Marine heatwave over Pacific Ocean could lead to flooding in north-west. Severe ‘blob’ or marine heatwave can lead to increased inundation and wintery weather in eastern North America

People gather along the rocky bluffs of La Jolla's Windansea Beach in San Diego, California. Photograph: Kevin Carter/Getty Images

 by Eric Berger 

A marine heatwave known as a blob was especially severe this year in the north-western and central Pacific Ocean, which could lead in the coming months to increased flooding in the US Pacific north-west and especially wintery weather in eastern North America, according to climate scientists.

The temperature in August in the northern Pacific was 2.5C above preindustrial levels, according to Berkeley Earth, a non-profit that studies global warming.

That spike can lead to more thunder storms and affect marine species, according to Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist with Berkeley Earth.

“I kind of wonder, is this going to be a permanent feature?” said Nick Bond, a climatologist with the state of Washington and the University of Washington, who coined the term “blob” for the phenomenon.

 

Bond added: “A storm can come along and cool off the ocean some. You might have a sunny summer and it will warm up a little bit more than usual, so there are those kinds of fluctuations. But boy, what is out there in the central north Pacific? That is not going away anytime soon.”

Bond said he started calling such a heatwave a blob because “they are not static. They are kind of amorphous. They move around and evolve with time as the weather changes.”

Over the past decade, such heatwaves have become more severe and frequent.

“It has become appreciated that there can be these events that happen in the ocean that are significant, especially from an ecosystem point of view but also from a weather point of view,” Bond said. “It’s important to monitor them and to hopefully forecast them more effectively and just be aware that the climate is changing.”

From 2014 to 2016, there was a blob along the US west coast in which ocean temperatures were up to 3C above normal, according to the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration.

 

“There were a lot of harmful algal blooms along the US west coast of unprecedented scope and intensity, and those shut down commercial shellfish fisheries,” Bond said.

Higher oceanic temperatures can force marine species to migrate or lead to their death, said Hausfather.

“The impacts on various marine species, on phytoplankton, which drive a lot of the food web, are quite important,” said Hausfather.

Some news organizations recently reported that the blob could cause Chicago to have the “coldest, snowiest” winter in years.

While Bond said the blob could play a role in the weather so far inland, it would probably only be a “secondary player”.

“If the air coming in off the ocean here in western Washington state is warmer than normal, then we will have less snow, all other things being equal. That effect doesn’t extend that far inland,” Bond said. “For it to impact snowfall in Chicago, it has to be causing a disruption in the weather patterns … It doesn’t mean that it has no influence whatsoever, but there are other factors that are going to be more important to how snowy it is in the midwestern US.”

Scientists also do not yet have enough data to state with confidence what impact such blobs will have and the impact can be confounded by developments such as a disruption in the polar vortex, Bond said.

In short, Bond said: “We are limited by just how many blobs we have had.”

 

Mosquitoes found in Iceland for first time as climate crisis warms country. Three specimens discovered in what was previously one of the few places in the world without the insects

 

A Culiseta annulata mosquito, which is the type found in Kiðafell, Kjós. Photograph: Alamy

 by 

Helena Horton Environment reporter

 

 

Mosquitoes have been found in Iceland for the first time as global heating makes the country more hospitable for insects.

The country was until this month one of the few places in the world that did not have a mosquito population. The other is Antarctica.

Scientists have predicted for some time that mosquitoes could establish themselves in Iceland as there are plentiful breeding habitats such as marshes and ponds. Many species will be unable to survive the harsh climate, however.

But Iceland is warming, at four times the rate of the rest of the northern hemisphere. Glaciers have been collapsing and fish from warmer, southern climes such as mackerel have been found in the country’s waters.

As the planet warms, more species of mosquito have been found across the globe. In the UK, eggs of the Egyptian mosquito (Aedes aegypti) were found this year, and the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) has been discovered in Kent. These are invasive species that can spread tropical diseases such as dengue, chikungunya and Zika virus.

Iceland is warming at four times the rate of the rest of the northern hemisphere. Photograph: Jon Arnold Images Ltd/Alamy

Matthías Alfreðsson, an entomologist at the Natural Science Institute of Iceland, confirmed the findings there. He identified the insects himself after they were sent to him by a citizen scientist.

He said: “Three specimens of Culiseta annulata were found in Kiðafell, Kjós, two females and one male. They were all collected from wine ropes during wine roping aimed at attracting moths.”

The species is cold-resistant and can survive Icelandic conditions by sheltering through winter in basements and barns.

 

Björn Hjaltason found the mosquitoes and posted about it on the Facebook group Insects in Iceland. “At dusk on October 16, I caught sight of a strange fly on a red wine ribbon,” Björn said, referring to the trap he uses to attract insects. “I immediately suspected what was going on and quickly collected the fly. It was a female.”

He caught two more and sent them to the science institute where they were identified.

 

 

Mystery heatwave warms Pacific Ocean to new record

Mark Poynting and Matt McGrathBBC News Climate and Science

 

 

The waters of the north Pacific have had their warmest summer on record, according to BBC analysis of a mysterious marine heatwave that has confounded climate scientists.

Sea surface temperatures between July and September were more than 0.25C above the previous high of 2022 - a big increase across an area roughly ten times the size of the Mediterranean.

While climate change is known to make marine heatwaves more likely, scientists are struggling to explain why the north Pacific has been so hot for so long.

But all this extra heat in the so-called "warm blob" may have the opposite effect in the UK, possibly making a colder start to winter more likely, some researchers believe.

"There's definitely something unusual going on in the north Pacific," said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a research group in the US.

Such a jump in temperatures across a region so large is "quite remarkable", he added.

The BBC analysed data from the European Copernicus climate service to calculate average temperatures between July and September across a large area of the north Pacific, sometimes known as the "warm blob".

The region extends from the east coast of Asia to the west coast of North America, the same area used in previous scientific studies.

The figures show that not only has the region been warming quickly over the past couple of decades, but 2025 is markedly higher than recent years too.

 

That the seas are getting hotter is no surprise. Global warming, caused by humanity's emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases, has already trebled the number of days of extreme heat in oceans globally, according to research published earlier this year.

But temperatures have been even higher than most climate models - computer simulations taking into account humanity's carbon emissions - had predicted.

Analysis of these models by the Berkeley Earth group suggests that sea temperatures observed across the north Pacific in August had less than a 1% chance of occurring in any single year.

Natural weather variability is thought to be part of the reason. This summer has seen weaker-than-usual winds, for example. That means more heat from the summer sunshine can stay in the sea surface, rather than being mixed with cooler waters below.

But this can only go so far in explaining the exceptional conditions, according to Dr Hausfather.

"It certainly is not just natural variability," he said. "There's something else going on here as well."

 

One intriguing idea is that a recent change to shipping fuels might be contributing to the warming. Prior to 2020, dirty engine oil produced large amounts of sulphur dioxide, a gas harmful to human health.

But that sulphur also formed tiny, Sun-reflecting particles in the atmosphere, known as aerosols, which helped to keep a lid on rising temperatures.

So removing that cooling effect in shipping hotspots like the north Pacific could be revealing the full impact of human-caused warming.

"It does seem like sulphur is the primary candidate for what's driving this warming in the region," said Dr Hausfather.

Other research suggests that efforts to reduce air pollution in Chinese cities has played a role in warming the Pacific too.

That dirty air did a similar job to shipping in reflecting sunlight away, while cleaning it up could have had the unintended consequence of allowing more ocean heating.

Possible impacts for the UK?

The north Pacific's marine heatwave has already had consequences for weather on both sides of the Pacific, likely boosting very high summer temperatures in Japan and South Korea and storms in the US.

"In California, we've seen supercharged thunderstorms because the warm ocean waters in the Pacific provide heat and moisture," said Amanda Maycock, professor in climate dynamics at the University of Leeds.

"In particular, there are things we call atmospheric rivers… bands of air, which contain very high amounts of moisture that fuel themselves from the ocean waters," she added.

"So if we have warm ocean waters… they can then bring a lot of moisture onto the land, which then falls out as rain, or in the wintertime can precipitate out as snow."

 

Long-term weather forecasting is always challenging, but extreme heat in the north Pacific has the potential to affect the UK and Europe in the coming months too.

That's because of relationships between weather in different parts of the world known as teleconnections.

"Although the current warm conditions are located in the north Pacific, these can generate wave motions in the atmosphere that can alter our weather downstream into the north Atlantic and into Europe," said Prof Maycock.

"That can tend to favour high-pressure conditions over the continent, which brings us more of an influence from the Arctic, where we have colder air," she added.

"That can be drawn over Europe and bring us colder weather in early winter."

A colder outcome is by no means certain, as this is a complex area of science. Several other weather patterns also affect UK winters, which are typically getting milder with climate change.

And a warm north Pacific appears to have different effects later in the winter, favouring milder and wetter conditions in some parts of Europe.

Emerging La Niña in the tropical Pacific

Another factor to throw into the mix is what's happening further south in the eastern tropical Pacific.

There, surface waters are unusually cool - a classic sign of the weather phenomenon known as La Niña.

 

La Niña, and its warm sibling El Niño, are natural patterns, although research published this week highlighted that global warming could itself impact the swings between them.

Weak La Niña conditions are expected to persist over the next few months, according to NOAA, the US science agency.

All else being equal, La Niña generally increases the risk of a cold start to winter in the UK, but also brings a higher chance of a mild end, the Met Office says.

"These two drivers in the north and tropical Pacific will be acting together this winter," said Prof Maycock.

"But since the La Niña is quite weak this year, the extreme warmth in the north Pacific could be more important for forecasting the winter ahead."

Additional reporting by Muskeen Liddar and Libby Rogers

Atividades às 5h, alta em afastamentos, perda bilionária: como o aquecimento global afeta o trabalho

 

Trabalhadores expostos a altas temperaturas podem sofrer desidratação e perdem rendimento; Organização Internacional do Trabalho calcula que o equivalente a 849,9 mil postos serão perdidos no Brasil em 2030 por causa da queda de produtividade.

Produtora rural em Sinimbu (RS), Claudia Hirsch Wegner, de 42 anos, começou a trabalhar na lavoura aos oito. Nos 30 anos seguintes, não mudou muito sua rotina. Na época de colheita de tabaco, entre novembro e fevereiro, 7h30 já estava no campo.

Há cinco anos, porém, esse horário foi alterado. Agora, começa a colher às 5h, para conseguir voltar para casa até as 10h e evitar o momento mais quente do dia, quando ficar sob o Sol se torna inviável.

 “Eu passava mal trabalhando (antes de mudar o horário em que faz a colheita)”, diz Wegner. “Quando era criança, não era tão quente. Agora, a cada ano, parece que o Sol chega mais perto da nossa pele.”

 Há cerca de dez anos, Wegner também passou a usar uma espécie de roupa plástica para trabalhar, que protege de intoxicações. Apesar de garantir maior segurança, a vestimenta aumenta a sensação de calor.

 

Ela conta que todos os seus colegas produtores da região alteraram o horário de trabalho. Para fugir do calor, teve também quem tentasse fazer uma safra de inverno. “Mas aí a qualidade do fumo caiu.”

Wegner faz parte de um universo de 15,1 milhões de trabalhadores brasileiros (ou 14,5% da população ocupada) expostos ao calor excessivo, segundo dados da Organização Internacional do Trabalho (OIT).

 

Expostos a altas temperaturas, trabalhadores podem sofrer desidratação e terem problemas de vasodilatação, de acordo com a médica Simone Assalie, diretora da Associação Nacional de Medicina do Trabalho (Anamt). Aumentam, assim, os riscos de infarto, AVC e insuficiência renal. “Essa questão, em um país tropical, como o Brasil, tem de ser tratada como prioridade, sobretudo em empresas em que as pessoas trabalham na rua, perto de caldeiras ou atividades que têm sobrecarga física.”

Diretor do escritório da OIT no Brasil, Vinícius Pinheiro acrescenta que há casos de cânceres de pele, de doenças transmitidas por vetores (como dengue) e de problemas de saúde mental relacionados ao aquecimento global. “O debate é urgente. Estamos falando de uma mudança que já aconteceu. Os recordes de temperatura têm implicações imediatas nas condições de trabalho.”

 

Dados do Ministério da Previdência Social, por exemplo, indicam que, em 2024 — o ano mais quente da história —, 2.265 pessoas tiveram de se afastar do trabalho e receberam benefício por incapacidade temporária (antigo auxílio-doença) por contraírem dengue. No ano anterior, haviam sido 450 pessoas. De acordo com pesquisa da Fiocruz publicada no ano passado, as constantes ondas de calor causadas pelas mudanças climáticas estão entre os fatores que têm elevado os casos de dengue no País.

 

Pinheiro afirma também que desastres climáticos — como a enchente do Rio Grande do Sul no ano passado — e até temporadas excessivamente secas podem aparecer entre os fatores que propiciam doenças mentais, como depressão. No caso de secas, por exemplo, produtores rurais podem ficar mais suscetíveis a quadros de ansiedade.

“Há inúmeros problemas relacionados ao calor excessivo. Ele causa distúrbios de sono, queda na concentração e na produtividade. Essa questão é algo real que já afeta o trabalho, e a tendência é piorar”, diz Pinheiro. “Ela também faz com que a sociedade perca horas que poderiam ser de trabalho.”

Um estudo da OIT aponta que trabalhadores perdem 50% de sua capacidade de trabalho quando submetidos a temperaturas superiores a 33°C. Diante do aumento da temperatura média global, em 2030, 2,2% do total de horas trabalhadas no mundo serão perdidas, numa projeção considerada conservadora. O número equivale a 80 milhões de postos de trabalho em período integral. 

 No Brasil, esse impacto deve ser mais modesto, ainda segundo a OIT: 0,84% do total de horas trabalhadas será perdido. Ainda assim, é o equivalente a 849,9 mil postos de trabalho. Agricultura, construção e indústria serão os setores mais afetados, com perdas de, respectivamente, 2,74%, 2,74% e 1,09%. Os serviços amenizarão o prejuízo, com perda de 0,13%.

A OIT projeta ainda que as perdas econômicas relacionadas ao estresse térmico no trabalho chegarão a US$ 2,4 bilhões em 2030. No Brasil, os custos de lesões e mortes pelo calor excessivo no ambiente de trabalho já foi de R$ 175,5 bilhões (1,5% do PIB) no ano passado, de acordo com a organização.

 Além do calor excessivo, desastres climáticos decorrentes do aquecimento global também têm gerado perdas para o trabalho e para a economia global. As enchentes do ano passado no Rio Grande do Sul, por exemplo, atingiram 9,5% dos estabelecimentos privados dos municípios afetados pelas chuvas e 13,7% dos postos de trabalho, segundo o Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (Ipea). 

 

Na cidade de Claudia Wegner — Sinimbu —, 70,4% dos estabelecimentos e 84,1% dos postos de trabalho foram atingidos. Wegner tinha uma pequena pousada de turismo rural com capacidade para 12 pessoas. A construção foi destruída pela enchente e, até hoje, a atividade não pode ser retomada, o que fez com que a família perdesse uma de suas fontes de renda.

Atualmente, além do fumo, a família só conta com uma horta — cuja produção também foi perdida nas chuvas de 2024. “O tabaco é o carro chefe. Se não fosse ele, a gente não sobreviveria. A horta paga só a internet, a luz e as compras do mês”, diz Wegner, que pede para ser acrescentado no texto que o fumo é o “sustento de milhares de famílias na região não por escolha, mas pela falta de algo que dê a mesma renda”.

 

Após a enchente no Rio Grande do Sul, o Ministério Público do Trabalho no Estado passou a entender riscos climáticos como riscos de ambiente de trabalho. Isso significa que as companhias têm de mapeá-los e ter planos de ação. “As empresas precisam ter medidas de prevenção, como saber onde vão colocar trabalhadores em caso de uma emergência climática”, diz a procuradora do trabalho Mônica Pasetto.

Durante a enchente, Pasetto foi uma das procuradoras que atuou em conversas com os municípios atingidos para que fossem emitidos atestados para pessoas afetadas justificarem sua ausência no trabalho. “A CLT não diz se alguém pode faltar ao trabalho em um caso como esse. As pessoas estavam com medo de ser demitidas.”

O Brasil já tem normas regulamentadoras (NRs) para garantir a segurança e a saúde no trabalho que servem, em muitos casos, para problemas climáticos. A NR-15 é uma delas. Alterada em 2019 (após nove anos de discussões), ela estabeleceu que pausas precisam ser adotadas de acordo com uma avaliação que considera tipo de atividade realizada, temperatura, umidade e velocidade do ar. É possível realizar o cálculo no aplicativo Monitor IBUTG, do Ministério do Trabalho, para verificar se os trabalhadores estão sob condições que demandam esses intervalos.

 

Para Pinheiro, da OIT, porém, quando se trata de trabalho e aquecimento global, o País tem atuado de forma a responder problemas específicos, sem ter políticas estruturadas. “Teve o desastre no Rio Grande do Sul, desenharam políticas de recuperação. Teve o problema da dengue, trabalharam as vacinas. Mas há algo silencioso acontecendo também, que são os aumentos de doenças renais, cardiovasculares e pulmonares. É preciso cobrir todas essas questões.”

Desconfiança com créditos de carbono faz mercado preferir projetos de restauro florestal

 

Plantio de árvores em projeto de reflorestamento da empresa Mombak - Raimundo Pacco/Mombak/Divulgação 

 

Brazil

Amazonia

 

by Pedro Lovisi

• Multinacionais diminuem compensação por desmatamento evitado, modelo alvo de denúncias nos últimos anos
• Restauração exige investimentos maiores e tem atraído big techs

Algumas big techs, como Apple, Microsoft e Google, mudaram suas estratégias de compensação de carbono e agora privilegiam a compra de créditos de restauração de áreas desmatadas em detrimento de conservação de florestas.

Como essas empresas são algumas das maiores compradoras de crédito de carbono do mundo, o mercado de projetos florestais precisou se adaptar e o interesse por projetos de conservação diminuiu –inclusive no Brasil, onde há índices altos de desmatamento.

 

Um crédito de carbono equivale a uma tonelada de carbono que foi absorvida da atmosfera. E uma das formas de gerar esses créditos é plantar vegetação nativa em áreas desmatadas, já que árvores são capazes de absorver gás carbônico, responsável pelo aquecimento global.

Outra forma de gerar esses créditos é por meio de projetos que evitam o desmatamento em áreas ameaçadas por grileiros, madeireiros, produtores rurais e criadores de gado. Nesse caso, organizações calculam quanto sua presença na região conseguiu evitar de destruição da floresta.

Esse último modelo, conhecido pela sigla Redd+, foi por alguns anos o principal fornecedor de créditos de carbono florestais. Mas denúncias de cálculos supervalorizados e abusos sobre comunidades locais fizeram com que empresas compradoras de créditos diminuíssem seu apetite em compensar emissões com esses ativos. Investigações recentes envolveram, inclusive, gigantes de tecnologia, gestoras de ativos e petroleiras.

"Todo esse pessoal está sendo acusado de ter comprado crédito podre, então, se você é um comprador institucional de um banco ou de um fundo de pensão, vai pensar três vezes antes de entrar num negócio desse. O risco reputacional é muito grande", afirma Shigueo Watanabe Jr, pesquisador no Instituto ClimaInfo.

A busca por projetos de restauro, conhecidos pela sigla ARR, passa justamente por isso. Nos últimos meses, gigantes da tecnologia, como a Google, anunciaram investimentos bilionários em iniciativas na área.

"Antes as empresas faziam seu inventário e depois pensavam em como compensar, elas não se preocupavam muito sobre de onde vinha o crédito. Mas hoje há uma série de direcionamentos internacionais sobre como a empresa deve fazer seu inventário e quais os tipos de projetos são os mais íntegros para a compensação", afirma Ana Moeri, presidente do Ekos Brasil, instituto que conecta projetos a empresas.

 

Agora, está cada vez mais difícil encontrar novos projetos de Redd+ no mundo. A Verra, maior certificadora de créditos de carbono, tinha 27 projetos de ARR e 22 de Redd+ em desenvolvimento ou validação em 2022. Em 2023, foram 28 e 7; em 2024, 22 e 2 e, até abril de 2025, 7 e 2. Os dados foram coletados pela pesquisadora Fernanda Valente, da FGV (Fundação Getulio Vargas).

E o Brasil segue esse movimento. Em julho, o Governo do Pará assinou a primeira concessão de restauração florestal para a iniciativa privada, criando uma demanda pública no mercado. O projeto, inicialmente, seria financiado pelo BNDES (Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social), mas três meses depois ainda nenhum empréstimo saiu do papel.

O banco também anunciou uma parceria com a Petrobras para restaurar 50 mil hectares de áreas degradadas na amazônia e outra com a empresa Re.green para restaurar 15 mil hectares de florestas na amazônia e na mata atlântica.

O BNDES ainda organiza uma série de editais para restauração florestal em áreas públicas em parceria com o governo federal, o que vai movimentar bilhões de reais nos próximos anos —desde 2023, foram destinados R$ 900 milhões em recursos não reembolsáveis para projetos do tipo.

 

Além disso, uma startup formada por cinco multinacionais (entre elas, Suzano, Itaú e Vale) anunciou, em abril, investimentos de R$ 55 milhões para restaurar uma área no sul da Bahia.

Essa mudança de mercado tem obrigado algumas empresas a recalibrarem seus focos, ainda que ainda vejam importância nos projetos de conservação.

A Carbonext, por exemplo, uma das maiores desenvolvedoras do Brasil, tem nove projetos de Redd+ em seu portfólio, mas estuda inaugurar projetos de restauro. "A Carbonext não trata o ARR como um concorrente do Redd+ e, como tem financiamento no mercado, a gente também quer entrar nessa agenda", diz Jeronimo Roveda, diretor de relações institucionais da Carbonext.

Ele, porém, pontua que o Brasil desmatou 1,4 milhão de hectares em 2024 e, se seguir esse número, não conseguirá restaurar 12 milhões de hectares até 2030, como almejado pelo governo Lula.

"O ARR está sendo extremamente valorizado e trazendo para o mercado um grande ganho para o cenário ambiental, mas a gente precisa trazer de volta a discussão sobre conservação. Não adianta a gente querer plantar e continuar desmatando", diz Roveda .

Outra companhia que segue esse raciocínio é a Systemica, ligada ao BTG Pactual. A empresa é uma das principais desenvolvedoras de projetos Redd+ do país, mas começou no ano passado a procurar projetos de restauro na amazônia –ela, aliás, venceu a licitação do Pará organizada em março.

"Hoje há um grande interesse por projetos de restauração, mas eu acho que vai haver uma retomada de projetos de Redd+. E isso vai acontecer simplesmente por uma racionalidade econômica, já que é a solução de compensação mais barata", diz Munir Soares, CEO da Systemica.

 

A diferença de investimentos entre os dois modelos é enorme. Hoje, segundo quem acompanha o mercado, um projeto de conservação exige investimentos entre US$ 2 e US$ 10 por hectare, enquanto os de restauro variam entre US$ 7.000 e US$ 10 mil por hectare.

A diferença nos preços dos créditos, por outro lado, não seguem a mesma proporção: os ativos de conservação tendem a valer no máximo US$ 12, enquanto um de restauro varia entre US$ 30 e US$ 70, a depender do volume negociado.

"Os projetos de ARR têm mais semelhança com projetos de infraestrutura, porque não necessariamente nessas terras há comunidades morando, o que gera um capex [investimentos em obras] intensivo. Já os projetos de conservação mais valorizados estão ligados a comunidades tradicionais e a pequenos produtores, onde 70% do ganho fica com a comunidade", diz Andrea Resende, gerente de investimentos do Impact Earth, organização à frente do Fundo de Biodiversidade da Amazônia, com carteira de R$ 250 milhões.

---

ENTENDA A SÉRIE

A série de reportagens Mercado de Carbono, publicada às vésperas da COP30 (conferência do clima das Nações Unidas, em Belém), retrata o funcionamento das compensações por emissões de gases de efeito estufa. O tema tem sido debatido entre países, empresas e organismos internacionais, em busca de regras em comum para os chamados mercados voluntário e regulado.

 

 

Prince William to attend Cop30 UN climate summit in Brazil. Prince of Wales’s decision welcomed as a means of drawing attention to the event and galvanising talks

 

Prince William will also present the Earthshot prize, a global environmental award, while he is in Brazil. Photograph: Chris Jackson/AFP/Getty Images

by Fiona Harvey Environment editor

 

 The Prince of Wales will attend the crunch Cop30 UN climate summit in Brazil next month, the Guardian has learned, but whether the prime minister will go is still to be decided.

Prince William will present the Earthshot prize, a global environmental award and attend the meeting of representatives of more than 190 governments in Belém.

Environmental experts welcomed the prince’s attendance. Solitaire Townsend, the co-founder of the Futerra consultancy, said it would lift what is likely to be a difficult summit, at which the world must agree fresh targets on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“Is Prince William attending Cop a stunt? Yes. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea,” she said. “Cop has long been as much about so-called ‘optics’ as it is negotiations. Prince William’s announcement will likely encourage other leaders to commit, and will have the global media sitting up to attention.

“I suspect HRH knows very well that by showing up, he’ll drag millions of eyes to the event. In an era when climate impacts are growing, but media coverage dropping, anything that draws attention should be celebrated.”

King Charles has attended previous Cops, but will not be going to this one.

 

Gareth Redmond-King of the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, an environmental thinktank, said: “All hands on deck – and any prominent, high-profile individual like the Prince of Wales, there helping make the case for the difficult job that needs doing, is almost certainly a good thing.

“[King Charles] was the Prince of Wales when he went to Cop26 [in Glasgow in 2021] and pitched in to help galvanise talks. I don’t think it necessarily needs both of them to go.”

The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, has not yet said whether he will attend the summit, to which all world leaders are invited, with scores already confirmed. He was heavily criticised by leading environmental voices, including the former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and the former Irish president Mary Robinson, for appearing to waver on the decision late last month.

Ban said: “World leaders must be in Belém for Cop30. Attendance is not a courtesy, it is a test of leadership. This is the moment to lock in stronger national commitments and the finance to deliver them, especially for adaptation” to the effects of the climate crisis.

“The world is watching, and history will remember who showed up.”

 

Brazil

COP 30 - Belem do Para

Brazil - Amazonia

The before and after images showing glaciers vanishing before our eyes

 

by 

Mark PoyntingClimate and science reporter, BBC News

 

 

When Matthias Huss first visited Rhône Glacier in Switzerland 35 years ago, the ice was just a short walk from where his parents would park the car.

"When I first stepped onto the ice... there [was] a special feeling of eternity," says Matthias.

Today, the ice is half an hour from the same parking spot and the scene is very different.

"Every time I go back, I remember how it used to be," recalls Matthias, now director of Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland (GLAMOS), "how the glacier looked when I was a child."

There are similar stories for many glaciers all over the planet, because these frozen rivers of ice are retreating - fast.

In 2024, glaciers outside the giant ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica lost 450 billion tonnes of ice, according to a recent World Meteorological Organization report.

That's equivalent to a block of ice 7km (4.3 miles) tall, 7km wide and 7km deep - enough water to fill 180 million Olympic swimming pools.

"Glaciers are melting everywhere in the world," says Prof Ben Marzeion of the Institute of Geography at the University of Bremen. "They are sitting in a climate that is very hostile to them now because of global warming."

Switzerland's glaciers have been particularly badly hit, losing a quarter of their ice in the last 10 years, measurements from GLAMOS revealed this week.

"It's really difficult to grasp the extent of this melt," explains Dr Huss.

But photos - from space and the ground - tell their own story.

Satellite images show how the Rhône Glacier has changed since 1990, when Dr Huss first visited. At the front of the glacier is a lake where there used to be ice.

Until recently, glaciologists in the Alps used to consider 2% of ice lost in a single year to be "extreme".

Then 2022 blew that idea out of the water, with nearly 6% of Switzerland's remaining ice lost in a single year.

That has been followed by significant losses in 2023, 2024 and now 2025 too.

Regine Hock, professor of glaciology at the University of Oslo, has been visiting the Alps since the 1970s.

The changes over her lifetime are "really stunning", she says, but "what we see now is really massive changes within a few years".

The Clariden Glacier, in north-eastern Switzerland, was roughly in balance until the late 20th Century - gaining about as much ice through snowfall as it lost to melting.

But this century, it's melted rapidly.

For many smaller glaciers, like the Pizol Glacier in the north-east Swiss Alps, it's been too much.

"This is one of the glaciers that I observed, and now it's completely gone," says Dr Huss. "It definitely makes me sad."

 

Photographs allow us to look even further back in time.

The Gries Glacier, in southern Switzerland near the Italian border, has retreated by about 2.2km (1.4 miles) in the past century. Where the end of the glacier once stood is now a large glacial lake.

In south-east Switzerland, the Pers Glacier once fed the larger Morteratsch Glacier, which flows down towards the valley. Now the two no longer meet.

 And the largest glacier in the Alps, the Great Aletsch, has receded by about 2.3km (1.4 miles) over the past 75 years. Where there was ice, there are now trees.

 

Glaciers have grown and shrunk naturally for millions of years, of course.

In the cold snaps of the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries - part of the Little Ice Age - glaciers regularly advanced.

During this time, many were considered cursed by the devil in Alpine folklore, their advances linked to spiritual forces as they threatened hamlets and farmland.

There are even tales of villagers calling on priests to talk to the spirits of glaciers and get them to move up the mountain.

Glaciers began their widespread retreat across the Alps in about 1850, though the timing varied from place to place.

That coincided with rising industrialisation, when burning of fossil fuels, particularly coal, began to heat up our atmosphere, but it's hard to disentangle natural and human causes that far back in time.

Where there is no real doubt is that the particularly rapid losses of the past 40 years or so are not natural.

 

Without humans warming the planet - by burning fossil fuels and releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) – glaciers would be expected to be roughly stable.

"We can only explain it if we take into account CO2 emissions," confirms Prof Marzeion.

What is even more sobering is that these large, flowing bodies of ice can take decades to fully adjust to the rapidly warming climate. That means that, even if global temperatures stabilised tomorrow, glaciers would continue to retreat.

"A large part of the future melt of the glaciers is already locked in," explains Prof Marzeion. "They are lagging climate change."

 

But all is not lost.

Half of the ice remaining across the world's mountain glaciers could be preserved if global warming is limited to 1.5C above "pre-industrial" levels of the late 1800s, according to research published this year in the journal Science.

Our current trajectory is leading us towards warming of about 2.7C above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century – which would see three-quarters of ice lost eventually.

That extra water going into rivers and eventually the oceans means higher sea levels for coastal populations around the world.

But the loss of ice will be particularly acutely felt by mountain communities dependent on glaciers for fresh water.

Glaciers are a bit like giant reservoirs. They collect water as snowfall - which turns into ice - during cold, wet periods, and release it as meltwater during warm periods.

This meltwater helps to stabilise river flows during hot, dry summers - until the glacier disappears.

The loss of that water resource has knock-on effects for all those who rely on glaciers - for irrigation, drinking, hydropower and even shipping traffic.

Switzerland is not immune from those challenges, but the implications are much more profound for the high mountains of Asia, referred to by some as the Third Pole due to the volume of ice.

About 800 million people rely at least partly on meltwater from glaciers there, particularly for agriculture. That includes the upper Indus river basin, which serves parts of China, India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

In regions with drier summers, meltwater from ice and snow can be the only significant source of water for months.

"That's where we see the biggest vulnerability," says Prof Hock.

So how do scientists feel when confronted by the future prospects of glaciers in a warming world?

"It's sad," says Prof Hock. "But at the same time, it's also empowering. If you decarbonise and reduce the [carbon] footprint, you can preserve glaciers.

"We have it in our hands."

 

Top image: Tschierva Glacier, Swiss Alps, in 1935 and 2022. Credit: swisstopo and VAW Glaciology, ETH Zurich.

Additional reporting by Dominic Bailey and Erwan Rivault.