in newspapers around the globe dipped 5% from September 2022 and 37% from September 2021 levels. Meanwhile, coverage in international wire services decreased 15%, as radio coverage rose 21% from September 2022. Compared to the previous month, coverage decreased in the European Union (EU) (-4%), Asia (-6%), , Oceania (-6%), the Middle East (-7%) and North America (-11%). But, coverage was up from the previous month in Africa (+14%), and Latin America (+19%). Figure 1 shows trends in newspaper media coverage at the global scale – organized into seven geographical regions around the world – from January 2004 through October 2022.   

Figure 1. Newspaper media coverage of climate change or global warming in print sources in seven different regions around the world, from January 2004 through October 2022.

At the country level, United States (US) print coverage decreased 18% while television coverage also decreased 33% from the previous month. Among other countries that we at the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) monitor, coverage increased in Spain (+6%), Canada (+7%), India (+11%), Denmark (+13%), and Norway (+76%). However, coverage in October 2022 decreased in Japan (-1%), Finland (-4%), New Zealand (-5%), the United Kingdom (UK) (-5%), Australia (-7%), Germany (-10%), Sweden (-12%), and Korea (-23%) (see Figure 2). You may note that we have added four new sources in Korea – C hosun Ilbo , Dong-a Ilbo , Maeil Business Newspaper , and Hankyoreh – thanks to the work of our two new team members Dr. Kyungsun Lee and Dr. Kyotaek Hwang.

Figure 2. ­­Newspaper coverage of climate change or global warming in Korean newspapers C hosun Ilbo , Dong-a Ilbo , Maeil Business Newspaper , and Hankyoreh from January 2004 through October 2022.

Turning to the content of coverage, in October media coverage featured many cultural stories relating to climate change or global warming. Pro-climate action protesters in Europe garnered significant media attention through their slightly whimsical yet daring actions. For example, The Guardian journalist Damien Gayle noted , “There were gasps, roars and a shout of “Oh my gosh!” in room 43 of the gallery as two young supporters of the climate protest group threw the liquid over the painting, which is protected by glass, just after 11am. They removed jackets to reveal Just Stop Oil T-shirts before gluing themselves to the wall beneath the artwork, which is one of the gallery’s most important treasures. “What is worth more, art or life?” said one of the activists, Phoebe Plummer, 21, from London. She was accompanied by 20-year-old Anna Holland, from Newcastle. “Is it worth more than food? More than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?”” These actions generated a debate among activists between angry protest and civil disobedience. For example, La Vanguardia journalist Antonio Cerrillo wrote , "Division of opinions before the launch of tomato soup against a VanGogh”. Meanwhile, Steven Duncombe opined in The Guardian , “Last week two activists from Just Stop Oil who threw tomato soup on a landscape painting by Vincent Van Gogh in the National Gallery and then glued themselves to the wall, symbolizing, um, well, ah… I’m really not quite sure. The head-scratching disconnect between the activists’ tactics and the message they were trying to convey – linking oil to the climate crisis, in case you hadn’t figured it out – has been widely discussed, and ridiculed, in the media”. Elsewhere, New York Times journalist Eduardo Medina reported , “Two climate activists threw mashed potatoes on a glass-covered painting by the celebrated French Impressionist Claude Monet on Sunday inside a German museum, the latest art attack intended to draw attention to climate change”.

Later in October, protesters in London stopped traffic to draw attention to climate change. Many stories followed. For example, Guardian correspondent Sophie Zeldin-O'Neill reported , “Motorists dragged Just Stop Oil protesters out of the way as activists halted traffic flow across four central London roads on Saturday. The group said 61 Just Stop Oil supporters stopped traffic on Charing Cross Road, Kensington High Street, Kennington Road and Blackfriars Road, “demanding that the government halts all new oil and gas consents and licences”. They posted a series of videos on Twitter shortly after midday on Saturday, showing protesters in bright orange vests sitting across some of the city’s major roads. In several instances, members of the public shouted abuse and dragged the protesters on to the nearby pavement. Drivers dragged protesters out of the road, but they persistently returned to retake their places”. Meanwhile, Guardian journalist Damian Carrington noted , “A large majority of the UK public supports nonviolent direct action to protect the environment, according to an opinion poll. People also strongly backed solar power on farmland and opposed fracking. The poll indicates the unpopularity of a recent swathe of government policies, with more than twice as many people saying they trusted Labour to protect the environment as said they trusted the Conservatives…In the poll, 66% of people supported taking nonviolent direct action to protect the UK’s nature, with 34% opposed. Support for such action dropped to 44% among Tory supporters. Recent direct action has included protesters throwing soup at a Van Gogh painting and blocking the Dartford Crossing”.

And, European scientists announced actions of nonviolent civil disobedience. La Vanguardia journalist Antonio Cerrillo wrote , “Rebelión Científica (Scientist Rebellion), the branch made up of expert climatologists and ecologists related to the international movement Rebellion or Extinction, has announced a series of initiatives with protest actions and civil disobedience in protest against what it considers government inaction on climate change. The result is that more than 100 scientists and academics from 12 countries are going to risk arrest and imprisonment in Germany to demand that the government admit that staying below the 1.5°C global warming limit is no longer possible, set by the Paris Agreement, and call for the cancellation of the debt of the countries of the global south and the immediate decarbonization of their transport sector”.

Figure 3. ­­Newspaper front pages stories in October with links to climate change and climate risks.

The month of October was also marked by media coverage about climate change or global warming with ecological and meteorological themes. Early in October, Hurricane Roslyn made landfall on Mexico’s Pacific coast as a Category 3 hurricane, and several stories made links between the storm and climate change. For example, Washington Post correspondent Matthew Cappucci noted , “Roslyn emerged after a group of thunderstorms off the west coast of Mexico congealed into a tropical depression and eventually a named storm on Thursday. It wasn’t until 11 p.m. Eastern time Friday that Rosslyn became a hurricane, but it rapidly intensified into a major hurricane, defined as Category 3 or higher, on Saturday morning, just six hours later. Rapid intensification, defined as a spike of 35 mph or more in a storm’s maximum sustained winds within 24 hours, is more likely in the presence of warmer waters and calm upper-level winds. There are emerging links between human-induced climate change and the frequency and severity of rapid intensification”.

In late October, Tropical Storm Nalgae slammed into the Philippines and several stories made connections to climate change as they described the devastation. For example, an Agence-France Presse story detailed , “The Philippines has significantly revised down the death toll from a tropical storm ravaging the country, saying only 45 people have been killed… The storm struck at the beginning of a long weekend in the Philippines, when millions return to their home towns to visit the graves of their relatives. The Philippines is hit by an average of 20 major storms a year that kill hundreds of people and keep vast regions in perpetual poverty. Scientists have warned that such storms, which also kill livestock and destroy key infrastructure, are becoming more powerful as the world gets warmer because of climate change”.

Several stories then took a wider look at recent ecological and meteorological events. For example, El País journalist Manuel Planelles wrote , “From the United States to China to Europe, the summer of 2022 has been marked by drought in much of the northern hemisphere. With a climate crisis that every two times three shows its most damaging face anywhere on the planet, the question is almost inevitable: is global warming behind this time too? A group of scientists specializing in the attribution of extreme phenomena to climate change - the World Weather Attribution (WWA) - has presented a study in which they explain that the high and unusual temperatures of June, July and August were the main cause of the enormous soil dryness. The researchers conclude that human-caused climate change has made these dry conditions at least 20 times more likely in the extratropical region of the Northern Hemisphere”. Furthermore, an editorial in El País , entitled ‘Drought and poverty’ noted, “Only in Europe, which has experienced the hottest summer since at least 1880, the European Drought Observatory estimates that 47% of the continental territory is in danger of suffering it and the 17% in serious alert conditions”. Drought is also present in Africa. Also, an editorial in La Vanguardia entitled ‘Famine in East Africa’ noted, “the increase in grain and fuel prices due to the war in Ukraine, the serious effects of the climate crisis, the economic consequences of the pandemic and the Tribal violence has caused famine to spread across East Africa, mainly affecting South Sudan.” This country is dying of starvation: “71% of the population needs urgent help”.

In October, there continued to be a steady stream of scientific themes that emerged in media stories. For example, NBC News reporter Evan Bush wrote , “Little relief is expected for farmers, ranchers and reservoirs this winter in the Western U.S., as extreme drought is forecast to continue plaguing the region. That’s according to forecasters with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who predict "widespread extreme drought to persist across much of the West," according to Jon Gottschalck, chief of the operational prediction branch at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center… New research suggests climate change might be influencing circulation in a way that favors La Niña in the short term”.

Last, several political and economic themed media stories about climate change or global warming continued in October. To illustrate, a new report from Insure our Future generated media attention. For example, Guardian journalist Isabella Kaminski reported , “New coal power projects are becoming “effectively uninsurable” outside China because so many insurance companies have ruled out support for them, a report has found. Recent commitments to stop underwriting coal by prominent US insurers AIG and Travelers have brought the number of coal insurance exit policies to 41, according to the latest industry scorecard by the climate campaign Insure Our Future. The scorecard ranks the top global fossil fuel insurers on the quality of their fossil fuel exclusion policies. It shows that 62% of the reinsurance market and 39% of the primary insurance market are now covered by coal exclusions, with Allianz, Axa and Axis Capital ranking top for the robustness and breadth of their policies. Many of the remaining insurers without coal exclusions are not active in the fossil fuel sector”. Meanwhile, Associated Press correspondent Frank Jordans noted , “Insurance companies that have long said they’ll cover anything, at the right price, are increasingly ruling out fossil fuel projects because of climate change — to cheers from environmental campaigners. More than a dozen groups that track what policies insurers have on high-emissions activities say the industry is turning its back on oil, gas and coal…In part, investors are demanding it. But insurers have also begun to make the link between fossil fuel infrastructure, such as mines and pipelines, and the impact that greenhouse gas emissions are having on other parts of their business”.

Also, stories about the ongoing invasion in Ukraine, the economy, fossil fuel transport and climate change dotted the media landscape in October. For example, Expansión journalist Pedro Biurrun noted , “Criticism of the IMF and the World Bank, defections from the alliance for decarbonization... Governments, companies and organizations suffer from the tensions between the green revolution and the economic crisis”. According to the EU Commissioner for International Partnerships, Jutta Urpilaine, “Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine and its economic repercussions have had a dramatic impact on countries around the world and widen the financing gap needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Public resources continue to play an important role, but they are not enough”.

Climate activists staged a number of protests during the conference, demanding end of fossil fuels and climate finance. Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images.

November media coverage of climate change or global warming in newspapers around the globe increased 41% from October 2022 but remained 12% lower than November 2021 levels. In a larger context, the levels of November 2022 coverage was the fourth highest monthly total, following December 2009, November 2021, and October 2021. International wire services were a strong contributor to this increase as coverage in these sources jumped 76%. Radio coverage also rose 27% from October 2022. Compared to the previous month, coverage went up in all regions: Oceania (+15%), North America (+17%), Asia (+31%), the European Union (EU) (+40%), Africa (+57%), Latin America (+80%), and the Middle East (+122%). Figure 1 shows trends in newspaper media coverage at the global scale – organized into seven geographical regions around the world – from January 2004 through November 2022.  

Figure 1. Newspaper media coverage of climate change or global warming in print sources in seven different regions around the world, from January 2004 through November 2022.

At the country level, United States (US) print coverage increased 20% while television coverage also was up 25% from the previous month. Among other countries that we at the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) monitor, coverage increased in Canada (+11%), Finland (+15%), India (+15%), Denmark (+19%), Australia (+33%), Norway (+37%), the United Kingdom (UK) (+40%), Germany (+42%), Japan (+46%), Spain (+49%), Sweden (+75%), Korea (+77%), and Russia (+81%) (see Figure 2). Coverage in November 2022 only decreased at the country level in those we monitor in New Zealand (-15%).

Figure 2. ­­Newspaper coverage of climate change or global warming in Russian newspapers Izvestiya , Rossiskaya Gazeta , Nezavisimaya Gazeta , Komsomolskaya , and Pravda from January 2000 through November 2022.

Turning to the content of coverage, in November media coverage featured many political and economic themed media stories about climate change or global warming. To illustrate, the United Nations (UN) climate negotiations (COP27) in November generated many media accounts. For example, in the lead up to the two-week event, Washington Post reporters Brady Dennis and Harry Stevens wrote , “Last fall, at a high-profile global climate summit in Scotland, the countries of the world embraced what seemed like a significant commitment in the quest to combat climate change. Acknowledging that progress had been too slow, leaders agreed to “revisit and strengthen” their national climate targets if possible over the coming year — rather than waiting every five years, as envisioned under the 2015 Paris climate accord. The push came as part of the effort to hold average global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, compared with preindustrial levels — a key threshold past which scientists have said disastrous impacts become far more likely. But…almost none of the globe’s biggest emitters have come forward with stronger commitments. Few nations overall have ramped up their ambition, despite another year of floods, fires and other climate-related catastrophes. According to the independent Climate Action Tracker, as of Thursday only 21 countries have submitted updated national climate commitments as leaders are set to gather at the summit, which starts Nov. 6 in Egypt — and not even all those newer plans contain more ambitious goals. Meanwhile, another 172 countries have not updated their targets, the group said.”

Media attention was paid to elements of the COP27 negotiations such as ‘loss and damage’. For example, Wall Street Journal correspondent Eric Niiler reported , “The last eight years have each been warmer than all years before that period on record, according to a report by the World Meteorological Organization that was released Sunday as the United Nations opened two weeks of climate talks. The WMO, which is a branch of the U.N., combined multiple scientific studies to compare temperatures since record-keeping began in the late 19th century. The group also reported that the rate of sea-level rise has doubled since satellite measurements began in 1993. European glaciers are expected to suffer a record melt in 2022. Greenland’s ice sheet experienced rainfall, rather than snow, for the first time in September”. Meanwhile, BBC journalist Esme Stallard noted , “Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was responding to a UN report released on Sunday saying the past eight years were on track to be the warmest on record. More than 120 world leaders are due to arrive at the summit known as COP27, in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. This will kick off two weeks of negotiations between countries on climate action. COP27 president, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, urged leaders to not let food and energy crises related to Russia's invasion of Ukraine get in the way of action on climate change…Mr Guterres sent a video message to the conference in which he called the State of the Global Climate Report 2022 a "chronicle of climate chaos".”

As the negotiations wrapped up with initial agreement on a loss and damage fund, many stories covered these developments. For example, CNN journalists Ivana Kottasová, Ella Nilsen and Rachel Ramirez reported , “The world has failed to reach an agreement to phase out fossil fuels after marathon UN climate talks were “stonewalled” by a number of oil-producing nations. Negotiators from nearly 200 countries at the COP27 UN climate summit in Egypt took the historic step of agreeing to set up a “loss and damage” fund meant to help vulnerable countries cope with climate disasters and agreed the globe needs to cut greenhouse gas emissions nearly in half by 2030”. Meanwhile, Wall Street Journal correspondents Matthew Dalton and Stacy Meichtry noted , “Poorer countries secured a deal at United Nations climate talks to create a fund for climate-related damage as part of a broader agreement that failed to yield faster cuts in emissions sought by wealthy nations to avert more severe global warming. The accord at the COP27 summit in this Egyptian seaside resort hands a victory to poorer nations that have demanded that money since the first U.N. climate treaty was signed three decades ago”.

As the second week of COP27 unfolded, leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) nations met in Bali, Indonesia and climate-related news emanated from that meeting as well. For example, New York Times journalists Brad Plumer, David Gelles, and Lisa Friedman reported , “At last year’s global climate talks in Glasgow, world leaders, scientists and chief executives rallied around a call to “keep 1.5 alive.” The mantra was in reference to an aspirational goal that every government endorsed in the 2015 Paris climate agreement: try to stop global average temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. Beyond that threshold, scientists say, the risk of climate catastrophes increases significantly. Now, 1.5 is hanging on for dear life. At the United Nations climate summit that is underway in this Red Sea town, countries are clashing over whether they should continue to aim for the 1.5-degree target. The United States and the European Union both say that any final agreement at the summit, known as COP27, should underscore the importance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees. But a few nations, including China, have so far resisted efforts to reaffirm the 1.5-degree goal, according to negotiators from several industrialized countries. Failing to do so would be a major departure from last year’s climate pact and, to some, a tacit admission of defeat”.

Figure 3. ­­Newspaper front pages stories in November with links to climate change and climate risks.

The month of November was also marked by media coverage about climate change or global warming with ecological and meteorological themes. Early in the month, hurricane Lisa’s landfall in Belize generated stories making connections with climate change. For example, Washington Post journalist Ian Livingston reported , “The tropical Atlantic remains unusually busy for November, with forecasters monitoring multiple systems at a time when activity is usually tamping down. After battering Belize as a hurricane Wednesday, where it caused flooding and wind damage, Tropical Depression Lisa is raining itself out over southeast Mexico. Meanwhile, Hurricane Martin, fueled by unusually warm ocean waters, is sweeping across the North Atlantic as the farthest-north hurricane on record during November. When Lisa and Martin coexisted as hurricanes on Wednesday, it marked only the third instance on record of multiple Atlantic hurricanes during the month. Statistically, a November hurricane should form in the Atlantic just once every two or three years…Human-caused climate change is warming ocean waters around the world, and research has already shown storms are gaining strength farther north than they used to.” An article in The New York Times by Christine Hauser and colleagues added , “The links between hurricanes and climate change have become clearer with each passing year. Data shows that hurricanes have become stronger worldwide during the past four decades. A warming planet can expect stronger hurricanes over time, and a higher incidence of the most powerful storms — though the overall number of storms could drop, because factors like stronger wind shear could keep weaker storms from forming. Hurricanes are also becoming wetter because of more water vapor in the warmer atmosphere. Also, rising sea levels are contributing to higher storm surge — the most destructive element of tropical cyclones.”

Scoping out, there were several news stories connecting meteorological events, disasters, and climate change. For example, Associated Press correspondent Drew Costley reported , “Ninety percent of the counties in the United States suffered a weather disaster between 2011 and 2021…Some endured as many as 12 federally-declared disasters over those 11 years. More than 300 million people — 93% of the country’s population — live in these counties… The National Centers for Environmental Information estimate over $1 trillion was spent on weather and climate events between 2011 and 2021. The report recommends the federal government shift to preventing disasters rather than waiting for events to happen”. Furthermore, La Vanguardia journalist Antonio Cerrillo noted , “The rise in temperatures observed in Europe in the last 30 years has been more than double the average increase in temperature recorded worldwide. On no other continent have temperatures been so high. And, as the warming trend continues, society, economies and ecosystems will be affected by exceptional heat episodes, forest fires and major avenues, among other effects. This is indicated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in the report on the State of the climate in Europe prepared jointly with the Copernicus service and the European Union”.

In November, there continued to be a steady stream of scientific themes that emerged in media stories. To begin, a new report from World Weather Attribution that found connections between climate pollution and extreme rainfall attracted media attention. For example, Washington Post correspondent Amudalat Ajasa wrote , “Devastating floods this summer and fall displaced 1.5 million Nigerians and killed 612. In all of West Africa, more than 800 people died. Researchers have determined that human-caused climate change made the excessive rainfall behind the flooding 80 times more probable, according to a new analysis…The researchers, from the World Weather Attribution group, which evaluates the impact climate change has on extreme-weather events, made several related findings: The rainy season in West Africa was 20 percent wetter than it would have been without the influence of climate change. Throughout West Africa, prolonged rain events such as the one just experienced now have a 1 in 10 chance of happening each year; previously they were exceptionally rare. Short periods of intense downpours, which worsened the recent floods, have become­ twice as likely in the Lower Niger Basin region because of climate change. In their analysis, researchers uncovered what they described as a “very clear fingerprint of anthropogenic,” or human-caused, climate change. The analysis employed weather data and climate models to compare present climate conditions to the past. The researchers focused on the Lake Chad Basin, which saw a wetter-than-average rainy season, and the Lower Niger Basin, which saw short spikes in very heavy rain, to analyze climate change impacts. Running simulations with and without the influences of greenhouse gas emissions and aerosol pollution, the researchers were able to quantify how climate change altered the risk of extreme rainfall”.

Last, several cultural stories relating to climate change or global warming were evident in wider news coverage of climate change or global warming in the month of November. For example, global attention paid to the World Cup in Qatar also led to several stories making links to climate change. For example, Associated Press correspondent Suman Naishadham reported , “In the 12-year run-up to hosting the 2022 men’s World Cup soccer tournament, Qatar has been on a ferocious construction spree with few recent parallels. It built seven of its eight World Cup stadiums, a new metro system, highways, high-rises and Lusail, a futuristic city that ten years ago was mostly dust and sand. For years, Qatar promised something else to distinguish this World Cup from the rest: It would be ‘carbon-neutral,’ or have a negligible overall impact on the climate. And for almost as long, there have been skeptics — with outside experts saying Qatar and FIFA’s plan rests on convenient accounting and projects that won’t counteract the event’s carbon footprint as they advertise…in an official report estimating the event’s emissions, Qatari organizers and FIFA projected that the World Cup will produce some 3.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from activities related to the tournament between 2011 and 2023. That’s about 3% of Qatar’s total emissions in 2019 of roughly 115 million metric tons, according to World Bank data….Qatar famously moved the tournament to the winter to protect players and spectators from extreme heat. Even so, the gas-rich nation will air condition seven stadiums that are open to the sky. For water, it will mostly rely on energy-guzzling desalination plants that take ocean water and make it drinkable to satisfy the more than 1.2 million fans expected to touch down for the monthlong event. The Gulf Arab sheikdom is normally home to 2.9 million people. Qatar and FIFA say the largest source of emissions will be travel — mostly the miles flown from overseas. That will make up 52% of the total. Construction of the stadiums and training sites and their operations will account for 25%, the report said. Operating hotels and other accommodations for the five weeks, including the cruise ships Qatar hired as floating hotels, will contribute 20%. But in its report, Carbon Market Watch said those figures are not the whole story. It said Qatar vastly underestimated the emissions from building the seven stadiums by dividing the emissions from all that concrete and steel by the lifespan of the facilities in years, instead of just totaling them”. As a second example, El País journalists Miguel A. Medina and Clemente Álvarez wrote , “Idols of the ball, villains of the climate: the climate emergency does not reach the soccer bubble. Many of the World Cup stars in Qatar are part of the small percentage of the population that multiplies the emissions that warm the planet…any teams have oil companies and airlines as sponsors”.

Climate protests and demonstrations in November also led to media portrayals in various news outlets. For example, The Associated Press reported , “Hundreds of climate protesters blocked private jets from leaving Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on Saturday in a demonstration on the eve of the COP27 U.N. climate meeting in Egypt. Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion protesters sat around private jets to prevent them leaving and others rode bicycles around the planes”. As a second example, Guardian journalist Kevin Rawlinson wrote , “Parts of the M25 have been closed after activists demanding action on the climate crisis climbed gantries, police have said. The disruption followed seven arrests in Scotland Yard’s pre-emptive operation against the Just Stop Oil group”. A third example – covering protest actions at various European museums – by La Vanguardia journalists Teresa Sesé and Justo Barranco noted , “Two activists tried to glue Munch's The Scream to the National Museum in Oslo by proclaiming that “there will be no screaming when people die”, but museum guards prevented the action and called the police. A few days ago it was the Parisian Musée d'Orsay that stopped an activist who first tried to attack Van Gogh's self-portrait and then a Gauguin with tomato soup. A clear sign that Western museums are on high alert and taking urgent measures to confront the actions of climate activists, who in recent months have attached themselves to picture frames and thrown tomato soup against the windows of pieces iconic works such as Van Gogh's Sunflowers or Goya's Majas in the Prado”.

Melting ice on the Kuskokwim River on the Yukon Delta in Alaska. Scientists have found that Alaska has been warming twice as fast as the global average. Photo: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images.

December media coverage of climate change or global warming in newspapers around the globe dropped 36% from November 2022 but remained 8% higher than December 2021 levels. International wire services similarly decreased 36%. Radio coverage also dipped 45% from November 2022. Compared to the previous month, coverage was pretty consistently down in all regions: North America (-29%), Asia (-30%), Oceania (-30%), the European Union (EU) (-40%), the Middle East (-45%), Latin America (-46%), and Africa (-56%). Figure 1 shows trends in newspaper media coverage at the global scale – organized into seven geographical regions around the world – from January 2004 through December 2022.  

Figure 1. Newspaper media coverage of climate change or global warming in print sources in seven different regions around the world, from January 2004 through December 2022.

At the country level, United States (US) print coverage decreased 36% while television coverage also was down 45% from the previous month. Among other countries that we at the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO) monitor, coverage decreased across the board.

Figure 2. ­­Newspaper coverage of climate change or global warming in Indian newspapers Indian Express, The Hindu, Hindustan Times , and Times of India from January 2004 through December 2022.

Turning to the content of coverage, media attention to climate change or global warming was punctuated with ecological and meteorological themes. For instance, El País journalist Victoria Torres Benayas noted , “Spain exceeds 15° on average for the first time in 2022, the warmest year in more than a century. The heat of 2022 is unprecedented in Spain. In the absence of nine days left until the end of December and which will register abnormally high temperatures, it has already become the warmest year for which there is data. "It is, with an overwhelming difference, the warmest year in the series, which starts in 1961. But highly reliable climate reconstructions allow us to affirm that it has been warmer for at least more than a century, since 1915," explains the Agency spokesperson. State Meteorology Department (Aemet) Rubén del Campo who, together with his counterpart Beatriz Hervella, makes a preliminary analysis of the year. For the first time, the country's average annual temperature will exceed 15˚ —for the moment 15.3˚— which is 1.6˚ above normal”.

Elsewhere, heavy rains in Kinshasa, Congo – with links made to climate change – populated several news accounts in December. For example, New York Times correspondent Elian Peltier noted , “At least 141 people died in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday after heavy rains caused floods and landslides in the capital, Kinshasa, Congolese officials said. It was the latest in a series of deadly environmental disasters to hit West and Central African countries this year. Many neighborhoods, major infrastructure and key roads were still underwater or in ruins on Wednesday after the previous day’s all-night downpour brought the worst floods in years to the city of 15 million people. Nearly 40,000 households were flooded and 280 collapsed, according to an official document seen by The New York Times . President Félix Tshisekedi, who is in Washington for a U.S.-Africa summit, declared three days of mourning and said he would cut his trip short, flying back to Kinshasa on Thursday after meeting with President Biden. West and Central Africa have suffered from devastating floods this year, highlighting a deadly mix of chaotic urban development and climate change faced by dozens of fast-growing African cities. In Chad, the worst floods in decades displaced thousands in September and left the capital, Ndjamena, navigable only by boat. In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, hundreds of people died, a million were displaced and at least 200,000 houses were destroyed in November after the nation’s worst flooding in a decade. Scientists said in a report last month that the rainy season, which runs from April to November, had been 20 percent wetter than it would have been without climate change”.

Also, cold weather across North America at the end of December generated several news accounts that connected to changes in the climate. For example, New York Times reporter Henry Fountain wrote , “The winter storm that ravaged much of the United States and Canada through Christmas was expected to be bad, and it was. Forecasters billed it as a “once in a generation” event even before ice began coating the steep streets of Seattle, white-out conditions spread from the Plains to the Midwest and more than four feet of snow was dumped on Buffalo in a storm that killed more than two dozen people. The links between climate change and much extreme weather are becoming increasingly clear. In a warming planet, heat waves are hotter, droughts are prolonged, summer downpours are more severe”.

Figure 3. ­­Newspaper front pages stories in December with links to climate change and climate risks.

December media coverage also featured various cultural stories relating to climate change or global warming were evident in wider news coverage of climate change or global warming. To illustrate, new findings regarding school textbooks found that there remains only scant attention paid to climate change in typical science textbooks. News media focused on this. For example, Washington Post journalist Caroline Preston reported , “Evidence is mounting fast of the devastating consequences of climate change on the planet, but college textbooks are not keeping up. A study released Wednesday found that most college biology textbooks published in the 2010s had less content on climate change than textbooks from the previous decade and gave shrinking attention to possible solutions to the global crisis”.

Many scientific themes continued to emerge in media stories during the month of December through new studies, reports, and assessments. One such report was the annual ‘Arctic Report Card’ published by researchers at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Stories about report findings dotted the media landscape around the world, particularly in temperate zones. For example, Washington Post correspondent Kasha Patel wrote , “The bison couldn’t crack the ice. As Christmastime wound down last year, unseasonably warm temperatures and heavy rain in Alaska’s Delta Junction melted snow and ice, which quickly refroze due to subzero temperatures near the surface. Usually, the bovine can shovel through snow with their heads and horns, but the frozen snow and ice persisted like a layer of cement atop the grasses and plants they need to feed on. And the bison couldn’t get through. About 180 bison, or a third of the Delta herd, starved to death. Those that survived were skinny and in poor form. Bison season in the Delta Junction area, one of the most popular hunting seasons in Alaska, was cut short from six months to two weeks. It was one of several exceptional events the Arctic experienced over the past year, all intensified by a warmer world. A typhoon, formed in unusually warm waters in the North Pacific, hit the western coast of Alaska as the state’s strongest storm in decades. A late heat wave in Greenland caused unprecedented melt in September, which can contribute to sea level rise. Despite decent winter snow in Alaska, the rapid onset of summer created devastating conditions for wildfires that burned a record million acres by June. The recent events are a continuation of a decades-long destabilization in the Arctic region, researchers said in the 2022 Arctic Report Card”.

Last, many political and economic themed media stories about climate change or global warming continued to roll out in the month of December. At the start of the month, documents released by the US House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform revealed that rhetoric and action was quite divergent from top officials in major oil companies such as Shell, Chevron, Exxon, and BP. For example, CNN correspondent René Marsh reported , “Big Oil companies have engaged in a “long-running greenwashing campaign” while raking in “record profits at the expense of American consumers,” the Democratic-led House Oversight Committee has found after a year-long investigation into climate disinformation from the fossil fuel industry. The committee found the fossil fuel industry is “posturing on climate issues while avoiding real commitments” to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Lawmakers said it has sought to portray itself as part of the climate solution, even as internal industry documents reveal how companies have avoided making real commitments”. Meanwhile, Guardian journalist Oliver Milman wrote , “Some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies have internally dismissed the need to swiftly move to renewable energy and cut planet-heating emissions, despite publicly portraying themselves as concerned about the climate crisis, a US House of Representatives committee has found. Documents obtained from companies including Exxon, Shell, BP and Chevron show that the fossil fuel industry “has no real plans to clean up its act and is barreling ahead with plans to pump more dirty fuels for decades to come”, said Carolyn Maloney, the chair of the House oversight committee, which has investigated the sector for the past year. The committee accused the oil firms of a “long-running greenwashing campaign” by committing to major new projects to extract and burn fossil fuels despite espousing their efforts to go green. In reality, executives, the documents show, were derisive of the need to cut emissions, disparaged climate activists and worked to secure US government tax credits for carbon capture projects that would allow them to continue business as usual”.

Also in the political sphere, ongoing stories of the Russian invasion of Ukraine – with consequent impacts on energy supplies and policy – proliferated, particularly in Europe. For example, La Vanguardia journalist Piergiorgio M. Sandri noted , “World coal consumption marks a new record due to the energy crisis. War fuels a cheap resource but a major emitter of carbon dioxide. Never before has so much coal been consumed and produced in the world. At a time when the fight against climate change forces us to reconsider the energy supply towards less polluting sources, the facts say that one of the resources responsible for the most emissions not only refuses to die, but is booming and in top form . This is stated in the report published yesterday by the International Energy Agency (IEA). High gas prices after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and consequent supply disruptions (particularly from Russia) have led some countries to turn to relatively cheaper coal this year, albeit the biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions. of the world energy system”.

Meanwhile in related economics news, British NGO Christian Aid published a list of the 10 costliest 2022 weather disasters. This grabbed European media attention as well. For instance, El País journalist Manuel Planelles noted , “The economic impact of these ten events linked to the climate crisis calculated in the study of this organization exceeds 168.100 million dollars. But the authors caution that most of their estimates are based only on losses covered by insurers, so it is very likely that "the true financial costs are even higher, while the human costs are often not accounted for", warns the NGO”.

About MeCCO | Figures | Monthly Summaries | Download Datasets | News | Research Outputs | Support MeCCO

DOE Awards $66 Million to Research the Impact of Climate Change on America’s Urban Communities

September 2022, field labs in baltimore, chicago, and texas will study the impact of extreme weather on people, homes, and local infrastructure .

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $66 million in funding for three projects, together involving over 20 institutions, that will develop Urban Integrated Field Laboratories (Urban IFLs) in Baltimore, MD, Chicago, IL, and the Texas Gulf Coast . These Urban IFLs will expand the understanding of climate and weather events and their impact on urban systems, including diverse demographic characteristics; differing climate-induced pressures on people and infrastructures; and varied geographic settings. Understanding how climate change will impact urban systems and infrastructure is key to building resilient cities powered by clean energy, helping achieve President Biden’s goal of a net-zero carbon economy by 2050.

“Understanding the risks of climate change and extreme weather means understanding the direct and indirect effects on people, their homes, their businesses, and the communities they live in,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm. “The Urban Integrated Field Labs will strengthen DOE leadership in climate modeling and drive scientific breakthroughs to inform the development of resilience technology that can protect America’s diverse communities.”

Each Urban IFL project team brings together scientific expertise from multiple institutions with a breadth of expertise in field observations, data assimilation, modeling, and model-data fusion to study the environmental, ecological, infrastructural, and human components of their selected urban regions. The selected projects will advance our scientific understanding of urban systems and harness that understanding to inform equitable climate and energy solutions, strengthening community scale resilience in urban landscapes, and addressing climate change impacts on underrepresented and disadvantaged communities.

The three selected projects will work in three different urban regions that are facing different environmental and climate hazards, and that each have distinct and diverse disadvantaged populations. Each selected IFL includes significant participation from local and minority serving institutions and will provide new opportunities at these institutions to inspire, train, and support leading scientists who have an appreciation for the global climate and energy challenges of the 21st century. The Urban IFLs will serve as an important element of DOE Office of Science’s commitment to the “Justice 40” initiative, which prioritizes investment in diverse and underrepresented communities affected by a changing climate.

The Urban IFL projects include: 

• Chicago, IL, the 3rd largest city in the nation, led by Argonne National Laboratory, will employ a network of observations and modeling from street to regional scales to explore multiple issues, including mitigation via green roofs and blue spaces, and community-driven future scenarios for adaptation and decarbonization.
• Austin, TX, led by the University of Texas at Austin in Beaumont/Port Arthur Texas, focuses on specific challenges of industrialized, medium sized port cities, including significant legacies of petrochemical industry, and how climate change may affect urban flooding and air quality.
• Baltimore, MD, led by Johns Hopkins University, focuses on a metropolitan area facing interlinked challenges of aging infrastructure, increased heat and flood risk, and inequitable burdens of air and water pollution that are common to many other mid-sized industrial cities in the Eastern and Midwest United States.

While each project is distinct, each has similarities to other U.S. urban regions and will develop new tools and techniques that will help other cities benefit from the science and success stories of these Urban IFLs.

The projects were selected by competitive peer review under the  DOE Funding Opportunity Announcement  for Urban Integrated Field Laboratories. Additional selections will be made in fiscal year 2023, subject to the availability of funds.

Total funding is $66 million for projects lasting up to five years in duration, with $18 million in Fiscal Year 2022 dollars and outyear funding contingent on congressional appropriations. The list of projects and more information can be found  here .

U.N. Report Shows Increased Climate Change Impacts on Humans and Nature

Governments must reduce emissions, accelerate adaptation efforts.

Navigate to:

• Table of Contents

Editor's Note: This analysis was updated to correct the number of scientific publications referenced.

According to a major report just released by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), human activities have caused climate change, resulting in a rise in sea levels, reduced crop yields, decreased availability of water for human use, and increased risk of extreme events around the world.

Written by more than 270 leading scientists from 67 countries, the latest report makes clear that the effects of climate change on ecosystems and human well-being are accelerating and worsening, and that our efforts to adapt to risks and withstand hazards must outpace both current and predicted climate change. The report further substantiates scientists’ calls for fast and sustained efforts to reduce emissions across every facet of life as necessary steps to reduce the risks of more damaging effects in the future.

The report, titled “Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability,” interweaves social and economic research and data with observed changes to the physical climate—for example, sea-level rise in low-lying coastal communities—to paint an all-encompassing picture of the interconnectedness of Earth’s systems. It stresses how changes to nature and society are likely to proceed in the coming decades as global temperatures rise, and identifies current and future options to better withstand climate impacts as well as their likelihood of success.

The nearly 4,000-page report synthesizes 34,000 scientific publications on the observed and predicted effects of climate change to natural and human systems, as well as the capacity of these systems to withstand change. It outlines how increased warming and sea-level rise affect biodiversity, water availability, agriculture, human settlements, and infrastructure. By doing so, the report builds a strong case that the effects of climate change are being felt everywhere and are predominantly negative.

The report also highlights the intergenerational nature of climate change: Under even the most extreme warming scenarios, people over age 55 are unlikely to live to see its worst outcomes. In reviewing the available evidence, the report identifies key risks at global and regional scales and proposes climate resilient development pathways across sectors and geographies.

Average global temperatures have risen more than 1 degree Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the end of the 19 th century. This warming has already impacted ecosystems and societies, and increased changes are certain to occur because of ongoing emissions.

Central to the report is evidence that rising temperatures could push our planet beyond tipping points at which changes can no longer be avoided or undone. All species, including humans, have certain adaptation limits, above which preventing or withstanding the effects of climate change is not possible. Species, such as the rodent Bramble Cay melomys in Australia, have suffered climate-induced extinctions, while others have shifted their habitats in response to temperature rise. If warming reaches 1.5 C (2.7 F), as many as 14% of terrestrial species could face a high risk of extinction, up to 24% of the world’s population would be exposed to flooding, and fully 90% of coral reefs could disappear. At 2 C (3.6 F) of warming, these numbers could rise to 18%, 30%, and 99%, respectively.

This science makes clear that incremental temperature increases result in increased effects—regardless of the amount of warming that has already occurred. About 3.3 billion people currently live in areas of high vulnerability to climate change. Managing emissions to limit future warming to a maximum of 1.5 C (2.7 F) substantially reduces future losses and damages when compared with higher levels of warming. In other words, the magnitude of change to natural and human systems—including the likelihood of severe and irreversible impacts, losses, and damages —increases with the magnitude of future warming.

Ultimately, while some of these consequences are already being observed—such as increased droughts, more intense flash flooding, and elevated storm surges—the worst effects can still be avoided through better planning and adapting to changing climatic conditions. However, even if future warming is limited to 1.5 C (2.7 F), some impacts will be irreversible as ecosystem-specific limits to adaptation may be exceeded. For example, some coral reefs, polar regions, and ecosystems found on the slopes of mountains have already reached or surpassed limits to adaptation.

The IPCC report underlines the interconnectedness of all systems on Earth, including climate, biodiversity, ecosystems, and human societies. What’s become unequivocally clear is that effects to one translate to effects for all. And that reducing the magnitude of future climate change benefits ecosystems and reduces the risk to society.

Although a range of useful options exists to adapt to climate change across regions and sectors—from protecting coastal wetlands that buffer shorelines from sea-level rise to promoting the interconnectivity of protected areas to allow for shifting migration and developing flood-prepared communities—they lose their effectiveness at higher levels of warming. As such, efforts to reduce vulnerability to climate risks and increase capacity to withstand effects from future changes must be implemented while also ensuring that global emissions are rapidly curtailed to limit future warming.

The report highlights that climate change will result in transformational change on a global scale. The question is what this change will look like as the “window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all” is rapidly closing. We can choose to live in a hotter and deadlier future for people and nature. Or, by rapidly reducing emissions, redesigning energy systems, and aggressively adapting to climatic impacts, we can choose to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Courtney Durham is an officer focusing on The Pew Charitable Trusts’ international conservation work, and Jim Palardy is a project director with Pew’s conservation science project. 

Governments Must Act Now To Prevent Climate Change

Longer heat waves, more intense rainfall, rising sea levels, and melting ice caps are some of the effects of climate change that are happening now and almost certain to worsen in coming years, according to the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Don’t miss our latest facts, findings, and survey results in The Rundown

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

MORE FROM PEW

Climate Finance and the USD 100 billion goal

The OECD has been instrumental in tracking progress towards the USD 100 billion climate finance goal, assessing contributions from developed countries to support climate action in developing nations, promoting transparency, and fostering international cooperation to meet this crucial target.

• Climate Finance Provided and Mobilised by Developed Countries in 2013-2022

The New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance

Select a language

At the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) of the UNFCCC in Copenhagen in 2009, developed countries committed to a collective goal of mobilising USD 100 billion per year by 2020 for climate action in developing countries, in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation. The goal was formalised at COP16 in Cancun, and at COP21 in Paris, it was reiterated and extended to 2025.

At the request of donor countries, the OECD has been tracking progress towards this goal since 2015. It produces regular analyses of progress made, based on a robust accounting framework that is consistent with the COP24 outcome agreed by all Parties to the Paris Agreement on funding sources and financial instruments.

Spotlight: Climate action in developing countries for 2013-2022

Released on 29 May 2024: The OECD’s seventh assessment of progress towards the UNFCCC goal finds that in 2022 developed countries provided and mobilised a total of USD 115.9 billion in climate finance for developing countries, exceeding the annual USD 100 billion goal for the first time.  This achievement occurs two years later than the original 2020 target year, but one year earlier than in projections produced by the OECD prior to COP26. 

The analysis presented in the report finds that:

• Public climate finance (bilateral and multilateral attributable to developed countries) accounted for close to 80% of the total in 2022 and increased from USD 38 billion in 2013 to USD 91.6 billion in 2022.
• Following a small drop in 2021, adaptation finance reached USD 32.4 billion in 2022, three times the 2016 level. Mitigation continued to account for the majority, representing 60% of the total.
• Private finance mobilised by public climate finance grew by 52%, following several years of relative stagnation.

In-depth: Scaling up the mobilisation of private finance and adaptation finance

OECD analysis on trends of climate finance provided and mobilised by developed countries for developing countries show that there is a pressing need for international providers to significantly scale up their efforts in two essential areas: adaptation finance and the mobilisation of private finance. Scaling up both adaptation finance and the mobilisation of private finance requires a major reorientation in the scope, composition, and strategic use of international climate finance.

In 2023, the OECD released two special reports, available below, that outline a set of actions and recommendations for international providers to increase finance for adaptation, and to more effectively mobilise private finance for climate action. Relevant to both reports are the following key messages:

• Support for building capacity in terms of project development, financial literacy, and operational efficiency strengthens developing countries’ abilities to access, absorb, and effectively utilise climate finance.
• There is a need for international providers to adapt and evolve the financial products and mechanisms they offer to enhance the reach and effectiveness of climate finance.
• International providers should collaborate more coherently and systematically, notably through country and regional platforms and other long-term arrangements.
• Scaling Up the Mobilisation of Private Finance for Climate Action in Developing Countries Challenges and Opportunities for International Providers Learn more
• Scaling Up Adaptation Finance in Developing Countries Challenges and Opportunities for International Providers Learn more

At the UNFCCC COP21 in 2015, Parties decided to set a New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) on climate finance prior to 2025, amounting to at least USD 100 billion per year and taking into account the needs and priorities of developing countries. Released on 27 May 2024, the OECD-IEA Climate Change Expert Group (CCXG) paper “The New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance: Options for reflecting the role of different sources, actors, and qualitative considerations” explores options for the design and scope of the forthcoming NCQG to reflect the importance of international public finance as well as the need to scale up private finance, while also recognising the magnitude and effectiveness of such finance depends on the domestic context and actions by all Parties. 

Related publications

What is included as climate finance in OECD figures?

OECD figures capture four distinct components of climate finance provided and mobilised by developed countries:

• Bilateral public climate finance provided by developed countries’ institutions, notably bilateral aid agencies and development banks;
• Multilateral public climate finance (provided by multilateral development banks and multilateral climate funds), attributed to developed countries;
• Climate-related officially supported export credits, provided by developed countries' official export credit agencies, and;
• Private finance mobilised by bilateral and multilateral public climate finance, attributed to developed countries.

OECD publications relating to the USD 100 billion goal also include less forward analyses. The most recent one, released in 2021 ahead of COP26, provided scenarios for the period 2021-2025, based on most recent pledges made by bilateral and multilateral public climate finance providers.

Further OECD work on tracking climate finance

• Assessing the alignment of finance with climate goals

Connect with us on X (Twitter)

@OECD_ENV

Connect with us on LinkedIn

OECD Environment

Subscribe to our newsletter

The OECD regularly publishes newsletters featuring the latest publications, analysis, events, Green Talks LIVE webinars, articles and blogs related to environment.

The Green Cluster of Cultural Heritage: Climate Effects TeamEU funded projects

• Gerakis, Athanasios
• Hemmelskamp, Jens
• Kowalczyk-Kedziora, Irena
• Vyzika, Melpomeni

Europe's built heritage, cultural landscapes and sites are under immediate threat from the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels, prolonged droughts, floods, and strong storms. Acid rain and other environmental pollutants cause wear and defacement of monuments and historic buildings, while soil erosion accelerates the deterioration of underwater and coastal heritage sites. The effects of climate change also affect, directly or indirectly, indoor cultural heritage.Horizon Europe, the 9th European Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2021-2027), is a key instrument of the Union to tackle global challenges such as the impact of climate change and natural disasters on cultural assets, as well as to promote cooperation and the influence of research and innovation in the design, support, and implementation of EU policies. To further enhance efficiency and research collaboration, the European Commission (EC) clusters the consortia with similar research objectives during their lifecycle. The idea is to facilitate researchers to share insights and best practices, identify synergies for dissemination and communication actions, and propose integrated feedback recommendations to policy makers in the EC and beyond.Since 2021, three calls for proposals have invited research teams to respond to the demands for more sustainable methods and technologies to restore monuments and works of art[i], the impact of climate change and natural hazards on cultural heritage[ii], and advanced technologies for remote monitoring in the field[iii]. The eleven projects selected for the EU funding have been encouraged to form the Green Cluster on Cultural Heritage.Within the Green Cluster, the ''Climate Effects'' Team, currently composed of four active EU projects (THETIDA, RescueME, TRIQUERTA, STECCI), has an overarching aim to address the urgent need to protect monuments, historic buildings, and sites from the diverse impacts of climatic risks, natural and anthropogenic hazards. This is expected to contribute to the conservation and protection of Europe's heritage by exploiting cutting-edge remote monitoring technologies and modelling tools for multi-hazard risk understanding and better preparedness.Research within the Green Cluster is complemented by other consortia that develop sustainable methodologies, materials and techniques for the preservation and restoration of art objects and explore the use of advanced and sophisticated technologies for more accurate, targeted, and reliable remote monitoring purposes.The impact of the scientific research is furthermore amplified by the active involvement of Artificial Intelligence tools, a wide range of community groups, stakeholders, and participants covering the full spectrum of ongoing research activities. This includes participatory and inclusive approaches, such as citizen science and participatory Living Lab methodologies.The overall goal of the EC is to support transdisciplinary joint efforts of researchers to develop sustainable preservation and adaptation plans, and to bring community involvement and inclusiveness to the forefront of large collaborative research projects funded by the EU. The long-term outcome will be the creation of a sustainable cultural heritage research ecosystem. [i] https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/horizon-cl2-2021-heritage-01-01 [ii] https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/horizon-cl2-2022-heritage-01-08 [iii] https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/horizon-cl2-2023-heritage-01-01

No Sources Found

• Ways to Give
• Contact an Expert
• Explore WRI Perspectives

Filter Your Site Experience by Topic

Applying the filters below will filter all articles, data, insights and projects by the topic area you select.

• All Topics Remove filter
• Climate filter site by Climate
• Cities filter site by Cities
• Energy filter site by Energy
• Food filter site by Food
• Forests filter site by Forests
• Freshwater filter site by Freshwater
• Ocean filter site by Ocean
• Business filter site by Business
• Economics filter site by Economics
• Finance filter site by Finance
• Equity & Governance filter site by Equity & Governance

Search WRI.org

Not sure where to find something? Search all of the site's content.

Canada's Record-breaking 2023 Wildfires Released Nearly 4 Times More Carbon than Global Aviation

• GHG emissions
• climate change

Canada’s 2023 wildfires made international headlines, causing billions of dollars in property damage, displacing thousands of people from their homes, and spewing air pollution that traveled as far as Europe and China. A new analysis shows that the wildfires also had a massive effect on greenhouse gas emissions.

Researchers from WRI’s Global Forest Watch initiative and the University of Maryland find that wildfires burned roughly 7.8 million hectares of forests in Canada in 2023 — more than 6 times the annual average since 2001. This amount of tree cover loss produced roughly 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide — nearly 4 times the carbon emissions of the global aviation sector in 2022, and 25% more than from all tropical primary forest loss combined in 2023.

Unlike emissions from tropical deforestation, which involve a permanent change in land use, most of the carbon emitted from wildfires will eventually be recovered by Canada’s forests over time as they regrow. However, it will take these forests decades to re-absorb all the carbon dioxide that was emitted in just a single year; meanwhile, time is in short supply to prevent irreversible damage from climate change.

While 2023 wildfires were exceptionally bad, they are part of a growing trend of forest fires becoming more frequent and severe. And yet due to Canada’s emissions accounting methods, most of the country’s wildfire-related emissions will not be officially reported in the UN’s global inventory, despite their substantial contribution to climate change.

Climate Change Is Fueling Wildfires in Canada

The 2023 wildfires in Canada accounted for more than a quarter of all tree cover loss globally that year and were largely driven by unusually hot temperatures and low precipitation . Québec, Northwest Territories, Alberta and British Columbia all experienced record high tree cover loss due to fires in 2023.

Though forest fires in Canada and other northern boreal forests are a common and natural occurrence, drier, hotter conditions caused by climate change are leading to fires that are larger and more frequent than in past decades. One study estimates that the annual area burned in Canada increased more than 30,000 hectares per year between 1959 and 2015. Another recent analysis from WRI shows that globally, forest fires are burning nearly twice as much tree cover today as they did 20 years ago.

This trend is likely driven by the fact that in parts of Canada and other northern latitudes, land surface temperatures are warming at rates roughly double the global average. Higher temperatures caused by climate change dry out the landscape and make forests more susceptible to fire, driving longer fire seasons and larger forest fires. As larger forested areas burn, more carbon is emitted into the atmosphere, further exacerbating climate change and contributing to even more fires as part of a fires-climate feedback loop .

With climate change expected to increase annual burned area by 30-50% globally by the end of the century, wildfires will become an increasingly large source of carbon emissions, further exacerbating climate change. Correctly accounting for them in global emissions inventories is essential for accurately assessing atmospheric emissions and progress towards climate goals, such as the international target to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels.

Emissions from Canada’s Wildfires Are Largely Excluded from its GHG Inventory

There is currently a large gap between emissions reported by countries and what is measured directly in the atmosphere. And, while this is largely by design to target anthropogenic sources and many of the differences between GHG inventories and global atmospheric models have largely been explained and reconciled, the build-up of GHGs in the atmosphere still does not match the cumulative impact of national reporting.

Part of the reason is that the UN only requires countries to document emissions that are anthropogenic, or human-caused, to track progress against the world’s goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) above pre-industrial levels. Because it is difficult to assess which emissions and removals are caused by land management and land use changes, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) methodology used for estimating GHG emissions allows countries to designate portions of their lands as “managed” (areas where human interventions have been applied for production, ecological or social functions) and “unmanaged” (areas where no human activity is present) to better differentiate between anthropogenic and natural sources of GHGs.

The problem is that there’s a lot of ambiguity around the definition of what counts as managed land and whether natural disturbances in managed lands count as anthropogenic emissions.

Because managed lands are more likely to be influenced by human activity, countries agreed to focus their GHG reporting there. But they did not agree on a definition for what constitutes managed land, or how to report GHG emissions and removals from natural disturbances in those areas. Therefore, countries are free to interpret the definition in a wide variety of ways.

Canada is unique from many other countries in that it excludes all wildfire-related emissions and removals in its “managed” lands from official reporting to focus more directly on anthropogenic sources of emissions, like timber harvesting. However, the UN and others have questioned this approach. During a technical review of the inventory Canada submitted in 2021, reviewers noted that Canada did not provide enough information to justify their assumption that all emissions and removals from stand-replacing fires in managed forests are non-anthropogenic. Furthermore, one recent study found that excluding wildfire emissions in managed forests in Canada may underestimate GHG emissions in the country by 80 million tons per year.

Accounting for the Full Impact of Wildfires

The reality is that the lines between “natural” and “anthropogenic” wildfires are blurring. Research shows that roughly half of all fires in Canada are directly started by people and, on average, they account for about 20% of the area burned each year. Furthermore, human-driven climate change is making fire seasons longer, resulting in larger and more frequent wildfires. By excluding all emissions and removals in managed forests affected by natural disturbances, Canada’s national GHG inventory may be underestimating land-based carbon emissions.

The full impact of Canada’s record-breaking wildfire season reveals a lesson for all countries: Fighting forest fires — and accurately accounting for their emissions — are critical measures for overcoming the world’s growing climate crisis.

Relevant Work

Global tree cover loss rose 51 percent in 2016, california’s wine country wildfires are among the worst on record, tree cover loss spikes in russia and canada, remains high globally, 3 trends in us wildfires, how you can help.

WRI relies on the generosity of donors like you to turn research into action. You can support our work by making a gift today or exploring other ways to give.

Stay Informed

World Resources Institute 10 G Street NE Suite 800 Washington DC 20002 +1 (202) 729-7600

© 2024 World Resources Institute

Envision a world where everyone can enjoy clean air, walkable cities, vibrant landscapes, nutritious food and affordable energy.

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• Perspective
• Published: 26 October 2022

The missing risks of climate change

• James Rising   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8514-4748 1 ,
• Marco Tedesco   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7549-9307 2 ,
• Franziska Piontek   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4305-7552 3 &
• David A. Stainforth   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6476-733X 4 , 5  

Nature volume  610 ,  pages 643–651 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

36k Accesses

214 Altmetric

Metrics details

• Climate-change impacts

The risks of climate change are enormous, threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions to billions of people. The economic consequences of many of the complex risks associated with climate change cannot, however, currently be quantified. Here we argue that these unquantified, poorly understood and often deeply uncertain risks can and should be included in economic evaluations and decision-making processes. We present an overview of these unquantified risks and an ontology of them founded on the reasons behind their lack of robust evaluation. These consist of risks missing owing to delays in sharing knowledge and expertise across disciplines, spatial and temporal variations of climate impacts, feedbacks and interactions between risks, deep uncertainty in our knowledge, and currently unidentified risks. We highlight collaboration needs within and between the natural and social science communities to address these gaps. We also provide an approach for integrating assessments or speculations of these risks in a way that accounts for interdependencies, avoids double counting and makes assumptions clear. Multiple paths exist for engaging with these missing risks, with both model-based quantification and non-model-based qualitative assessments playing crucial roles. A wide range of climate impacts are understudied or challenging to quantify, and are missing from current evaluations of the climate risks to lives and livelihoods. Strong interdisciplinary collaboration and deeper engagement with uncertainty is needed to properly inform policymakers and the public about climate risks.

Similar content being viewed by others

Increasing frequency and intensity of the most extreme wildfires on Earth

Global impacts of heat and water stress on food production and severe food insecurity

The economic commitment of climate change

There is overwhelming evidence that the risks and impacts from increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are very significant, will impact nearly every aspect of human life and the environment, and could ultimately prove to be devastating. An apparent incongruity exists between the pervasiveness of anticipated physical changes and the relatively modest total losses often estimated in economic evaluations 1 , 2 . Part of the explanation for this mismatch comes from ‘missing risks’: the risks that are not currently included in economic evaluations because of their uncertainty, because of our limited understanding of them or because existing economic models do not capture them in sufficient detail.

The interplay within and between different physical and social systems plays a crucial role in defining when and where impacts will manifest themselves, and these interactions are often only poorly understood. This leads to large and growing uncertainty estimates and a wide range of incompletely understood and underestimated risks 3 . For example, the potential for climate change impacts to drive social discontent, dislocation and relocation, and instability and conflict, are all deeply uncertain, but potentially crippling.

Excluding these risks from economic assessments is equivalent to placing a probability of zero on their occurrence. This, clearly, is not the case. Similarly, the common practice of engaging with only the expected levels of impacts and reporting central confidence bounds can undermine the ability of decision-makers to engage with the actual range of risks. The overall consequence is an underestimation of the total risks of climate change. This Perspective aims to identify, classify and suggest ways to engage with some of the most significant risks that are not currently captured by socioeconomic evaluations of climate change, from both a natural perspective and a social perspective. As an example of how this can be achieved, we present a demonstration of how diverse impact estimates or assumptions can be coherently combined.

Economic evaluations of the risks of climate change are a crucial input into policymaking and long-term planning processes for businesses and communities. Various studies have projected the costs of climate impacts (damages) across multiple sectors 4 , 5 , whereas integrated assessment models (IAMs) produce global estimates of the social cost of carbon 6 (throughout the paper, we use the term IAM to refer to both benefit–cost IAMs, which incorporate damages as standard, and detailed-process IAMs, which traditionally focus on cost-effectiveness analysis of mitigation strategies, but are increasingly developed to integrate impact estimates). Such assessments generally intend to go far beyond financial risks and involve ‘non-market’ effects, such as losses to ecosystems and broader human well-being.

The aim in quantifying climate risks is usually to produce probability distributions for possible impacts in quantities such as metres of sea-level rise, decreased biodiversity indices, people affected by certain types of event or percent losses to gross domestic product (GDP). Anthropogenic climate change, however, takes the climate–social system into a regime never before experienced, and consequently robust, reliable probabilities are rarely a possibility 7 , 8 , 9 . Nevertheless, even scientifically founded rough estimates of such distributions are valuable for illuminating the characteristics of the integrated complexities of the economic impacts of climate change. Indeed, even where no credible quantifications exist, we might still be able to set plausible limits.

The distributions of climate change impacts produced by economic models are often taken as probability distributions, but in practice they suffer from deep uncertainties 7 , 10 . Consequently, although models play a part in supporting policy, model outputs are insufficient to facilitate effective engagement with many risks and it is important to consider risks associated with climate change even when no quantifications exist or deep uncertainties abound.

The full range of risks from climate change is currently missing from economic evaluations. There are two broad reasons for this. First, a considerable time delay exists between the understanding of physical risks, the economic understanding of the implications of those risks and their nonlinear social feedbacks, and the incorporation of this understanding into economic models and analyses. Second, high levels of uncertainty and incomplete understanding of physical processes can drive scientists to be conservative in reporting them, or drive them to focus on central estimates.

It is helpful to distinguish five kinds of uncertainty that factor into economic impact uncertainty (Box 1 , visualized in Fig. 1 ). The first derives from uncertainty about future socioeconomic policy scenarios (UC1). This scenario uncertainty will not be an important part of our discussion because we are concerned with informing policy choices, which generally involves a comparison of different socioeconomic and policy scenarios. The second kind refers to the parameters that describe the processes of the climate and social systems (UC2), such as climate sensitivity, elasticity of marginal utility of consumption, rate of ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the potential increased mortality related to heat and so on. Model uncertainty (UC3) arises from differences in how the structure of the problem is approached by different experts and modelling centres and the choice of computational and statistical parameters available for tuning. Even small differences in models could produce large differences in outcomes over time 11 (a proposed hawkmoth effect analogous to the butterfly effect).

The process for developing risk estimates depends on several stages of analysis, with uncertainty compounding across stages. Distributions are shown for an illustrative projection of changes to death rates in New Delhi (using data from ref. 40 ). Axes are constructed so that the expected value of the distribution of each policy scenario is aligned across subfigures. Uncertainty in emissions scenarios and their associated baseline socioeconomics contributes to uncertainty in climate changes, local hazards, impacts and economic damages (including costs of adaptation). As climate risks can then affect emissions (for example, populations after death tolls), there are also feedbacks between these processes further increasing uncertainty.

Trajectory uncertainty (UC4) describes the intrinsic, aleatoric, uncertainty in what the future trajectory will actually be. In deterministic models such as global climate models (GCMs), it arises from their nonlinear dynamical behaviour and is referred to as ‘initial-condition uncertainty’ 7 . Although IAMs typically do not have this form of chaotic variability, the socioeconomic system they represent is similarly nonlinear and variable, and trajectory uncertainty can be explored within them using stochastic representations 12 , 13 , 14 .

Finally, model inadequacy (UC5) refers to the known and unknown limitations in our models: their incomplete representation of processes that could significantly influence the outcome in the real-world system they are designed to represent. Acknowledging model assumptions and inadequacies is particularly important where quantitative models are aimed at informing policy decisions, and increasing model coverage and complexity often will not increase its relevance and accuracy 15 .

Although epistemologically distinct, parameter, model and trajectory uncertainty (UC2–UC4) can be combined in impact evaluations, as they are functionally similar for decision-makers. Scientists, however, engage with them quite differently. Of these, parameter uncertainty is the most susceptible to reduction through data collection and empirical studies, although this can be a slow process. Scientific progress may increase or decrease model uncertainty. The sensitivity behind trajectory uncertainty derives from both the finest details of the starting conditions 16 and their large-scale, generic features 17 . The former is irreducible but the latter is, at least potentially, reducible through further research and better observations 7 . We argue that risk evaluations should incorporate UC2–UC4, alongside descriptions of model limitations (UC5) to describe our combined uncertainty around final outcomes.

Decision-makers are often adept at handling uncertainty and could use information on both low-probability/high-damage outcomes and unknown-probability/high-damage outcomes. Consider, for instance, the sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report, which allows for up to 10% probability that climate sensitivity is outside the 2–5 °C range, with much of this probability reflecting the deep uncertainty in the upper tail of the probability distribution 18 , 19 . The associated risk of high levels of warming is significantly higher than acceptable risk levels in public health (for example, 1 in 10,000 (ref. 20 )) and indeed uncertainty in the tail probabilities have been shown to have orders of magnitude impact on economic assessments of future welfare and therefore on the value of emissions reductions 21 . Even the possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect owing to anthropogenic climate change cannot be entirely ruled out 22 . Typically decision-making has multiple objectives, and harmful, low-probability outcomes can play a significant role. It is therefore important for decision-makers to be aware of harmful processes, even if their likelihood is unknown. For example, there is little basis for knowing whether climate impacts on GDP growth rates 23 will continue into the future, but if they do, the result would be devastating. Furthermore, risks are sometimes excluded when they are not fully understood or where there is considerable variation in estimates (for example, health risks 24 ). If only those risks considered ‘likely’ (above 66% probability) in the IPCC reports are accounted for, a large portion of potential impacts would be erroneously given a 0% probability. Some of these risks are incredibly complex, with impacts cascading across multiple sectors and involving considerable path dependence (for example, biodiversity or ecosystem losses). Most are fraught with ‘deep uncertainty’, with scientists disagreeing on the basis for providing reliable estimates (for example, the potential for climate-driven conflict 25 ). These challenges are not, however, insurmountable barriers to their inclusion in policymaking or economic valuations. There are opportunities to use imprecise probabilities, formal possibilistic approaches and informal possibilistic approaches 26 such as ‘tales of the future’, which encapsulate physically realistic and plausible futures focused on the aspects of the system of concern 27 , 28 .

Box 1
 Types of within-process uncertainty

Ontology of missing risks

Here we distinguish between five categories of currently missing risks and suggest potential solutions on how to start integrating them into current and future studies. The categories below are based on the reasons behind their exclusions, and these reasons provide insight into how they can be engaged with in the near future.

Missing biophysical impacts

One group of missing risks arises from the calibration of the IAMs, which are often decades out of date 29 . This is true of several risks now considered to have high probability at current and future levels of warming, such as the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation by 2300 (assessed as likely as not) 30 and abrupt permafrost melt by 2100 (assessed as high probability) 31 (also see Supplementary Fig. 1 ). The pathway from improved understanding of a climate phenomenon to its valuation in economic models can be long. It often requires that the understanding of relevant climate drivers reaches a point where the science is available beyond the climate science community, for instance, through media such as IPCC reports. As part of this process. biophysical modelling is often required to translate climate risks into physical impacts; economists need to develop an understanding of the response of social systems to the physical impact, and a welfare valuation of these responses; and the risk then needs to be incorporated into IAMs, computable general equilibrium models or other comprehensive analyses. This requires close collaboration between multiple disciplines 32 , 33 .

The physical impacts and population exposure for a large number of relevant risks have already been quantified (Supplementary Table 1 ). In some cases, a translation from impacts into welfare or monetary damages is readily available and these can be rapidly incorporated into evaluations. In other cases, credible valuations are unavailable (for example, biodiversity loss and natural disasters) or resilience and general equilibrium effects are first-order concerns (for example, water stress and migration). In this case, considerable work is needed to translate biophysical risks into economic ones. Examples of recent developments that are not captured in economic assessments include exposure of populations to natural disasters 34 , 35 , the latest process-based impact-model intercomparisons across multiple sectors 36 , and new statistical models of health, productivity, agriculture and energy 37 . These impact estimates represent substantial developments beyond existing representations of these risks in the IAMs 38 , 39 .

There are several possible causes for this gap, including: the disagreements within the impact community over the scale of impacts; a culture in economics that does not encourage large-team collaboration; and, to some extent, limited funding available for economic model development. The process for including these risks in the near future must confront multiple challenges. Economic damage assessments need damage functions that reflect the widest possible range of credible responses: recent advances in empirical damage estimates 37 go in the right direction but face the challenges of both connecting short-term weather-related impacts to long-term climate ones, and incorporating the endogeneity of adaptation. One approach to this problem is being pioneered at the Climate Impact Lab, and tries to address both problems. To account for adaptation, they use observed variation in temperature sensitivity 40 . To support incorporating these results into economic models as functions of climate rather than weather, they estimate impacts under downscaled projected weather and then index these uncertain impacts to expected climate, which allows them to be emulated in models that do not have daily weather or disaggregated sectors 41 . Parallel work at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research develops channel-specific damage functions using process models for use in economic models (for example, ref. 42 ). However, integration of this work into economic analyses requires that issues of valuation, equilibrium adjustments and double counting are resolved, which requires an interdisciplinary approach 43 .

The ability to incorporate many risks into economic evaluations is being undermined by difficulties in bridging the climate science, economics and modelling cultures. Examples include climate tipping points, conflict and migration, and topics from climate justice. Natural scientists and economic modellers struggle to find a common language to discuss the possible consequences of climate change. Bridging these gaps requires the repeated, collaboration-focused convening of researchers engaged in all aspects of the problem.

Spatial and temporal extremes

The spatial and demographic variations in impacts has emerged as one of the central features of economic damages: poor and socioeconomically vulnerable groups in many regions are the most exposed to risks 5 , 43 . IAMs often represent the world in highly aggregated terms, describing only global results (for example, the DICE model 44 ) or across multi-national regions (for example, PAGE 14 , FUND 45 and RICE 46 ) and for representative agents. Although these variations can be parameterized in damage functions 47 or elasticity parameters 48 , doing so hides the underlying source and consequences of climate risk.

Temporal extremes are also likely to play a significant role. Although impacts of climate change result from the long-term evolution of temperature changes and sea-level rise, many will manifest as extreme shocks: heatwaves, storms and droughts. While projections of many natural disasters are available 35 , 49 , they are not represented in IAMs and reported metrics typically hide the role of variability 4 . See examples of risks arising from spatial and temporal extremes in Supplementary Section  D .

It is a conceptual challenge to integrate the small spatial and temporal scales relevant for extreme events or the effects on different income groups and related distributional effects into the IAMs operating on large world regions and long timescales. Spatially detailed research requires simulations and data often available for only a few countries. Research examining the complexity of systems and potential impacts of climate change responses at scales ranging from individual households to national policy and global governance can help in this regard.

Traditionally, the highly aggregated approach of benefit–cost IAMs has supported their use in identifying climate policies that maximize global welfare, by relying on intertemporal optimization. Economic assessments of scenarios, however, do not require optimization, and higher-resolution economic risk assessments have been produced for the United States and Europe 33 , the consequences of tipping points 50 and country-level-scale information using empirical damage estimates 51 . Improvements in stochastic optimization techniques also provide a pathway to increasing resolution while studying optimal mitigation 52 .

A way to better engage with these features is to improve how heterogeneity, variability and uncertainty are approached generally. We propose that there is an emerging way forwards for combining parameter, model and trajectory uncertainty, while considering model inadequacy, at high spatial and temporal resolution. First, impact models should be driven by downscaled inputs available at a monthly or higher frequency, over multi-decadal periods. This captures the interaction between the dynamic uncertainty represented by both natural variability of theclimate system and climate change. Parameter uncertainty within the impact models should be represented by probability distributions over parameter values, simulated using Monte Carlos across multiple downscaled GCMs and multiple impact models, ideally drawing from initial-condition ensembles.

It is in addition important to improve how uncertainty is communicated to policymakers. When presenting model-based information, we recommend separating variability from uncertainty, that is, the 1-in-100-chance outcome for an impact conditioned on a model, alongside how that number varies between models. Finally, model inadequacy needs to be stated clearly, and unmodelled risks represented (for example, with ember plots).

Feedback risks and interactions

Feedback processes are ubiquitous within and among the climate, environment and economic systems. Critical and sometimes overlooked risks arise from the complex interplay of climate change and variability, demographic shifts, economic insecurity and political processes (Supplementary Section  E ). Physical risks are not independent of each other and climate change can act as a catalyst and stressor that accelerates and exacerbates conditions leading to cascading effects in the climate system and societal tipping points (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Section F ). Feedback processes are often the source of heavy-tailed distributions and are therefore closely linked to black-swan events (see ‘Deep uncertainty’). However, these interactions are often missing from analyses and thus represent a source of missing risks.

The red arrows show channels of interaction. Cascading tipping points refers to the increased probability of one tipping point because of the triggering of another 75 . Cascading disasters can occur as natural disasters heighten the risk of other disasters (for example, droughts causing wildfire). With multiple stressors, as climate stresses proliferate, the resilience and adaptive capacity of populations can be sapped 53 . As with the climate system, cascading social changes can emerge, such as migration increasing the risk of conflict 54 . As populations adapt and develop, this will produce simultaneous exposure/sensitivity changes, which may increase risks (for example, if populations further concentrate on coasts or along rivers).

The complexity of feedback systems has slowed the process of both understanding them and modelling them. Compound, sequential, and concurrent extremes would lead to lower thresholds (for a single driver) for substantial impacts as well as deeper impacts when two drivers align 53 . The overall lack of representation for this type of secondary effect leads to an underestimation of risk.

There is a need for assessment and risk management frameworks that better incorporate uncertainty and complex, cascading risks, including systems approaches built on interacting sectors, actors, geophysical hazards, scenarios and storylines. Approaches that utilize agent-based modelling and computable general equilibrium models are now being developed, but more effort is needed to understand their potential contribution in a climate change context.

An important class of feedback risks is tipping points 54 . Climate, ecological and social tipping points are transitory states of a feedback process beyond which a new basin of attraction will drive further system change, resulting in a qualitatively different and self-reinforcing regime. A wide variety of tipping points have been incorporated into analyses for individual papers, but representing the full collection has been a challenge 50 .

One barrier to research on tipping points and climatic extremes being incorporated into economic evaluations is that they are not well represented in GCMs, and their associated downscaled products. Social scientists look to natural scientists to provide probabilities, time evolutions and gridded projections to support their work. This is not always possible. Ensuring that climate scientists provide results in a form that is both robustly justifiable and can be readily incorporated into economic analysis requires bringing together the two disciplines.

Deep uncertainty

Deep uncertainty describes processes for which robust probability distributions do not exist. For many impacts, one or more steps in the estimation of hazards, exposure, vulnerability and welfare suffer from deep uncertainty, in terms of, for instance, the extent of their impacts and their spatiotemporal probability or frequency (Supplementary Section  G ). In some cases, the appropriate metrics for quantification are unclear. Yet, they can (and should) still be factored into risk assessment and planning.

One class of impacts suffering from deep uncertainty is black-swan events, characterized by their extreme nature and long-lasting consequences 55 . Statistically, black-swan events are outcomes from the tails of heavy-tailed distributions, which are common in natural and human systems 54 , 56 , 57 , 58 . These events are difficult to predict, because they are so far outside of what we normally observe and often arise from interlinked instabilities. Because they depend on and trigger changes throughout their systems, each black-swan event can dramatically alter exposure to risks and force the need for developing new decision contexts. As advancing climate change places new stresses on climate and social systems, outcomes beyond the extremes observed within the historical record are increasingly possible. The high frequency of previously considered ‘highly improbable’ events requires their consideration in climate change evaluations. Some examples include technological breakthroughs (unforeseen dramatic efficiency gains, consequences of a new green revolution and so on); governance and geopolitical reorganization (conflict, trade blocs and so on); new climate regimes (unforeseen ocean circulation or ecosystem changes and so on); funding mechanisms (green development banks, subsidies to tip the balance towards renewables and so on); and disease outbreaks (coronavirus disease 2019, Ebola and so on).

Some of these deep uncertainties and black-swan events can be explored through scenarios. Scenarios as a combination of broad narratives and quantitative projections based on models have been employed in climate science in the past 59 . It is important that climate narratives represent sequential and concurrent events across multiple regions and sectors of the global economy. The currently used Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) cover a range of socioeconomic futures, but these scenarios do not necessarily capture disruptive deviations from the past 60 . To truly assess deep uncertainty, the diversity and robustness of scenarios needs to receive more attention 61 . Computational techniques such as cross-impact balances can be used to systematically explore large numbers of scenarios and the coverage of scenarios space. Alternatively, the vulnerability of a (policy) strategy to disruptions can be studied. A number of projects have built on a storyline approach 27 , 28 , 62 , 63 , 64 . Speculative storylines can begin an iterative process whereby global and regional modelling exercises and storyline refinements can offer insights.

It is noted that assessments of model uncertainty in multi-model intercomparisons and perturbed physics and parameter studies cannot provide robust probabilities owing to the shared features across models, their limited exploration of possibilities and the conceptual lack of any basis for defining the shape of ‘model space’ across which probabilities must be built 7 . Nevertheless, the uncertainty derived from such ensembles represents a starting point for consideration of deep uncertainty. Example applications include model evaluation with historical data and developing multi-sector, multi-model projections 65 , 66 , 67 .

A similar process of reflection on deep uncertainties should be initiated with IAMs (and other models capturing impacts) and the economic damage integration process in general. Although IAMs have been intercompared in the past, a concerted intercomparison project would have a much broader focus on consideration of the implications of what is missing or inadequately incorporated at present.

Unidentified risks

Finally, it is appropriate to recognize a further set of risks completely unidentified in the academic literature. The coupled global environmental–human system can be disrupted in many ways that are unexpected or have not been studied. We take for granted many of the ways that the environment currently supports human needs, and not all of these functions are known, much less their sensitivity to climate change. Populations may respond to changes in their environments in unpredictable ways, driving social movements that take on a life of their own.

As these risks are fully unknown and unquantified, we cannot directly include them in valuations, but we can still factor unidentified risks into decision-making. Approaches exist for doing so. First, we could consider a precautionary principle, arguing that we might want to maintain the state with which we have long historical experience, even in the absence of clearly identified risks. The precautionary principle is already embedded in the Paris Agreement, and underlies the results of detailed-process IAMs, which identify cost-effective implementations of given mitigation scenarios 6 . We can understand the risks we face by comparing the future world to the range of conditions experienced across instrumental records (for example, see Fig. 3 ) 68 . The precautionary principle would motivate pairing economic welfare calculations with planetary boundaries or other deviations from historical ranges 69 .

a , Hazards that most exceed the distribution from recent (1980–2009) history, measured with a z -score from nine GCMs in WorldClim 76 in 2050 under SSP3-7.0, using high logged precipitation in the wettest month (labelled 'Flood'), low logged annual precipitation (Drought), coefficient of variation of precipitation (Precipitation variation), minimum temperature of the coldest month (Chill) and maximum temperature of the warmest month (Heat). Significance is determined by bootstrapping the 95% confidence interval, and determined to be at a z -score of 0.98. b , The same as a , but showing the distribution of the z -scores across the global population.

Second, there are normative, ethical arguments to maintain the natural state of the planet, out of a rights-based demand to not subject people to undue risks, for example 70 , 71 . The argument is that economic systems should conform to the values held by their stakeholders and that comprehensive economic evaluations should therefore account for infringements on the stated priorities of each community.

Third, there are results from complexity science that provide ways to monitor the fingerprints of risks, even if we do not know their nature 72 . These can provide early warning signals, and suggest improving resilience even without clear dangers in sight.

Moving forwards

Improving our representation and understanding of the missing risks in economic assessments of climate change impacts is a long-term goal. It demands greater coordination between the climate, impact and economic scientific communities, better approaches for grounding economic projections in data, systems understanding and the latest climate science, and better representations of complex, interacting, heterogeneous systems. The different classes of missing risks described above each require different approaches for moving forwards. Furthermore, foundational work is needed to understand the basis for deriving robust, actionable information when combining different kinds of information sources to generate comprehensive assessments—we should avoid potentially misleading, model-sensitive data.

We can distinguish three overlapping stages in this broad agenda. With existing knowledge, we can already offer a better picture of the total risks of climate change by engaging in detailed, integrative work. This stage depends on collating existing knowledge, preparing better narratives and interpreting results in the context of missing risks. The second stage consists of work to map out the spaces that current models miss and to analyse where there may be value in improving existing models or developing better non-model-based approaches. This stage involves improving scientific inputs into quantitative economic assessments, improving representations of uncertainty, and engaging in explorations of the potential behaviour and model intercomparisons of IAMs with respect to impact modelling. Finally, there is a long-term agenda, which requires targeted funding to support intensive engagement across disciplines, model approaches and types of modelling experiments designed to robustly test the sensitivity of policy-relevant conclusions to the nonlinear consequences of the initial state, structural model error and stochastic behaviour and assumptions.

Finally, some risks have been treated as insignificant because of the long time horizon before they will be experienced with a measurable effect. Welfare losses in the future are typically discounted (reduced) in cost–benefit calculations. We will not address discounting in this paper, but we offer a few comments. First, discounting is inherently an ethical decision, so decision-makers should be careful about applying common conventions from the academic economic literature and might benefit from greater awareness of the undiscounted stream of damages. Second, under the risk of negative economic growth, it may not be economically or socially sensible to discount the future (for example, under Ramsey discounting 73 ). Third, alternatives to standard discounting are available (for example, ref. 74 ), but best practices are needed.

Rapidly quantifying missing risks

Considerable information is available on many of the risks discussed in the ‘Ontology of missing risks’ section, but it is not integrated in a way that can lead to comprehensive quantification. Here we propose an illustrative general approach for combining uncertain and qualitative information about an indefinite but growing collection of risks. The framework highlights the gaps in existing knowledge, and aims to rapidly lower the barrier to incorporating a large number of currently missing risks.

Conditional on a temperature change of Δ T , we posit that each risk i can be described by an imprecise and possibly subjective distribution of possible consequences or impacts, x i  ≈  f i (Δ T ), a probability distribution over possible impacts. For our purposes, we are agnostic about the quantification of x i , so long as the metric is consistent across all risks: for example, they could be in terms of percent welfare-equivalent GDP lost or lives negatively affected over the course of each lifespan. Suppose that each distribution embodies all forms of uncertainty (UC2–UC5).

We can distinguish two broad forms of interdependencies between individual risks. First, the drivers behind the forms of uncertainty can be shared, so that a high impact from one risk is correlated with a high impact from another. For example, damages owing to droughts and wildfires both depend on precipitation changes, and are likely to be correlated, even after accounting for temperature changes. However, this points to the other form of interdependence: double counting. If the same area is at risk from both droughts and wildfires, damages from one may already be accounted for in the estimation of damages from the other.

We address these both using a copula approach, which simplifies the representation of these interdependencies, and is detailed in Supplementary Section  A . This simple framework decomposes the problem of understanding the total missing risks into a series of discrete and cumulative steps: (1) identifying a common metric for measuring risks; (2) estimating or otherwise generating a probability distribution representing losses from each risk; (3) determining the correlation of uncertainty between pairs of risks; (4) determining the degree of double counting between pairs of risks.

Furthermore, additional risks can be incorporated without revisiting existing estimates, allowing the process of including more missing risks to occur in a distributed fashion. The estimates used for steps 2, 3 and 4 may be subjective and will certainly involve deep uncertainty, but they allow us to better understand risks and their interactions under various assumptions.

As an illustrative application of this framework, we combine estimates for a range of risks from recent literature, including natural disasters, ecosystem impacts, conflict, migration, sea-level rise, heat and cold mortality, and economic growth impacts (Supplementary Table 1 ). As a consistent metric across all risks, we describe the number of lives disrupted, in terms of the population in 2010, at various levels of warming. As such, the results presented here do not provide a complete path to incorporating these risks in economic assessments, as welfare losses are not quantified.

We show these risks and their combined effects in Fig. 4 . The greatest risks, in terms of central estimates for populations affected, are multi-sector energy risks (46% at 2 °C and 85% at 4 °C) and relative conflict risk (32% at 2 °C and 75% at 4 °C). However, heatwaves, productivity and water stress all have tail risks (95% quantile) of greater than a quarter of the global population being affected. These risks can also be combined into a smooth functional form, potentially applicable in IAM-style models (Fig. 4b ). If the common metric were economic damages (for example, loss of GDP), the results could be used in IAMs in the form of a damage function.

a , Each panel shows the distribution of the portion of the global population that could be impacted by a risk or a combination of risks for 2 °C, 3 °C, and 4 °C warming. These represent some of the major missing risks discussed in the text. Each distribution is based on a single study, and the collection of missing risks is not comprehensive. The dashed lines represent the 99th percentile of the distributions. Specifics on how calculations are done and population impacts are determined are described in Supplementary Section  B . b , Smooth spline representation of the combined population affected across all risks shown in a . Spline is fit to each Monte Carlo drawn value at 2 °C, 3 °C and 4 °C, and constrained to a value and slope of 0 and a global mean surface temperature (GMST) change of 0 °C and to be weakly monotonic after 4 °C. The shaded region shows the 1st–99th percentiles.

Here we have discussed only the negative impacts incident on populations, but there are entangled positive impacts as well. Some of these are direct, such as increases in economic growth in some sectors and lives saved by milder cold winters. In addition, adaptation and migration can significantly reduce the overall risks.

Understanding the risk of 2 °C, 3 °C and 4 °C global mean surface temperature anomalies requires not only a reporting of the existing risks that models provide but also the incorporation of new classes of risks as well as the potential for disruptive unknown risks that could dramatically alter the context of future societal systems and anthropogenic climate change risks. It is hoped that recognition of these ‘missing risks’ will improve the overall level of accounting for consequences associated with climate change under credible warming scenarios.

Data availability

All data used here are publicly available at the sources cited in the  Supplementary Information .

Stern, N. The structure of economic modeling of the potential impacts of climate change: grafting gross underestimation of risk onto already narrow science models. J. Econ. Lit. 51 , 838–859 (2013).

Article   Google Scholar  

Dellink, R., Lanzi, E. & Chateau, J. The sectoral and regional economic consequences of climate change to 2060. Environ. Resour. Econ. 72 , 309–363 (2019).

Simpson, N. P. et al. A framework for complex climate change risk assessment. One Earth 4 , 489–501 (2021).

Article   ADS   Google Scholar  

Houser, T. et al. Economic Risks of Climate Change: An American Prospectus (Columbia Univ. Press, 2015).

Ciscar, J. C. et al. Climate Impacts in Europe: Final Report of the JRC PESETA III Project (Publications Office of the European Union, 2018); http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC112769/kjna29427enn_1.pdf

Weyant, J. Some contributions of integrated assessment models of global climate change. Rev. Environ. Econ. Policy 11 , 115–137 (2017).

Stainforth, D. A., Allen, M. R., Tredger, E. R. & Smith, L. A. Confidence, uncertainty and decision-support relevance in climate predictions. Phil. Trans. A 365 , 2145–2161 (2007).

Article   ADS   CAS   Google Scholar  

Frigg, R., Smith, L. A. & Stainforth, D. A. An assessment of the foundational assumptions in high-resolution climate projections: the case of UKCP09. Synthese 192 , 3979–4008 (2015).

Article   MathSciNet   MATH   Google Scholar  

Smith, L. A. What might we learn from climate forecasts? Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 99 , 2487–92 (2002).

Article   ADS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Stainforth, D. A., Downing, T. E., Washington, R., Lopez, A. & New, M. Issues in the interpretation of climate model ensembles to inform decisions. Phil. Trans. A 365 , 2163–2177 (2007).

Frigg, R., Bradley, S., Du, H. & Smith, L. A. Laplace’s demon and the adventures of his apprentices. Phil. Sci. 81 , 31–59 (2014).

Article   MathSciNet   Google Scholar  

Cai, Y. & Lontzek, T. S. The social cost of carbon with economic and climate risks. J. Polit. Econ. 127 , 2684–2734 (2019).

Calel, R., Chapman, S. C., Stainforth, D. A. & Watkins, N. W. Temperature variability implies greater economic damages from climate change. Nat. Commun. 11 , 5028 (2020).

Article   ADS   CAS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Kikstra, J. S. et al. The social cost of carbon dioxide under climate–economy feedbacks and temperature variability. Environ. Res. Lett. 16 , 094037 (2021).

Saltelli, A. et al. Five ways to ensure that models serve society: a manifesto. Nature 582 , 482–484 (2020).

Article   ADS   CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Daron, J. D. & Stainforth, D. A. On predicting climate under climate change. Environ. Res. Lett. 8 , 034021 (2013).

Hawkins, E., Smith, R. S., Gregory, J. M. & Stainforth, D. A. Irreducible uncertainty in near-term climate projections. Clim. Dyn. 46 , 3807–3819 (2016).

IPCC: Summary for Policymakers. In Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis (eds Masson-Delmotte, V. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2021).

Sherwood, S. C. et al. An assessment of Earth’s climate sensitivity using multiple lines of evidence. Rev. Geophys. 58 , e2019RG000678 (2020).

Fewtrell, L. & Bartram, J. Water Quality: Guidelines, Standards and Health: Assessment of Risk and Risk Management for Water-related Infectious Diseases (WHO, 2001).

Calel, R., Stainforth, D. A. & Dietz, S. Tall tales and fat tails: the science and economics of extreme warming. Clim. Change 132 , 127–141 (2015).

Goldblatt, C. & Watson, A. J. The runaway greenhouse: implications for future climate change, geoengineering and planetary atmospheres. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 370 , 4197–4216 (2012).

Burke, M., Hsiang, S. M. & Miguel, E. Global non-linear effect of temperature on economic production. Nature 527 , 235–239 (2015).

Rocklöv, J., Huber, V., Bowen, K. & Paul, R. Taking globally consistent health impact projections to the next level. Lancet Planet. Health 5 , e487–e493 (2021).

Koubi, V. Climate change and conflict. Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 22 , 343–360 (2019).

Katzav, J. et al. On the appropriate and inappropriate uses of probability distributions in climate projections and some alternatives. Clim. Change 169 , 15 (2021).

Hazeleger, W. et al. Tales of future weather. Nat. Clim. Change 5 , 107–113 (2015).

Shepherd, T. G. Storyline approach to the construction of regional climate change information. Proc. Math. Phys. Eng. Sci. 475 , 20190013 (2019).

PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Rising, J. A., Taylor, C., Ives, M. C. & Ward, R. E. T. Challenges and innovations in the economic evaluation of the risks of climate change. Ecol. Econ. 197 , 107437 (2022).

Fox-Kemper, B. et al. in Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis (eds Masson-Delmotte, V. et al.) 1211–1362 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2021).

da Cunha P. M. et al. in Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis (eds Masson-Delmotte, V. et al.) 673–816 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2021).

Diaz, D. & Moore, F. Quantifying the economic risks of climate change. Nat. Clim. Change 7 , 774–782 (2017).

Ciscar, J.-C., Rising, J., Kopp, R. E. & Feyen, L. Assessing future climate change impacts in the EU and the USA: insights and lessons from two continental-scale projects. Environ. Res. Lett. 14 , 084010 (2019).

Byers, E. et al. Global exposure and vulnerability to multi-sector development and climate change hotspots. Environ. Res. Lett. 13 , 055012 (2018).

Lange, S. et al. Projecting exposure to extreme climate impact events across six event categories and three spatial scales. Earths Future 11 , e2020EF001616 (2020).

Rosenzweig, C. et al. Assessing inter-sectoral climate change risks: the role of ISIMIP. Environ. Res. Lett. 12 , 010301 (2017).

Carleton, T. A. & Hsiang, S. M. Social and economic impacts of climate. Science 353 , aad9837 (2016).

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Huber, V., Ibarreta, D. & Frieler, K. Cold- and heat-related mortality: a cautionary note on current damage functions with net benefits from climate change. Clim. Change 142 , 407–418 (2017).

Moore, F. C., Baldos, U., Hertel, T. & Diaz, D. New science of climate change impacts on agriculture implies higher social cost of carbon. Nat. Commun. 8 , 1607 (2017).

Carleton, T. A. et al. Valuing the Global Mortality Consequences of Climate Change Accounting for Adaptation Costs and Benefits Working Paper 27599 (NBER, 2020); https://doi.org/10.3386/w27599

Hsiang, S. et al. Estimating economic damage from climate change in the United States. Science 356 , 1362–1369 (2017).

Geiger, T., Frieler, K. & Levermann, A. High-income does not protect against hurricane losses. Environ. Res. Lett. 11 , 084012 (2016).

Piontek, F. et al. Integrated perspective on translating biophysical to economic impacts of climate change. Nat. Clim. Change 11 , 563–572 (2021).

Nordhaus, W. Evolution of modeling of the economics of global warming: changes in the DICE model, 1992–2017. Clim. Chang. 148 , 623–640 (2018).

Anthoff, D. & Tol, R. S. J. Climate policy under fat-tailed risk: an application of FUND. Ann. Oper. Res. 220 , 223–237 (2014).

Nordhaus, W. D. Economic aspects of global warming in a post-Copenhagen environment. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. 107 , 11721–11726 (2010).

Anthoff, D. & Emmerling, J. Inequality and the social cost of carbon. J. Assoc. Environ. Resour. Econ. 6 , 243–273 (2019).

Google Scholar  

Dennig, F., Budolfson, M. B., Fleurbaey, M., Siebert, A. & Socolow, R. H. Inequality, climate impacts on the future poor, and carbon prices. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 112 , 15827–15832 (2015).

Dottori, F. et al. Increased human and economic losses from river flooding with anthropogenic warming. Nat. Clim. Change 8 , 781–786 (2018).

Dietz, S., Rising, J., Stoerk, T. & Wagner, G. Economic impacts of tipping points in the climate system. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 118 , e2103081118 (2021).

Article   CAS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Ricke, K., Drouet, L., Caldeira, K. & Tavoni, M. Country-level social cost of carbon. Nat. Clim. Change 8 , 895–900 (2018).

Ikefuji, M., Laeven, R. J. A., Magnus, J. R. & Muris, C. Expected utility and catastrophic risk in a stochastic economy–climate model. J. Econ. 214 , 110–129 (2020).

Olsson, L. et al. in Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (eds Field, C. B. et al.) 793–832 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).

Kopp, R. E., Shwom, R. L., Wagner, G. & Yuan, J. Tipping elements and climate–economic shocks: pathways toward integrated assessment. Earths Future 4 , 346–372 (2016).

Taleb, N. N. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Random House, 2007).

Buchanan, M. Ubiquity: The Science of History, or Why the World is Simpler Than We Think (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000).

Roe, G. H. & Baker, M. B. Why is climate sensitivity so unpredictable? Science 318 , 629–632 (2007).

Jevrejeva, S. et al. Probabilistic sea level projections at the coast by 2100. Surv. Geophys. 40 , 1673–1696 (2019).

Carter, T. R. et al. in Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (eds Parry, M. L.) 133–171 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007).

Schweizer, V. J. Reflections on cross-impact balances, a systematic method constructing global socio-technical scenarios for climate change research. Clim. Change 162 , 1705–1722 (2020).

Guivarch, C., Lempert, R. & Trutnevyte, E. Scenario techniques for energy and environmental research: An overview of recent developments to broaden the capacity to deal with complexity and uncertainty. Environ. Model. Softw. 97 , 201–210 (2017).

Zappa, G. & Shepherd, T. G. Storylines of atmospheric circulation change for European regional climate impact assessment. J. Clim. 30 , 6561–6577 (2017).

Dessai, S. et al. Building narratives to characterise uncertainty in regional climate change through expert elicitation. Environ. Res. Lett. 13 , 074005 (2018).

Bhave, A. G., Conway, D., Dessai, S. & Stainforth, D. A. Water resource planning under future climate and socioeconomic uncertainty in the Cauvery River Basin in Karnataka, India. Water Resour. Res. 54 , 708–728 (2018).

Schewe, J. et al. State-of-the-art global models underestimate impacts from climate extremes. Nat. Commun. 10 , 1005 (2019).

Schleussner, C.-F. et al. Differential climate impacts for policy-relevant limits to global warming: the case of 1.5 °C and 2 °C. Earth Syst. Dyn. 7 , 327–351 (2016).

Piontek, F. et al. Multisectoral climate impact hotspots in a warming world. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 111 , 3233–3238 (2014).

Xu, C., Kohler, T. A., Lenton, T. M., Svenning, J.-C. & Scheffer, M. Future of the human climate niche. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 117 , 11350–11355 (2020).

Steffen, W. et al. Sustainability. Planetary boundaries: guiding human development on a changing planet. Science 347 , 1259855 (2015).

Beckerman, W. & Pasek, J. Justice, Posterity, and the Environment (OUP, 2001).

Caney, S. Human rights, climate change, and discounting. Env. Polit. 17 , 536–555 (2008).

Scheffer, M. et al. Early-warning signals for critical transitions. Nature 461 , 53–59 (2009).

Arrow, K. J. et al. How should benefits and costs be discounted in an intergenerational context? The views of an expert panel. SSRN https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2199511 (2013).

Watkiss, P. & Downing, T. E. The social cost of carbon: valuation estimates and their use in UK policy. Integr. Assess. J. 8 , 85–105 (2008).

Lenton, T. M. & Williams, H. T. P. On the origin of planetary-scale tipping points. Trends Ecol. Evol. 28 , 380–382 (2013).

Fick, S. E. & Hijmans, R. J. WorldClim 2: new 1‐km spatial resolution climate surfaces for global land areas. Int. J. Climatol. 37 , 4302–4315 (2017).

Stainforth, D. A. et al. Uncertainty in predictions of the climate response to rising levels of greenhouse gases. Nature 433 , 403–406 (2005).

Warszawski, L. et al. The inter-sectoral impact model intercomparison project (ISI–MIP): project framework. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 111 , 3228–3232 (2014).

Weyant, J. & Kriegler, E. Preface and introduction to EMF 27. Clim. Change 123 , 345–352 (2014).

Download references

Acknowledgements

D.S. acknowledges support from the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP; ref. ES/R009708/1), and the Natural Environment Research Council through Optimising the Design of Ensembles to Support Science and Society (ODESSS; ref NE/V011790/1). F.P. acknowledges funding through the CHIPS project, part of AXIS, an ERA-NET initiated by JPI Climate, funded by FORMAS (Sweden), DLR/BMBF (Germany, grant number 01LS1904A), AEI (Spain) and ANR (France) with co-funding by the European Union (grant number 776608).

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

School of Marine Science and Policy, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

James Rising

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia Climate School, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

Marco Tedesco

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Member of the Leibniz Association, Potsdam, Germany

Franziska Piontek

Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

David A. Stainforth

Department of Physics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors contributed equally to the writing of the manuscript. J.R. prepared the visualizations.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to James Rising .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information.

Nature thanks Laurent Drouet and Zhifu Mi for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary information.

This file contains Supplementary Sections A and B, including Supplementary Tables 1 and 2, which provide additional details on the supporting analysis, and Supplementary Sections C–G, including Supplementary Fig. 1, with additional examples of the missing risks categories described in the main text.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Rising, J., Tedesco, M., Piontek, F. et al. The missing risks of climate change. Nature 610 , 643–651 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05243-6

Download citation

Received : 27 December 2021

Accepted : 15 August 2022

Published : 26 October 2022

Issue Date : 27 October 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05243-6

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines . If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.