BRUSSELS — Global warming intensified a series of torrential rainstorms that battered Spain and Portugal in recent weeks, new research has found.  Nine destructive winter storms hit the Iberian Peninsula with extensive flooding between mid-January and mid-February, killing six people in Portugal, forcing the evacuation of more than 12,000 people in Spain and leaving a trail of devastation across both countries.  The economic damage was significant: The Spanish government has already allocated €7 billion in relief payments to help people affected, while in Portugal the damage is estimated to reach €6 billion, equivalent to more than 1.5 percent of the country’s GDP. The Portuguese government has said the reconstruction cost will constrain the nation’s finances.  On Thursday, a team of international scientists published research showing that climate change intensified the rainfall in the Iberian Peninsula as well as neighboring Morocco, where the same storms displaced hundreds of thousands.  The World Weather Attribution consortium — a group of scientists who run rapid analyses assessing the role of climate change in extreme weather events based on peer-reviewed methods — looked at two specific rainfall events over the last month, one stretching from northwestern Spain into Portugal and another in southern Iberia and northern Morocco. They found an increase in the intensity of rainfall of 36 percent in the northern region and 28 percent in the southern area. “This means the wettest days are now around a third wetter” than before humans began heating the planet by burning fossil fuels, they write.  To understand to what degree climate change is responsible for this increase, they ran simulations comparing similar downpours in the present climate and in a world without global warming. The results complicated the picture but nevertheless demonstrated that global warming has driven up rainfall intensity.  In the northern region, the climate models consistently showed that rainfall was getting heavier, said Clair Barnes, a researcher with the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London and a co-author of the study.  “Overall, we estimate that the wettest days are now about 11 percent wetter than they would have been without human-caused climate change,” she said.  In the southern region, “the climate models actually don’t show any increasing trend in rainfall on the wettest days.” For that reason, “we can’t quantify the effect of climate change on extreme rainfall in that southern area,” Barnes added, but stressed: “This does not mean that climate change didn’t contribute to the extreme rainfall in the southern region as well, just that it’s difficult to detect overall trends over time.”  HOTTER OCEANS, HEAVIER RAIN In particular, the researchers also found that the succession of storms was driven in part by a so-called atmospheric river, a long band of wind and water vapor that transports moisture across vast distances.  Nine destructive winter storms hit the Iberian Peninsula with extensive flooding between mid-January and mid-February. | Jorge Guerrerp/AFP via Getty Images The atmospheric river was “intensified by passing over a very strong marine heatwave in the Atlantic on its way up to Spain,” said Barnes. This increase in sea temperatures, she added, was found to have been made 10 times more likely to happen as a result of climate change.  “The storm … is carrying moisture from the Atlantic up towards Iberia, up towards northern Morocco, and because this atmospheric river passed over this very warm patch of ocean, it was able to pick up more moisture than it would have if the ocean had been cooler, and that means that when that rain makes landfall … there is more water to fall,” she said.  A so-called blocked weather pattern — describing a high-pressure area that diverts winds around it — also influenced the extreme weather by channeling storm after storm toward Iberia for a month. Scientists are still investigating whether climate change is increasing the occurrence of blocking patterns. The authors noted that at an estimated 49 fatalities across the three countries, the death toll remained relatively low, thanks to concerted early-warning and evacuation efforts.  The precise reconstruction cost of homes, infrastructure and agriculture is still being assessed. The knock-on damages for the economy will likely run even higher; Portugal’s main highway, for example, collapsed in one of the storms in mid-February and is expected to take weeks to repair.  “These early warning and anticipatory actions reduced loss of life, but they don’t reduce the underlying exposure” to risk, said Maja Vahlberg from the Red Cross-Red Crescent Climate Centre, one of the study co-authors.  She added: “While humans can be moved out of harm’s way, that’s not true for our homes, our workplaces, our roads, our buildings — carriers of history, culture, and memory.” 

BRUSSELS — The EU must start drawing up concrete plans to cope with life on a continent made 4 degrees Celsius hotter by climate change, the bloc’s scientific advisers said Tuesday.  That would mean accepting that the world is on track for a catastrophic temperature increase that will far exceed the targets agreed under the Paris climate accord and will massively disrupt life for Europeans. “Europe’s climate is rapidly changing. It is not a distant or an abstract risk,” said Ottmar Edenhofer, the chair of the European scientific advisory board on climate change. As the planet warms, weather extremes such as floods and droughts are posing a growing threat to Europe’s society, economy and ecosystems. In recent years, tens of thousands of Europeans have died in heat waves and hundreds more when rivers burst their banks; the annual repair bill for climate disasters has reached an average of €45 billion.  But the EU’s efforts to prepare for both current and future impacts of global warming are insufficient and fragmented, lacking a coherent vision, Edenhofer warned. “The EU lacks a shared understanding of what it should collectively prepare for, leading to inconsistent climate risk assessments that often undermine risk management,” he said.  In the board’s view, the bloc should protect itself on the assumption that the continent will be 4 degrees Celsius warmer by 2100 than in the pre-industrial era. The advice echoes a recent French government plan to prepare for a 4C hotter France.  Aside from establishing a common baseline of preparations, the board recommends four other measures to climate-proof Europe — from setting binding preparation targets to suggesting the EU plan its budget around climate risks.  With their requests for more targets and assessments, many of the board’s recommendations run counter to the deregulation fever gripping Brussels. In the report, the researchers even reprimand the EU executive for weakening green reporting requirements. Yet the board’s advice, an independent consortium of senior scientists tasked by EU law with issuing climate policy guidance, often proves influential. Its 2023 report recommending an emissions-slashing target of at least 90 percent by 2040 played a major role in pushing the bloc’s institutions to adopt that figure as their goal.  The report on preparing for climate risks — called adaptation in policy-speak — is also timely: The Commission is working on a new “framework” for climate-proofing Europe, expected toward the end of the year. “Our recommendations are aimed at the upcoming legislation,” Edenhofer said.  ADAPT TO SURVIVE While the EU has extensive legislation in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, no targets or policies exist for adaptation.  That’s in part because it’s tricky to draft continent-level policies for climate impacts, which differ in severity and classification not only across the bloc’s 27 countries but also within their borders. Southern Europe faces greater threats from heat than northern countries, and a nation’s coastal towns will need to cope with different risks than mountainous hinterlands.  But emissions-slashing efforts, known in policy jargon as mitigation, have also generally received more attention and investment, as they seek to tackle the root cause of climate change, while adaptation addresses its symptoms.  Scientists insist both are needed. “The success of global mitigation efforts is … critical to determine future temperature increases and the magnitude of the global risks,” said Edenhofer. “Adaptation can reduce climate risk and associated harms.”  For example, southern Europe’s droughts will become more frequent and intense the higher global temperatures rise — according to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), more than a third of the region’s population will face water scarcity at 2C of global warming, while 3C doubles this share. Curbing warming limits this risk.  To address the remaining risk, countries can introduce adaptation measures — such as having farmers switch to more drought-resistant crops or managing water use. The worse the warming gets, the greater the danger that regions and economic sectors will no longer be able to adapt.  All the EU has for now is a vague adaptation strategy from 2021. Most EU countries have national adaptation plans or laws with relevant elements, but both the European Environment Agency and the European Court of Auditors have warned that legislation varies wildly across the bloc and that some strategies are based on outdated scientific findings.  WORST-CASE SCENARIO That’s not good enough, the advisory board says. Among the five recommendations, the scientists want the EU to develop a coherent vision with “sector-specific adaptation targets, for example for 2030 and 2040,” and to find ways to manage the rising economic costs of climate disasters, for example, through budgetary and insurance mechanisms. This must be based on a common reference scenario, the scientists say, recommending the EU prepare for a global warming of between 2.8 C and 3.3 C above pre-industrial levels — consistent with projections that “imply around 4C warming for Europe,” Edenhofer said. The “precautionary principle” requires the EU to prepare for that scenario and it should also “stress-test” its planning against even higher warming scenarios, Edenhofer said, given the uncertainties around global efforts to cut emissions. The United States is notably currently reversing course on its emissions-slashing plans.  The report also criticized the Commission for its deregulation drive. The Commission’s first omnibus package aimed at simplifying environmental legislation exempted the majority of EU companies from having to report on the threat climate change poses to their business models, for example. This, the researchers say, “may weaken the oversight and management of climate risks in the wider EU economy.”

Gavin Newsom’s message to world leaders in Munich: It’s time to start thinking about the next president. “Donald Trump is temporary,” the California governor and likely presidential candidate said during a panel about climate change Friday at the Munich Security Conference. “He’ll be gone in three years.” Newsom r has long positioned California as a durable counterweight to Trumpism, particularly on climate policies that California has expanded as the White House retreats. He carried a similar banner at an international climate conference in Brazil last year, casting California as America’s premiere climate mover in Trump’s absence. While it’s not unusual for California governors to wield the state’s economic clout to shape global climate policy, Newsom’s advocacy for the state doubles as a pitch for himself, allowing him to practice his diplomatic acumen, fortify relationships with heads of state, and sharpen his pitch for a post-Trump foreign policy. He is one of a half dozen potential Democratic presidential contenders offering a contrast to Vice President JD Vance’s scathing criticism of the continent in the same forum last year. On Friday, global leaders suggested they, too, understand a leadership change is coming, though it is unclear if the next administration will be any more sympathetic to concerns about climate change. Asked on a panel with Newsom about how to navigate the Trump administration’s rollback of climate policies, Vanuatu’s minister of climate adaptation noted other nations are already used to presidential elections shifting their relationship with the United States. “We are waiting for the U.S. to come back on board,” Minister Ralph Regenvanu said. “It happened once. I think it will happen again.”

Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro is under pressure over his government’s handling of the storms that have wreaked havoc across the country for several weeks. At least 16 people have died as a result of the fierce cyclones that have battered the Atlantic nation since late January, destroying homes and leaving thousands without power for days. A stretch of the A1 motorway that serves as the country’s main north-south artery was wiped out after a dike collapsed this week, and railway service between Lisbon and Porto is suspended. Coimbra, home to one of Europe’s oldest universities, is being threatened by major floods that could force the evacuation of up to 9,000 residents. Growing anger over the lack of preventative measures taken ahead of the storms, as well as the delays in emergency response and recovery operations, prompted Interior Minister Maria Lúcia Amaral to step down on Tuesday. “I no longer possess the personal and political conditions necessary to hold the position,” she wrote in her resignation letter, which President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa promptly accepted. Opposition parties on both sides of the aisle seized on Amaral’s sudden exit to criticize the country’s center-right prime minister. André Ventura, leader of the far-right Chega party, accused Montenegro of having “lost control of his own government,” while the Socialist Party’s José Luís Carneiro said the resignation proved the administration had “failed in its response to this emergency.” Montenegro himself has provisionally taken up Amaral’s portfolio to oversee the crisis response operations personally. While the move is aimed at underscoring the prime minister’s commitment to addressing the disaster, it is also politically risky, as he is now directly linked to the handling of the calamity. In a bid to calm citizens, Montenegro announced Thursday its government will use EU recovery funds to reconstruct devastated communities, and deliver a new water and forest management plan, he said, that will prepare the country for the extreme weather it will face over the next quarter-century. FRAUD INVESTIGATION But the prime minister’s messaging was undermined on Friday, when he was linked to an ongoing tax fraud probe. According to Portuguese weekly newspaper Expresso, prosecutors have been investigating alleged discrepancies between the cost of Montenegro’s summer house and the invoices issued by his contractors since last fall. Although he has not been named as a subject in the probe, the news is an unpleasant distraction for the prime minister. Montenegro did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment on the investigation. Last year, the prime minister called snap elections after an unrelated corruption probe involving his family’s businesses led to him losing a confidence vote in parliament. That case was ultimately shelved by prosecutors, who found no evidence of criminal activity. The house in question in the latest probe was already the subject of a criminal investigation in 2024, when prosecutors raised doubts over the tax breaks the prime minister had claimed. That case was dropped after authorities concluded Montenegro was legally entitled to the benefits.

Venture capitalist Finn Murphy believes world leaders could soon resort to deflecting sunlight into space if the Earth gets unbearably hot. That’s why he’s invested more than $1 million in Stardust Solutions, a leading solar geoengineering firm that’s developing a system to reduce warming by enveloping the globe in reflective particles. Murphy isn’t rooting for climate catastrophe. But with global temperatures soaring and the political will to limit climate change waning, Stardust “can be worth tens of billions of dollars,” he said. “It would be definitely better if we lost all our money and this wasn’t necessary,” said Murphy, the 33-year-old founder of Nebular, a New York investment fund named for a vast cloud of space dust and gas. Murphy is among a new wave of investors who are putting millions of dollars into emerging companies that aim to limit the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth — while also potentially destabilizing weather patterns, food supplies and global politics. He has a degree in mathematics and mechanical engineering and views global warming not just as a human and political tragedy, but as a technical challenge with profitable solutions. Solar geoengineering investors are generally young, pragmatic and imaginative — and willing to lean into the adventurous side of venture capitalism. They often shrug off the concerns of scientists who argue it’s inherently risky to fund the development of potentially dangerous technologies through wealthy investors who could only profit if the planet-cooling systems are deployed. “If the technology works and the outcomes are positive without really catastrophic downstream impacts, these are trillion-dollar market opportunities,” said Evan Caron, a co-founder of the energy-focused venture firm Montauk Capital. “So it’s a no-brainer for an investor to take a shot at some of these.” More than 50 financial firms, wealthy individuals and government agencies have collectively provided more than $115.8 million to nine startups whose technology could be used to limit sunlight, according to interviews with VCs, tech company founders and analysts, as well as private investment data analyzed by POLITICO’s E&E News. That pool of funders includes Silicon Valley’s Sequoia Capital, one of the world’s largest venture capital firms, and four other investment groups that have more than $1 billion of assets under management. Of the total amount invested in the geoengineering sector, $75 million went to Stardust, or nearly 65 percent. The U.S.-Israeli startup is developing reflective particles and the means to spray and monitor them in the stratosphere, some 11 miles above the planet’s surface. At least three other climate-intervention companies have also raked in at least $5 million. The cash infusion is a bet on planet-cooling technologies that many political leaders, investors and environmentalists still consider taboo. In addition to having unknown side effects, solar geoengineering could expose the planet to what scientists call “termination shock,” a scenario in which global temperatures soar if the cooling technologies fail or are suddenly abandoned. Still, the funding surge for geoengineering companies pales in comparison to the billions of dollars being put toward artificial intelligence. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has raised $62.5 billion in 2025 alone, according to investment data compiled by PitchBook. The investment pool for solar geoengineering startups is relatively shallow in part because governments haven’t determined how they would regulate the technology — something Stardust is lobbying to change. As a result, the emerging sector is seen as too speculative for most venture capital firms, according to Kim Zou, the CEO of Sightline Climate, a market intelligence firm. VCs mostly work on behalf of wealthy individuals, as well as pension funds, university endowments and other institutional investors. “It’s still quite a niche set of investors that are even thinking about or looking at the geoengineering space,” Zou said. “The climate tech and energy tech investors we speak to still don’t really see there being an investable opportunity there, primarily because there’s no commercial market for it today.” AEROSOLS IN THE STRATOSPHERE Stardust and its investors are banking on signing contracts with one or more governments that could deploy its solar geoengineering system as soon as the end of the decade. Those investors include Lowercarbon Capital, a climate-focused firm co-founded by billionaire VC Chris Sacca, and Exor, the holding company of an Italian industrial dynasty and perhaps the most mainstream investment group to back a sunlight reflection startup. Even Stardust’s supporters acknowledge that the company is far from a sure bet. “It’s unique in that there is not currently demand for this solution,” said Murphy, whose firm is also supporting out-there startups seeking to build robots and data centers in space. “You have to go and create the product in order to potentially facilitate the demand.” Lowercarbon partner Ryan Orbuch said the firm would see a return on its Stardust investment only “in the context of an actual customer who can actually back many years of stable, safe deployment.” Exor, another Stardust investor, didn’t respond to a request for comment. Other startups are trying to develop commercial markets for solar geoengineering. Make Sunsets, a company funded by billionaire VC Tim Draper, releases sulfate-filled weather balloons that pop when they reach the stratosphere. It sells cooling credits to individuals and corporations based on the theory that the sulfates can reliably reduce warming. There are questions, however, about the science and economics underpinning the credit system of Make Sunsets, according to the investment bank Jeffries. “A cooling credit market is unlikely to be viable,” the bank said in a May 2024 note to clients. That’s because the temperature reductions produced by sulfate aerosols vary by altitude, location and season, the note explained. And the warming impacts of carbon dioxide emissions last decades — much longer than any cooling that would be created from a balloon’s worth of sulfate. Make Sunsets didn’t respond to a request for comment. The company has previously attracted the attention of regulators in the U.S. and Mexico, who have claimed it began operating without the necessary government approvals. Draper Associates says on its website that it’s “shaping a future where the impossible becomes everyday reality.” The firm has previously backed successful consumer tech firms like Tesla, Skype and Hotmail. “It is getting hotter in the Summer everywhere,” Tim Draper said in an email. “We should be encouraging every solution. I love this team, and the science works.” THE NEXT FRONTIER One startup is pursuing space-based solar geoengineering. EarthGuard is attempting to build a series of large sunlight deflectors that would be positioned between the sun and the planet, some 932,000 miles from the Earth. The company did not respond to emailed questions. Other space companies are considering geoengineering as a side project. That includes Gama, a French startup that’s designing massive solar sails that could be used for deep space travel or as a planetary sunshade, and Ethos Space, a Los Angeles company with plans to industrialize the moon. Both companies are part of an informal research network established by the Planetary Sunshade Foundation, a nonprofit advocating for the development of a trillion-dollar parasol for the globe. The network mainly brings together collaborators on the sidelines of space industry conferences, according to Gama CEO Andrew Nutter. “We’re willing to contribute something if we realize it’s genuinely necessary and it’s a better solution than other solutions” to the climate challenge, Nutter said of the space shade concept. “But our business model does not depend on it. If you have dollar signs hanging next to something, that can bias your decisions on what’s best for the planet.” Nutter said Gama has raised about $5 million since he co-founded the company in 2020. Its investors include Possible Ventures, a German VC firm that’s also financing a nuclear fusion startup and says on its website that the firm is “relentlessly optimistic — choosing to focus on the possibilities rather than obsess over the risks.” Possible Ventures did not respond to a request for comment. Sequoia-backed Reflect Orbital is another space startup that’s exploring solar geoengineering as a potential moneymaker. The company based near Los Angeles is developing a network of satellite mirrors that would direct sunlight down to the Earth at night for lighting industrial sites or, eventually, producing solar energy. Its space mirrors, if oriented differently, could also be used for limiting the amount of sun rays that reach the planet. “It’s not so much a technological limitation as much as what has the highest, best impact. It’s more of a business decision,” said Ally Stone, Reflect Orbital’s chief strategy officer. “It’s a matter of looking at each satellite as an opportunity and whether, when it’s over a specific geography, that makes more sense to reflect sunlight towards or away from the Earth.” Reflect Orbital has raised nearly $28.7 million from investors including Lux Capital, a firm that touts its efforts to “turn sci-fi into sci-fact” and has invested in the autonomous defense systems companies Anduril and Saildrone.” Sequoia and Lux didn’t respond to requests for comment. The startup hopes to send its first satellite into space next summer, according to Stone. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, whose aerospace company already has an estimated fleet of more than 8,800 internet satellites in orbit, has also suggested using the circling network to limit sunlight. “A large solar-powered AI satellite constellation would be able to prevent global warming by making tiny adjustments in how much solar energy reached Earth,” Musk wrote on X last month. Neither he nor SpaceX responded to an emailed request for comment. DON’T CALL IT GEOENGINEERING Other sunlight-reflecting startups are entering the market — even if they’d rather not be seen as solar geoengineering companies. Arctic Reflections is a two-year-old company that wants to reduce global warming by increasing Arctic sea ice, which doesn’t absorb as much heat as open water. The Dutch startup hasn’t yet pursued outside investors. “We see this not necessarily as geo-engineering, but rather as climate adaptation,” CEO Fonger Ypma said in an email. “Just like in reforestation projects, people help nature in growing trees, our idea is that we would help nature in growing ice.” The main funder of Arctic Reflections is the British government’s independent Advanced Research and Invention Agency. In May, ARIA awarded $4.41 million to the company — more than four times what it had raised to that point. Another startup backed by ARIA is Voltitude, which is developing micro balloons to monitor geoengineering from the stratosphere. The U.K.-based company didn’t respond to a request for comment. Altogether, the British agency is supporting 22 geoengineering projects, only a handful of which involve startups. “ARIA is only funding fundamental research through this programme, and has not taken an equity stake in any geoengineering companies,” said Mark Symes, a program director at the agency. It also requires that all research it supports “must be published, including those that rule out approaches by showing they are unsafe or unworkable.” Sunscreen is a new startup that is trying to limit sunlight in localized areas. It was founded earlier this year by Stanford University graduate student Solomon Kim. “We are pioneering the use of targeted, precision interventions to mitigate the destructive impacts of heatwave on critical United States infrastructure,” Kim said in an email. But he was emphatic that “we are not geoengineering” since the cooling impacts it’s pursuing are not large scale. Kim declined to say how much had been raised by Sunscreen and from what sources. As climate change and its impacts continue to worsen, Zou of Sightline Climate expects more investors to consider solar geoengineering startups, including deep-pocketed firms and corporations interested in the technology. Without their help, the startups might not be able to develop their planet-cooling systems. “People are feeling like, well wait a second, our backs are kind of starting to get against the wall. Time is ticking, we’re not really making a ton of progress” on decarbonization, she said. “So I do think there’s a lot more questions getting asked right now in the climate tech and venture community around understanding it,” Zou said of solar geoengineering. “Some of these companies and startups and venture deals are also starting to bring more light into the space.” Karl Mathiesen contributed reporting.

BRUSSELS — Current plans to tackle global warming will only save 3 percent of Europe’s Alpine glaciers from disappearing this century, with most melting away within the next two decades, a new study has found.  The ice fields of Central Europe are vanishing faster than anywhere else on Earth,according to research led by Switzerland’s ETH Zurich. Overall, the scientists found that 79 percent of the world’s glaciers will not survive this century unless countries step up efforts to curb climate change.  “The Alps as we know them nowadays will completely change by the end of the century,” Lander Van Tricht, the study’s lead author, told POLITICO. “The landscape will be completely different. Many ski resorts will not have access to glaciers anymore … the ones we keep are so high and so steep that they are not accessible anymore. So the economy will be confronted with these changes,” he said. “And even the small glaciers provide water downstream” for vegetation and villages, he added. “This will also change.” Their study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, is the first to calculate the number of glaciers remaining by the year 2100 under different warming scenarios. Previous studies have focused on size or ice mass, the factors determining future sea-level rise and water scarcity, as glaciers hold 70 percent of the world’s freshwater.  The researchers hope their findings, including a database showing the projected survival rate of each of the world’s 211,000 glaciers, will help assess climate impacts on local economies and ecosystems.  “Even the smallest glacier in a remote valley in the Alps, even if it’s not important for sea-level rise or water resources, can have a huge importance for tourism, for example,” said Van Tricht. “Every individual glacier can matter.”  The researchers found that 97 percent of Central European glaciers will go extinct this century if global warming hits 2.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — the temperature rise expected under governments’ current climate policies.  That means only 110 of the region’s roughly 3,200 glaciers would survive to see the next century. Those are located in the Alps, as the region’s other mountain range, the Iberian Peninsula’s Pyrenees, is set to lose its remaining 15 glaciers by the mid-2030s.  If the world manages to limit global warming to 1.5C or 2C, in line with the Paris Agreement, the Alps would lose 87 percent or 92 percent of glaciers, respectively. At warming of 4C, a level the world was heading toward before the 2015 climate accord was signed, 99 percent of Alpine glaciers would disappear this century, with just 20 surviving the year 2100.  In all scenarios, however, the majority of Central European glaciers melt away in the coming two decades. The scientists write that for this region, “peak extinction” — the year when most glaciers are expected to disappear — is “projected to occur soon after 2025.”  Glaciers located in high latitudes — such as in Iceland and Russian Arctic — or holding vast amounts of ice have the best survival chances, Van Tricht said.  Alpine glaciers “are in general very small” and “very sensitive” to climatic changes like warmer springs, he said. The biggest ice fields, such as the Rhône glacier, will survive 2.7C of warming but not 4C, he added.  The second-worst affected region is Western Canada and the United States, home to the Rocky Mountains, where 96 percent of the nearly 18,000 glaciers are expected to disappear this century under 2.7C of warming.  Overall, the study projects a dramatic disappearance of glaciers around the globe: At 2.7C of warming, 79 percent of glaciers worldwide would go extinct by the end of the century, rising to 91 percent at 4C. The melt-off is expected to continue after 2100, the researchers add. Drastic cuts in planet-warming emissions could save tens of thousands of individual glaciers, however, with the extinction rate slowing to 55 percent at 1.5C and 63 percent at 2C.  The rate of disappearance shocked even the scientists, Van Tricht said. Around mid-century, when glacier loss reaches its peak, “we lose at a global scale 2,000 to 4,000 glaciers a year,” depending on the level of warming. “Which means that if you look at the Alps today, all the glaciers we have there, you lose that number in just one single year at the global scale.” 

Ban Ki-moon is the eighth secretary-general of the U.N. and the co-chair of the Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens. Ana Toni is the CEO of COP30. As world leaders gather in Belém, Brazil for this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), we are standing at a global tipping point. 2024 broke temperature records, as the world temporarily surpassed the 1.5 degrees Celsius target for the first time. And now, we’re on track to cross it permanently within just five years. This means adaptation action has never been more vital for our survival. From the year 2000 to 2019, climate change already cost the world’s most vulnerable countries an estimated $525 billion. This burden only continues to rise, putting lives at risk and undoing hard-won development gains, with global annual damages likely to land somewhere between $19 trillion and $59 trillion in 2050. Even more sobering, the world economy is already locked into a 19 percent loss of income by 2050 due to climate change, no matter how successful today’s mitigation efforts are. This makes one thing clear: The consequence of inaction is far greater than the consequence of action. The world must stop seeing adaptation as a cost to bear but as an investment that strengthens economies and builds healthier, more secure communities. Every dollar invested in adaptation can generate more than 10 times that in benefits through avoided losses, as well as induced economic, social and environmental benefits. Every dollar invested in agricultural research and development generates similar returns for smallholder farmers, vulnerable communities and ecosystems too. This remains true even if climate-related disasters don’t occur. Effective adaptation does more than save lives — it makes the economic case for resilience. And if we really want to tackle the crises of today’s world, we need to put people — especially those most vulnerable — at the center of all our conversations and efforts. Those least responsible for climate change are the ones our financing must reach. Here, locally led adaptation provides a path forward, focusing on giving communities agency over their futures, addressing structural inequalities and enhancing local capacities. Today, more than 2 billion people depend on smallholder farms for their livelihoods, but as little as 1.7 percent of climate finance reaches Indigenous communities and locally operated farms. Small-scale agri-food systems, which are essential to many in developing countries, receive a mere 0.8 percent of international climate finance. This is deeply unjust. These are the people and systems most threatened by climate impacts — and they’re often the best-placed ones to deliver locally effective and regionally adaptive solutions. To that end, appropriate investments in global networks like the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) could accelerate and scale technologies that can be adopted by these local systems. These tools could then be used to improve resilience and increase productivity in low- and middle-income countries, while also reducing inequalities and advancing gender equity and social inclusion. The world economy is already locked into a 19 percent loss of income by 2050 due to climate change. | Albert Llop/Getty Images Scaling such efforts will be crucial in moving toward systemic climate solutions. Our ambition is to move from negotiation to implementation to protect lives, safeguard assets and advance equity. But it’s important to remember that adaptation is distinct — it is inherently local; shaped by geography, communities and governance systems. Meeting this challenge will require more than just pledges. It will necessitate high-quality public and private adaptation finance that is accessible to vulnerable countries and communities. That’s why governments around the world — especially those in high-income countries — must design institutional arrangements and policies that raise additional public funds, incentivize markets and embed resilience into every investment decision. The decade since the Paris Agreement laid the foundations for a world at peace with the planet. And with COP30 now taking place in the heart of the Amazon, we must make adaptation a global priority and see resilience as the investment agenda of the 21st century. At its core, climate finance should be driving development pathways that put people first. In Belém, leaders must now close the adaptation finance gap and ensure funding reaches those on the front lines. They need to back investable national resilience strategies, replicate successful initiatives and put resilience at the center of financial decision-making. COP30 needs to be transformative and lead to markets that reward resilience, communities that are better protected and economies built on firmer, more climate-resilient foundations. Let this be the moment we finally move from awareness to alignment, and from ambition to action. Our collective survival depends on it. Question is, will our leaders have the political will to seize it?

BRUSSELS — Climate change is already costing Europe dearly. This summer’s droughts, heat waves and floods will cost the European Union an estimated €43 billion this year, knocking nearly half a percentage point off the region’s economic output, according to a study published Monday.  The same study estimated that the cumulative damage to the European economy will reach about €126 billion by 2029. “These estimates are likely conservative,” said the authors of the study, Sehrish Usman of the University of Mannheim, and Miles Parker and Mathilde Vallat, economists at the European Central Bank. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent as greenhouse gases warm the world. In 2024, natural disasters, including catastrophic flooding in Spain, destroyed assets worth $31 billion in Europe, according to the insurance company MunichRe. “Climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events like floods, droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and all of this is contributing to the rising economic cost for the European regions,” Usman said at an event in Brussels on Monday. The study included physical damage to buildings and infrastructure as well as impact on worker productivity and efficiency, and spillover effects on other parts of the economy. It did not include damage from wildfires that burned more than 1 million hectares in Europe this year. “These events are not just temporary shocks,” said Usman. “They manifest their impacts over time.” Floods can disrupt supply chains. Droughts can cripple agricultural yields. “Initially, this is just a heat wave,” she said. “But it affects your efficiency, it reduces your labor productivity.” Droughts were the most damaging, causing an estimated €29.4 billion of loss to the EU this summer. Heat waves and floods caused damages of €6.8 billion and €6.5 billion, respectively. Southern Europe, a region particularly vulnerable to climate change, was hit hardest. Cyprus, Greece, Malta and Bulgaria suffered losses of more than 1 percent of their economic output. “Denmark, Sweden, Germany show relatively lower damages but the frequency and magnitude of these events, especially floods, are also increasing across these regions,” the researchers wrote. The findings come just after climate scientists reported that global warming made a heat wave in July in Norway, Sweden and Finland 2 degrees Celsius hotter than it would have otherwise been. Scientists have also calculated that wildfires in Spain and Portugal were made 40 times more likely by climate change.

BRUSSELS — The European Union’s climate chief has warned that the Gulf Stream could collapse in a few decades after Dutch scientists found key ocean currents are weakening faster than thought. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the system that forms part of the Gulf Stream — an Atlantic Ocean current that keeps Europe from becoming frigid — could start shutting down in the 2060s as a result of climate change, according to a study by Utrecht University researchers published this week.  European Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra described the findings in a social media post as a “wake-up call.”  The Gulf Stream, he noted, “carries warm tropical waters north, keeping Northern Europe’s winters far milder than regions on the same latitude, like Canada. This new study says that the Gulf Stream could collapse in our lifetime.”  Shutdown of the AMOC would see temperatures in Europe plummet even as global warming marches on. This would also reduce rainfall and likely bring even drier summers, with devastating consequences for agriculture. Earlier this month, European Commission Vice President Teresa Ribera — in charge of the EU’s overarching green policy — suggested that the AMOC should be “added to the list of national security acronyms in Europe” given the severe impact of a shutdown.  The Dutch study, which analyses 25 different climate models, found that under a moderate emissions scenario — meaning a rise in global temperatures of around 2.7 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels this century — the AMOC could start collapsing from 2063. The planet has already warmed to 1.3 C, and is on track to warm to 2.7 C under governments’ current climate plans. Under a high-emissions scenario of warming above 4 C, which is considered unlikely, the shutdown could occur as early as 2055, they found.  Previous studies said a collapse was unlikely to happen this century.  WHAT ARE THE CHANCES? Sybren Drijfhout, chair of ocean and earth science at the University of Southampton and a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, said the Utrecht study was “solid.”  Drijfhout, who was not involved in the Utrecht paper, published a separate study Thursday that reached a similar conclusion about the AMOC reaching a tipping point this century, entering a decline before shutting down after the year 2100.  According to this study, the unlikely high-emissions scenario has a 70 percent chance of leading to such an AMOC collapse, while the moderate scenario — the 2.7 C increase the planet is on track for at the moment — sets out a 37 percent chance.  Yet even a low-emissions scenario in line with the 2015 Paris climate accord targets that limit warming to below 2 C, the researchers write, give a 25 percent chance of a shutdown.  “As far as current models suggest, we conclude that the risk of a northern AMOC shutdown is greater than previously thought,” Drijfhout and his colleagues wrote. In his post, Hoekstra expressed frustration about climate becoming less of a priority in European politics in recent years despite the threat posed by global warming.  “There’s a sense out there that climate change has taken a backseat because we’re so busy dealing with [other] pressing concerns,” he wrote. “Progress takes time … it’s not linear,” he continued, and insisted that “there’ll be moments when attention wanes. So a big thanks to these scientists for giving us another serious climate wake-up call.”

In February 2022, as Russia marched on Kyiv, Oleksandr Dmitriev realized he knew how to stop Moscow’s men: Blow a hole in the dam that strangled the Irpin River northeast of the capital and restore the long-lost boggy floodplain. A defense consultant who organized offroad races in the area before the war, Dmitriev was familiar with the terrain. He knew exactly what reflooding the river basin — a vast expanse of bogs and marshes that was drained in Soviet times — would do to Russia’s war machinery.  “It turns into an impassable turd, as the jeep guys say,” he said. He told the commander in charge of Kyiv’s defense as much, and was given the go-ahead to blow up the dam.  Dmitriev’s idea worked. “In principle, it stopped the Russian attack from the north,” he said. The images of Moscow’s tanks mired in mud went around the world.  Three years later, this act of desperation is inspiring countries along NATO’s eastern flank to look into restoring their own bogs — fusing two European priorities that increasingly compete for attention and funding: defense and climate.  That’s because the idea isn’t only to prepare for a potential Russian attack. The European Union’s efforts to fight global warming rely in part on nature’s help, and peat-rich bogs capture planet-warming carbon dioxide just as well as they sink enemy tanks.  Yet half of the EU’s bogs are being sapped of their water to create land suitable for planting crops. The desiccated peatlands in turn release greenhouse gases and allow heavy vehicles to cross with ease.  Some European governments are now wondering if reviving ailing bogs can solve several problems at once. Finland and Poland told POLITICO they were actively exploring bog restoration as a multi-purpose measure to defend their borders and fight climate change.  Poland’s massive 10 billion złoty (€2.3 billion) Eastern Shield border fortification project, launched last year, “provides for environmental protection, including by … peatland formation and forestation of border areas,” the country’s defense ministry said in a statement.  “It’s a win-win situation that achieves many targets at the same time,” said Tarja Haaranen, director general for nature at Finland’s environment ministry.  BOGS! WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR?  In their pristine state, bogs are carpeted with delicate mosses that can’t fully decompose in their waterlogged habitats and slowly turn into soft, carbon-rich soil known as peat.  This is what makes them Earth’s most effective repositories of CO2. Although they cover only 3 percent of the planet, they lock away a third of the world’s carbon — twice the amount stored in forests.  Yet when drained, bogs start releasing the carbon they stored for hundreds or thousands of years, fueling global warming.  Some 12 percent of peatlands worldwide are degraded, producing 4 percent of planet-warming pollution. (To compare, global aviation is responsible for around 2.5 percent.) In Europe, where bogs were long regarded as unproductive terrain to be converted into farmland, the picture is especially dramatic: Half of the EU’s peatlands are degraded, mostly due to drainage for agricultural purposes. As a result, EU countries reported 124 million tons of greenhouse gas pollution from drained peatlands in 2022, close to the annual emissions of the Netherlands. Some scientists say even this is an underestimate.  Various peatland restoration projects are now underway, with bog repair having gained momentum under the EU’s new Nature Restoration Law, which requires countries to revive 30 percent of degraded peatlands by 2030 and 50 percent by 2050.  The bloc’s 27 governments now have until September 2026 to draft plans on how they intend to meet these targets.  On NATO’s eastern flank, restoring bogs would be a relatively cheap and straightforward measure to achieve EU nature targets and defense goals all at once, scientists argue.  “It’s definitely doable,” said Aveliina Helm, professor of restoration ecology at the University of Tartu, who until recently advised Estonia’s government on its EU nature repair strategy. “We are right now in the development of our national restoration plan, as many EU countries are,” she added, “and as part of that I see great potential to join those two objectives.”  NATO’S BOG BELT  As it happens, most of the EU’s peatlands are concentrated on NATO’s border with Russia and Kremlin-allied Belarus — stretching from the Finnish Arctic through the Baltic states, past Lithuania’s hard-to-defend Suwałki Gap and into eastern Poland.  When waterlogged, this terrain represents a dangerous trap for military trucks and tanks. In a tragic example earlier this year, four U.S. soldiers stationed in Lithuania died when they drove their 63-ton M88 Hercules armored vehicle into a bog.  And when armies can’t cross soggy open land, they are forced into areas that are more easily defended, as Russia found out when Dmitriev and his soldiers blew up the dam north of Kyiv in February 2022.  A destroyed Russian tank sits in a field on April 28, 2022 in Moshchun, Ukraine. | Taras Podolian/Gazeta.ua/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images “The Russians there in armored personnel carriers got stuck at the entrance, then they were killed with a Javelin [anti-tank missile], then when the Russians tried to build pontoons … ours shot them with artillery,” Dmitriev recounted.  Bog-based defense isn’t a new idea. Waterlogged terrain has stopped troops throughout European history — from Germanic tribes inflicting defeat on Roman legions by trapping them beside a bog in 9 AD, to Finland’s borderlands ensnaring the Soviets in the 1940s. The treacherous marshes north of Kyiv posed a formidable challenge to armies in both world wars.  Strategically rewetting drained peatlands to prepare for an enemy attack, however, would be a novelty. But it’s an idea that’s starting to catch on — among environmentalists, defense strategists and politicians.  Pauli Aalto-Setälä, a lawmaker with Finland’s governing National Coalition Party, last year filed a parliamentary motion calling on the Finnish government to restore peatlands to secure its borders and fight climate change.  “In Finland, we have used our nature from a defense angle in history,” said Aalto-Setälä, who holds the rank of major and trained as a tank officer during his national service. “I realized that at the eastern border especially, there are a lot of excellent areas to restore — for the climate, but also to make it as difficult to go through as possible.”  The Finnish defense and environment ministries will now start talks in the fall on whether to launch a bog-repair pilot project, according to Haaranen, who will lead the working group. “I’m personally very excited about this.” POLAND’S PEATY POLITICS Discussions on defensive nature restoration are advancing fastest in Poland — even though Warsaw is usually reluctant to scale up climate action.  Climate activists and scientists started campaigning for nature-based defense a few years ago when they realized that Poland’s politicians were far more likely to spend financial and political capital on environmental efforts when they were linked to national security.  “Once you talk about security, everyone listens right now in Poland,” said Wiktoria Jędroszkowiak, a Polish activist who helped initiate the country’s Fridays for Future climate protests. “And our peatlands and ancient forests, they are the places that are going to be very important for our defense once the war gets to Poland as well.”  After years of campaigning, the issue has now reached government level in Warsaw, with discussions underway between scientists and Poland’s defense and environment ministries.  Wiktor Kotowski, an ecologist and member of the Polish government’s advisory council for nature conservation, said initial talks with the defense ministry have been promising.  “There were a lot of misunderstandings and misconceptions but in general we found there are only synergies,” he said. Damaged Russian vehicle marked V by Russian troops and then re-marked UA by Ukrainians bogged down in the mud on April 8, 2022 in Moshchun, Ukraine. | Serhii Mykhalchuk/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images “What the ministry of defense wants is to get back as many wetlands as possible along the eastern border,” Kotowski added. “And that is what is required from the point of view of nature restoration and climate as well.”  Cezary Tomczyk, a state secretary at Poland’s defense ministry, agreed. “Our objectives align,” he said. “For us, nature is an ally, and we want to use it.”  JUST … DON’T DRAIN THE SWAMP  Governments in the Baltics have shown little interest so far. Only Lithuania’s environment ministry said that defense-linked wetland restoration “is currently under discussion,” declining to offer further details.  Estonia’s defense ministry and Latvia’s armed forces said that new Baltic Defence Line plans to fortify the three countries’ borders would make use of natural obstacles including bogs, but did not involve peatland restoration.  Yet scientists see plenty of potential, given that peatlands cover 10 percent of the Baltics. And in many cases, the work would be straightforward, said Helm, the Estonian ecologist.  “We have a lot of wetlands that are drained but still there. If we now restore the water regime — we close the ditches that constantly drain them and make them emit carbon — then they are relatively easy to return to a more natural state,” she said.  Healthy peatlands serve as havens for wildlife: Frogs, snails, dragonflies and specialized plant species thrive in the austere conditions of bogs, while rare birds stop by to nest. They also act as barriers to droughts and wildfires, boosting Europe’s resilience to climate change.  The return of this flora and fauna takes time. But ending drainage not only puts a fast stop to pollution — it also instantly renders the terrain impassable. As long as the land isn’t completely drained, “it’s one or two years and you have the wetland full of water,” said Kotowski, the Polish ecologist. “Restoration is a difficult process from an ecological point of view, but for water retention, for stopping emissions and for difficulty to cross — so for defensive purposes — it’s pretty straightforward and fast.”  And at a time when Europe’s focus has shifted to security, with defense budgets surging and in some cases diverting money from the green transition, environmentalists hope that military involvement could unlock unprecedented funding and speed up nature restoration.  “At the moment, it takes five years to obtain approval for peatland rewetting, and sometimes it can take 10 years,” said Franziska Tanneberger, director of Germany’s Greifswald Mire Centre, a leading European peatlands research institute. “When it comes to military activities, there is a certain prioritization. You can’t wait 10 years if we need it for defense.”  THE TRACTOR FACTOR  But that doesn’t mean there’s no resistance to the idea.  A Russian tank seized inside of the woodland is examined by Ukrainian soldiers in Irpin, Ukraine on April 01, 2022. | Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images In Estonia, the environment ministry halted one peatland restoration effort earlier this year amid fierce opposition from locals who worried that rewetting would lead to flooding and forest destruction. Scientists described such concerns as unfounded.  The biggest threat to peatlands is agriculture — an awkward reality for EU governments desperate to avoid drawing the ire of farmers.  In both Finland and Poland, any initial defensive restoration projects are likely to focus on state-owned land, sidestepping this conflict for now. But scientists argue that if countries are serious about large-scale bog repair, they have to talk to farmers. “This will not work without involving agricultural lands,” said Kotowski, the Polish ecologist. A whopping 85 percent of the country’s peatlands are degraded, in most cases because they have been drained to plant crops where water once pooled.  “What we badly need is a program for farmers, to compensate them for rewetting these drained peatlands — and not only compensate, to let them earn money from it,” he added.   There are plants that can be harvested from restored peatlands, such as reeds for use in construction or packaging. Yet for now, the market for such crops in Europe is too small to incentivize farmers to switch.  The bogs-for-defense argument also doesn’t work for all countries. In Germany, where more than 90 percent of peatlands are drained, the Bundeswehr sounded reluctant when asked about the idea.  “The rewetting of wetlands can be both advantageous and disadvantageous for [NATO’s] own operations,” depending on the individual country, a spokesperson for the Bundeswehr’s infrastructure and environment office said.  NATO troops would need to move through Germany in the event of a Russian attack in the east, and bogs restrict military movements. Still, “the idea of increasing the obstacle value of terrain by causing flooding and swamping … has been used in warfare for a very long time and is still a viable option today,” the spokesperson said.  BOGGING DOWN PUTIN Scientists are quick to acknowledge that a bogs-for-security approach can’t solve everything.  “Of course we still need traditional defense. This isn’t meant to replace that,” said Tanneberger, who also advises a company that recently drew up a detailed proposal for defense-linked peatland restoration.  Bogs can’t stop drones or shoot down missiles, and war isn’t good for nature — or conservation efforts.  Soldiers of the “Bratstvo” (Brotherhood) battalion under the command of the 10th Mountain Assault Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine sit on the muzzle of a captured Russian tank stuck in a field on April 2, 2022 in Nova Basan Village, Chernihiv Oblast, Ukraine. | Andrii Kotliarchuk/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images And in Ukraine, the flooding of the Irpin basin was economically and ecologically destructive.  Among outside observers, there was initial excitement about the prospect of a new natural paradise. But villagers in the region lost their lands and homes, and the influx of water had a negative effect on local species that had no time to adapt to the sudden change.  “Yes, it stopped the invasion of Kyiv, and this was badly needed, so no criticism here. But it did result in environmental damage,” said Helm, the Estonian ecologist.  Unlike Ukraine, EU governments have the chance to restore peatlands with care, taking into account the needs of nature, farmers and armies.  “Perhaps it’s better to think ahead instead of being forced to act in a hurry,” she said. “We have this opportunity. Ukraine didn’t.”  Zia Weise reported from Brussels, Wojciech Kość from Warsaw and Veronika Melkozerova from Kyiv.