uk essays on climate change

Climate change has been referred to as the world’s largest externality, motivating research and policies that in recent years appear to have gained additional momentum. This thesis compiles five empirical essays on the economics of climate change. The first three chapters study the costs of climate change. The last two chapters examine policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. More specifically, the first two chapters identify causal effects of temperature variability to examine its possible costs under scenarios of future climate change. The third chapter studies the impacts of weather shocks in Europe paying particular attention to their heterogeneity by industry and average climate. The chapters apply novel strategies for causal identification and report evidence on new channels through which climate change affects society. The fourth chapter empirically studies the sequencing of mitigation policies by instrument type and the association between sequencing and the adoption of carbon pricing policies. The fifth chapter examines the international diffusion of carbon pricing policies and quantifies its contribution to global greenhouse gas emission reductions. Both chapters report novel evidence that speaks to current debates in research and policy about how to limit global warming.

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What are the potential impacts of climate change for the UK?

Temperatures in the UK have risen by about one degree since the 1970s and, given the levels of greenhouse gas already in the atmosphere, further warming is inevitable over the next three decades or so. The amount of warming will depend on future emissions but even if emissions are cut quickly and sharply to avoid dangerous levels of climate change, there will be some unavoidable impacts that the UK will have to adapt to.

The government’s latest climate change risk assessment identifies flood risk, and particularly flooding from heavy downpours , as one of the key climate threats for the UK, alongside stresses on water resources, threats to biodiversity and natural habitats, and the repercussions for the UK from climate change impacts abroad.

Computer models that simulate the climate suggest that, as a result of warming, extremely wet winters could become up to five times more likely over the next 100 years, with more intense downpours in the winter months driving a greater risk of flash floods and river flooding, alongside risks from sea-level rise . Extreme flood events such as those in the summer of 2007 could become more frequent and severe, putting homes, businesses and infrastructure at greater risk.

The government estimates that annual damages from flooding alone could increase to between £2bn and £12bn by the 2080s, an increase of about two to 10 times compared with current-day estimates. Critical infrastructure, including water-pumping stations, water treatment works, transport and electricity systems, and schools and hospitals sited in flood-risk areas could also be threatened, while heavy rainfall events could increase the risk of water contamination should sewers overflow. Current government estimates suggest about 330,000 properties are currently at risk of flooding, and climate change could increase this to between 630,000 and 1.2m by the 2080s.

Conversely, the models suggest that the UK could experience warmer, drier summers in the future. While that may bring some benefits, it could mean increased risk of drought, and extreme events such as the 2003 heat wave could be the norm by the end of this century. Heatwaves could also heighten pressure on healthcare services, because older populations are more vulnerable to extreme heat, and impact on transport, as higher summer temperatures bring the threat of rail buckling and associated travel delays.

The UK could also face threats to its water security and supply . Declining summer river flows, reduced groundwater replenishment and increased evaporation could all contribute to water loss, which could result in water shortages and restrictions on usage. The government estimates that 27-59 million people could be living in areas affected by water supply deficits by the 2050s, even before considering increasing populations and rising water demand.

Ecosystems are also highly vulnerable to climate change, which can aggravate existing stress factors such as pollution, land conversion and invasive non-native species. While some species could benefit from climate change, far more are set to lose out, according to the latest government estimates .

The UK may see changing patterns of wildlife and plants as species try to adapt by moving northwards, or have to compete with new non-native species. Habitats may come under increasing pressure – from salt marsh threatened by sea-level rise to beech woodland susceptible to summer droughts. Species could also experience reduced food supply if earlier breeding periods are at odds with the food available at the time.

None of the model predictions are certain. There is a lot that science does not yet know, and wider social and economic trends will also affect the UK’s vulnerability to the effects of climate change. These range from an ageing population – with greater vulnerability to extreme heat – to population growth and increasing household and industry demand for water, which is expected to be 5% higher by 2020 compared with today . With 13% of new homes built since 2000 constructed on floodplains (that’s about 10,000–16,000 new homes a year), planning decisions are another factor that can worsen the UK’s existing vulnerabilities.

Recent reports by the UK Government Foresight programme and PWC suggest that the impacts of climate change outside the UK could have a larger effect on the British economy than the impacts felt within the country. If, for example, climate impacts led to international instability or reductions in the supply raw materials or commodities, the UK could experience effects ranging from increased food price volatility (if crop patterns change globally) to changing migration patterns as environmental refugees move from areas affected by extreme weather events.

Nevertheless, the UK could see some gains from climate change. While summer deaths could increase given the predicted increase in hot days and heatwaves, the country could see a fall in the number of cold-related deaths – estimated to be in the region of 3,900 to 24,000 premature cold deaths avoided each year by 2050 . Providing water is available in sufficient supply, the UK could also see new crop types, or increased yields of crops such as wheat or sugar beet. For some areas of the UK, climate change could also offer wider opportunities for tourism . And for wildlife warmer temperatures could increase survival rates for offspring born in winter.

As with climate predictions, there are still many uncertainties over the extent and distribution of climate impacts. Model predictions are based on a number of assumptions about factors ranging from future rates of warming and economic growth to the technological and social achievability of different levels of emissions cuts. Regional impacts are particularly difficult to predict, though some work has been done to map the risks in different areas of the UK. For example, see this map (p329).

Climate policy to cut global greenhouse gas emissions could have a tangible effect on future climate impacts, not only offering governments a way to avoid the most extreme impacts, but also providing them with more time to prepare and adapt to those that are unavoidable.

This article was written by Naomi Hicks and Nicola Ranger and is a reproduction of the following article “ What are the potential impacts of climate change for the UK ?” ©, 2013, The Guardian, used under a Creative Commons No Derivative Works licence .

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The Unesco World Heritage sites most at risk from climate change – and four are in the UK

Forth bridge and st kilda are among the uk heritage sites that are most at risk of being impacted by climate change, article bookmarked.

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Four Unesco World Heritage sites in the UK are among those at the most risk of climate change devastation, a study has found.

World Heritage sites gain their status for being an outstanding value to humanity and showcase some of the world’s cultural legacy, rich history and natural wonders. Unesco bestows these places with the title to encourage their protection and preservation while incentivising people to recognise their importance.

New data suggests that coastal flooding, droughts, landslides and storm surges are some of the top factors that are putting heritage sites at risk.

In an analysis by Climate X, a global climate risk data analysis organisation, their experts found that four out of 35 of the UK’s Unesco Heritage Sites are among the top 50 sites in the world that will be at risk by 2050.

Using Climate X’s ‘Spectra’ platform algorithm to determine how climate change will affect 500 natural and man-made heritage sites, the analysts discovered how the sites would fare in eight global warming scenarios.

They found that the most at risk in the UK , taking third place on the worldwide list, is the Forth Bridge in Edinburgh, Scotland , a structure representing an important milestone in bridge design and construction in the Victorian period.

However, the railway bridge is exposed to a coastal flood risk that could impact the preservation of the marvelled structure.

Volcanic archipelago St Kilda, also in Scotland, featuring at number six on the world scale, is also predicted to be at risk of climate change. Coastal flooding could impact its high cliffs, where colonies of endangered species of birds, such as puffins and gannets, nest.

The third Scottish heritage site to appear on the list is New Lanark, a small 18th-century village in which utopian idealist Robert Owen created a model industrial community.

However, analysts say that this idyllic village, appearing in seventh place in the top 50, is at risk of landslides caused by climate change.

The final UK heritage site to appear is Yorkshire’s Studley Royal Park, featuring at 27th place, as being at risk of storm activity impacting its preservation.

The park includes the 12th-century Ruins of Fountains Abbey and other buildings from various periods of British history, all placed among an what the UN-body describes as an “exceptionally beautiful” landscape designed in the 18th century.

There were many other wel-known heritage sites that made a list, such as Australia ’s Sydney Opera House (at risk of coastal flooding), the USA ’s Olympic National Park in Washington, predicted to be impacted by flooding and landslides, and the West Norwegian Fjords in Norway , at risk of coastal flooding.

Taking the top spot at the most at-risk Unesco World Heritage sites is the Sansa Buddhist Mountain Monasteries in South Korea , sacred temples that were established between the 7th and 9th centuries but also structures that analysis believe could be at risk of river and surfacing flooding.

Lukky Ahmed, the CEO and co-founder of Climate X, said that their findings should be a warning to governments and global organisations to recognise the impact climate change also has on our cultural heritage worldwide.

“The potential impact of climate change on these sites is profound. But it’s not just our past heritage that’s at risk – it’s our present, too,” he said.

“While the loss of these cultural treasures – many of which have endured for millennia – would, of course, be devastating, it’s also vital to remember the real societal and economic impact of climate change is happening in the here and now.”

“Our findings serve as a stark warning for governments, preservationists, and the global community to prioritise the safeguarding of our planet – to preserve our ancient monuments and our current assets and infrastructure – and to protect life today and into the future.”

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Effectiveness of 1,500 global climate policies ranked for first time

The world can take a major step to meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Accord by focusing on 63 cases where climate policies have had the most impact, new research has revealed. The findings have been published today in Science .

Our results inform contentious policy debates in three main ways. First, we show evidence for the effectiveness of policy mixes. Second our findings highlight that successful policy mixes vary across sectors and that policy-makers should focus on sector-specific best practices. Third our results stress that effective policies vary with economic development. Study co-author Dr Moritz Schwarz , an Associate at the Climate Econometrics Programme at the University of Oxford

The study, led by Climate Econometricians at the University of Oxford, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), and the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC), analysed 1,500 observed policies documented in a novel, high quality, OECD climate policy database for effectiveness. It is the first time a global dataset of policies has been compared and ranked in this way.

Using a methodology developed by Climate Econometrics at The Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School (INET Oxford), the researchers measured ‘emission breaks’ that followed policy interventions. The break detection methodology, called indicator saturation estimation, developed at Climate Econometrics, allows break indicators for all possible dates to be examined objectively using a variant of machine learning.

The results were sobering: Across four sectors, 41 countries, two decades and 1,500 policies, only 63 successful policy interventions with large effects were identified, which reduced total emissions between 0.6 and 1.8 Gt CO2.

However, the authors say the good news is that policymakers can learn from the 63 effective cases where climate policies had led to meaningful reductions to get back on track.

The researchers have made the data available to policy-makers across the world, and have produced a sector by sector, country by country data visualisation in a dashboard .

Overall, the Team concluded:

• Climate policies are more effective as part of a mix:  In most cases, effect sizes of climate policies are larger if a policy instrument is part of a policy mix rather than implemented alone –for example combining carbon pricing with a subsidy.
• Developed and developing countries have different climate policy needs:  In developed countries, carbon pricing stands out as an effective policy, whereas in developing countries, regulation is the most powerful policy.
• The Paris emissions gap can be closed:  Focusing on the 63 cases of effective climate policies would close the current emissions gap to meet the Paris Targets by 26% -41%, a significant contribution.

Scaling up good practice policies identified in this study to other sectors and other parts of the world can in the short term be a powerful climate mitigation strategy…The dashboard that we make available to policy-makers provides an accessible platform to conduct country-by-country, sector-by-sector comparisons and to find a suitable policy mix for different situations. Study co-author Professor Felix Pretis , Co-Director of the Climate Econometrics Programme at Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Study co-author Ebba Mark , researcher at the Calleva Project at INET Oxford, said the world needed to get back on track to meeting the Paris Climate Accord targets. ‘Meeting the Paris Climate objectives necessitates decisive policy action and this research shows the way. Data from the UN estimates that there remains a median emissions gap of 23 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030 . The persistence of this emissions gap is caused not only by an ambition gap but also a gap in the outcomes that adopted policies achieve in terms of emissions reductions.’

What works: Examples from the UK and USA

The country by country analysis showed that the UK has made very successful progress in the electricity sector, with two adjacent breaks detected following the mid-2013 introduction of a carbon price floor that imposed a minimum price for UK power producers. However, the study did not find in other UK sectors any major emission reductions following a policy intervention beyond what would be expected based on long-term economic and population dynamics.

The US has managed to reduce carbon emissions in the transport sector following actions taken in the aftermath of the financial crisis. While successful policy implementation in the transport sector is generally difficult and hence can be viewed as a positive example for the climate policy globally, the lack of any further climate policy successes in other sectors points to huge remaining challenges in the power sector or industry.

Dr Anupama Sen ,  Head of Policy Engagement at the Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment said: ' In more than 80%  of investments the total lifetime cost of a clean technology is considerably lower than that of a fossil technology. While the new UK government’s policies are moving in the right direction, they need to go further and faster to unlock these lower costs. New Oxford research now provides evidence that an optimal mix of policies can achieve this, and rapidly lower a country’s emissions.'

Further analysis can be found in INET Oxford’s accompanying Insight brief .

The study ‘Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades’ has been published in Science .

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Article Contents

1. introduction, 2. the climate change corpus, 3. methodology, 5. discussion of findings, 6. reflections on the ufa technique, 7. conclusions.

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Climate change in the UK press: Examining discourse fluctuation over time

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Mathew Gillings, Carmen Dayrell, Climate change in the UK press: Examining discourse fluctuation over time, Applied Linguistics , Volume 45, Issue 1, February 2024, Pages 111–133, https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amad007

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This article examines the discourses around climate change in the UK press from 2003 to 2019. Our main goal is to investigate how the media discourse developed during a period of significant world events, whilst also exploring the change in the UK public’s perception of the problem. We combine the novel technique of Usage Fluctuation Analysis (UFA, McEnery et al. 2019 ) with corpus-assisted discourse analysis to track the fluctuation in the usage of the phrases climate change and global warming over this 17-year period. Thus, in addition to offering a methodological contribution by applying UFA to a relatively small specialized diachronic corpus, this article offers new insights on how the discourse evolved. Results indicate that the tabloids and broadsheets offer a surprisingly similar image of climate change discourse, both showing two major discoursal shifts. From an overall prevalence of articles advocating for the climate change cause, the discourse incorporated voices of climate sceptics from 2008 onwards, moving on to increased coverage and awareness of the problem in recent years when the public started to engage in it more heavily.

Despite the broad scientific consensus on the dangers of climate change, societies worldwide still differ in their level of climate change concern (see PEW 2013 , 2015 , 2020 ); communication around the issue is difficult, and effective timely responses remain a challenge. Understanding public perception of climate change can help policymakers, government and scientists engage with public discourse in ways that can foster informed dialogues, increase awareness of the problem, prompt action, and open up the possibility of changing social practices and behaviour. As Urry (2011 : 155–168) argues, climate change is not only a scientific problem but also a socially constructed environmental hazard; tackling the climate crisis thus requires bringing about a wholesale shift in the interlocking systems that have been embedded into practices of everyday life during the course of the 20th century.

This study focuses on the study of discourse —that is ‘a particular way of constructing a particular (domain of) social practice’ ( Fairclough 1995 : 76). Discourse not only reflects or represents social entities and relations but also contributes to the construction of social relationships between people, as well as to the construction of systems of knowledge and belief ( Fairclough 1992 : 62–100; Wodak 1996 , 2004 ). The social context impacts and manifests in discourse, whilst discourse reflects or contests the social context; it is a two-way relationship, analysed with respect to its social function ( Mautner 2016 ). As discourses are constructed in society principally through language, by looking into the ways that language is used to construct discourses, we can gain a better understanding of how people use language to represent reality ( Baker 2006 : 13).

This article explores one type of discourse that is believed to influence the ways in which the public perceives and responds to climate change: the news media ( Castells 2009 : 316; Boykoff 2013 ; Tang 2022 ). Focusing on the UK press specifically, we investigate how the discourses around climate change developed between 2003 and 2019. Although journalism is changing rapidly with the emergence of other sources of information, such as online outlets and social media ( Boykoff et al. 2015 ; Schäfer and Painter 2021 ), traditional media coverage is still perceived as more trustworthy ( Karlsen and Aalberg 2023 ). As Schäfer and Painter (2021 : 2) observe, ‘news media are crucially important for how individuals, organizations and societies understand climate change and how they evaluate and act upon it’. Baker et al. (2013) go one step further by arguing that newspapers and readers influence each other (after all, newspapers must appeal to audiences to survive, yet their wide readerships mean they are in a powerful position to influence).

Several studies have examined the coverage of climate change in the UK press, but none covering the time period following the Paris Agreement in 2015. On the whole, past studies have been carried out through qualitative analyses of data, thus restricting the scale of the analysis (e.g., Carvalho and Burgess 2005 ; Boykoff 2008 ; Gavin et al. 2011 ; Ruiu 2021a , 2021b ). While acknowledging the crucial role of the mass news media in bringing climate change to public attention, these studies concluded that the press tended to present a ‘balanced’ view of the issue, giving disproportionate visibility to sceptical voices and not portraying the widespread scientific consensus about the problem. Ruiu’s ( 2021a , 2021b ) work is particularly interesting for our purposes as she examines the development of climate change narratives across time (1988–2016). Ruiu (2021a) demonstrates that climate change scepticism was present across the entire period under analysis, but more prominently in right-leaning newspapers. Focusing specifically on descriptions of the impact of climate change, Ruiu (2021b) finds that alarming and uncertain descriptions decreased over time; she adds that this narrative was more prominent in centre-left newspapers whereas the right-leaning newspapers tended to adopt a mockery tone, thus discrediting the scientific consensus around the issue.

Comparative work of media coverage in Britain and elsewhere reiterates the high level of sceptical voices in UK newspapers ( Grundmann and Krishnamurthy 2010 ; Painter 2011 ; Nerlich et al. 2012 ; Painter and Ashe 2012 ; Schmidt et al. 2013 ; Grundmann and Scott 2012 ; Brüggemann and Engesser 2017 ). Like Ruiu’s ( 2021a , 2021b ) work, these studies also unveiled the close association of the discourse around climate change with the political stance of newspapers. For instance, Painter and Ashe specifically note the ‘strong correspondence between the political leaning of a newspaper and its willingness of quote or use uncontested sceptical voices’ (2012: 6–7). While corroborating with the findings of previous studies, Brüggemann and Engesser (2017) challenge the norm of balance as the prime explanation for the salience of climate scepticism in media coverage. Focusing on articles published between 2011 and 2012 across the UK, US, Germany, India, and Switzerland, they argue that balanced coverage ‘has been replaced by an active contextualization and evaluation of contrarian voices’, usually paired with the dismissal of their stance on climate change ( Brüggemann and Engesser 2017 : 65).

The work of Grundmann and Krishnamurthy (2010) and Grundmann and Scott (2012) operate in a similar vein to ours. Using corpus linguistics methods, they explore the discourses around climate change in the news media across the UK, France, Germany, and the USA, between 2000 and 2010. They found that the US press was very much dominated by a scientific frame, while the UK, France, and Germany preferred political frames ( Grundmann and Krishnamurthy 2010 ). All four countries also showed a preference for climate advocates over sceptics, but there was a higher presence of the latter in the USA and France compared to Germany and the UK ( Grundmann and Scott 2012 ).

For the period after 2015, there has been research on other written text types. Of interest are Willis’ (2017) analysis of UK politicians’ views on climate change and Jaworska’s (2018) work on corporate social responsibility reporting in the oil industry. Using corpus techniques, they examine whether particular discoursal strategies are employed to (de)legitimize events and actors, and potentially encourage climate scepticism. These studies reveal what we might term ‘discursive smoothing’. That is, social actors downplay the effects of climate change in an attempt to avoid placing blame, avoid so-called scaremongering, and as a result they are able to ‘groom’ public perception ( Jaworska 2018 ). In linguistic terms, this discursive smoothing could be achieved, for example, by avoiding potentially inflammatory language and employing vagueness strategies to maintain the status quo.

The present study adds to the existing literature by investigating how the discourse around climate change in the UK press evolved across time. In addition to covering a longer period of time (2003–2019) than that of previous studies, our analysis seeks to capture shifts in the discourse and, if any shift happened, when it occurred and what caused it. Due to the constraints of space, this article focuses on the analysis of the terms climate change and global warming , treating broadsheets and tabloids independently.

The importance of examining the discourses around climate change in the UK press after 2015 is not to be underestimated. One reason is the ratification of the Paris Agreement in 2015, which marked a major political milestone in climate change negotiations. For the first time, there was a binding agreement bringing nations into a common goal to limit global warming to below 2°C, and preferably 1.5°C (compared to pre-industrial levels). A second reason for examining climate change discourse after 2015 is that survey evidence shows a significant increase in the level of climate change concern in the UK in recent years. The share who sees climate change as a major threat jumped from 48 per cent of respondents in 2013 to 71 per cent in 2020 ( PEW 2020 ). By contrast, survey evidence before 2013—the period covered by most studies mentioned above—shows that climate change scepticism proliferated in the UK in the mid-2000s, when concern over risks and threats posed by climate change showed a considerable decline ( Spence et al. 2010 ; Boykoff 2013 ; Poortinga et al. 2014 ; Capstick et al. 2015 ; Boykoff and Farrell 2019 ). This is interesting because it suggests a shift in the public perception of climate change in recent years.

This study also offers a methodological contribution by combining corpus-assisted discourse analysis ( Baker 2006 ; Gillings et al. 2023 ) with the novel technique of Usage Fluctuation Analysis (UFA, Baker et al. 2017 ; Brezina 2018 ; McEnery et al. 2019 , 2021 ). The UFA technique allows us to identify statistically meaningful shifts in word usage over a period of time by tracking the fluctuation of word usage manifested through collocation (see Section 3 for details). Despite its extraordinary potential, UFA has not yet been widely applied by corpus researchers ( Baker et al. 2017 ; Brezina, 2018 ; McEnery et al. 2019 , 2021 ). Whilst its creators suggest that it ‘could be used to explore brachychrony’ 1 ( McEnery et al. 2019 : 413), past work utilizing UFA is on corpora stretching at least 70 years. We are interested to see whether similarly interesting results would be picked up in a smaller specialized diachronic corpus—in our case, stretching 17 years.

The present article is structured as follows. We begin in Section 2 by introducing our specialized Climate Change Corpus. In Section 3, we introduce UFA, whilst in Section 4 we present the results from the analysis. In Section 5 we summarize our findings and compare similarities and differences between broadsheets and tabloids. In Section 6 we offer some reflections on the UFA technique, before presenting some concluding thoughts in Section 7.

A specialized corpus was constructed for the purpose of this analysis, allowing us to diachronically explore the discourse of climate change. Thus, the Climate Change Corpus consists of two distinct subcorpora: the tabloid subcorpus consists of 23,869 texts (11,992,644 words) and the broadsheet subcorpus consists of 101,248 texts (77,587,313 words). We analyse broadsheets and tabloids independently because given their difference in size (both in terms of the number of texts and the number of words), results from the broadsheet dataset have the potential to overshadow those from the tabloids.

Tables 1 and 2 show the range of newspaper titles comprising each subcorpus, indicating the overall number of articles and words from each, and ranked by the number of texts. As can be seen, the corpora include major national and Scottish titles in their weekday and Sunday editions.

Composition of the tabloid subcorpus.

Composition of the broadsheet subcorpus.

Articles were published between 01.01.2003 and 31.12.2019. The texts were collected from news aggregator services 2 , limiting the collection to the printed version of the articles and discarding online versions to avoid duplicates. The collection of individual texts proceeded on the basis of a set of query words and phrases that were established by applying Gabrielatos’ (2007) method. This method helps to identify words/phrases that would return articles relevant to our analysis, even though the terms climate change or global warming themselves may not be used in them. The following query words/terms were used:

climate change, global warming, carbon trading, carbon emissions, carbon cuts, carbon reduction, greenhouse gas, greenhouse gas(s)es, greenhouse initiative

We purposely kept the same query terms stable throughout the whole period. This is important to note given that various other terms emerged in the later period, for example, climate emergency/crisis/breakdown and global heating . Whilst our decision not to include those terms may affect the patterns that emerged in the later period, a decision to include them could risk skewing the data by adapting to the terminological preferences of individual newspapers. For example, we are aware that The Guardian updated its style guide in early 2019 to advocate for the use of these new terms over climate change and global warming , respectively. 3

All texts were retrieved in full, irrespective of their length or the extent to which they discussed climate change. This means that the corpus includes a wide variety of text genres (news reports, articles, and editorials). For national newspapers specifically, we selected the national editions only, thus excluding the Irish, Scottish, and Northern Ireland editions of the newspaper. Duplicates were removed by means of the WordSmith Tools version 7 ( Scott 2016 ), using the ‘Content Duplicate’ utility function. Texts were considered a duplicate if they were published by the same newspaper title with no more than 10 per cent difference in size (both types and tokens). As a result, we are confident that our corpus includes a sound range of news articles, within the specified time frame, that discusses the topic of climate change in some way.

This study uses UFA as the starting point for the analysis. UFA aims to ‘automatically identify places where [word] usage change occurs which may deserve the attention of an analyst’ ( McEnery et al. 2019 : 418). More specifically, it allows us to identify changes in a word’s collocates which deserve further investigation through qualitative means. Such changes, McEnery et al. (2019) observe, can reflect shifts in meaning, grammatical use, discourse or pragmatics. The method thus proves especially useful for the purposes of this study, given that marked changes to those collocates can indicate where a potential change in discourse takes place. In the remainder of this section, we discuss how UFA was applied to fulfil the specific purposes of this study. Readers interested in a fuller description of the method and the underlying tool 4 behind it should refer to McEnery et al. (2019) , along with Baker et al. (2017) , Brezina (2018) , and McEnery et al. (2021) .

The UFA technique uses a sliding window which moves through the time-series data within which collocates are identified, and then performs a recursive estimation between each comparison point—essentially comparing the collocates of one sliding window to the next in a chronological fashion. A matrix is then used to determine both the presence and absence of each collocate across all sampling points, and an agreement statistic (AC1) is applied to calculate the difference in collocates from one point to the next. The AC1 scale runs from 0 to 1: the closer to 1, the more similar the collocates. A GAM regression model is then applied to indicate the statistically significant points at which fluctuation takes place (i.e., where the collocates agree and disagree).

To apply UFA, the first step was to generate the collocates for the phrases climate change and global warming in the tabloid and broadsheet newspapers separately. The calculation was done by means of the software package #LancsBox ( Brezina et al. 2015 ) using 18-month sliding windows but moving through the subcorpora every 6 months. Thus, each window contains the collocates of the phrases in an 18-month period, with a 12-month overlapping window between two consecutive sampling points (January 2003 to June 2004, July 2003 to December 2004, all the way to July 2018 to December 2019). As newspaper coverage on climate change tends to rise around key events rather than calendar months, an overlapping window was used in order to reduce the effect of using discrete time periods. This totals 34 sets of collocates in each subcorpus and 32 comparison points.

Collocates were calculated on the basis of the following parameters:

a span of five words to the left and five words to the right;

a Mutual Information (MI— Church and Hanks 1990 ) score of 6, to minimize the effect of frequency and thus avoid a proliferation of function words;

and a relative collocation frequency cut-off point of five instances. This was automatically calculated by the tool in relation to the lowest frequency of each term within a given window. For example, the lowest frequency of climate change in the tabloid subcorpus is 226 occurrences for the window between January 2003 and June 2004. This means that the threshold of five instances was adopted for this discrete time period and is used as the benchmark for the calculation of the frequency threshold for the remaining time periods. For instance, between July 2003 and December 2004, climate change appears 477 times in the tabloid subcorpus and the minimum collocation frequency was thus 11.

After calculating the collocates, attention turns to the UFA tool. For running UFA, we defined our latency threshold as three and our consistency threshold as 70 per cent of 34 sampling points. These parameters are used by the UFA tool to categorize collocates as ‘consistent’ (for a period of time), ‘initiating’ (become consistent during the 17 years under analysis), ‘terminating’ (fell out of use), or ‘transient’ (only appear for a short period of time). What these thresholds mean in practice is that we considered a collocate to be consistent if it appeared in at least 24 sampling points (not necessarily consecutive), and we considered a collocate to lapse into latency if it disappeared for three consecutive sampling points. These thresholds, therefore, only affect UFA’s categorization output, rather than the collocation input.

To interpret the UFA results, we first examined the AC1 scores so that we could determine the turning points (either a dip or a rise) in the graph, if any. As McEnery et al. (2019 : 429) write: ‘A down slope marks a period of time during which sliding windows compared in sequence are increasingly divergent. An upward slope marks a period of time during which sliding windows compared in sequence are increasingly convergent.’ UFA thus allowed us to identify either a change or consistent stability in collocates over a given period of time, which pointed us towards collocates that deserved further investigation through qualitative analysis. This means that we returned to the corpus itself, using the software package #LancsBox, and explored the surrounding co-text of those collocations (termed ‘concordance lines’ within corpus linguistics), going back and forth in the text as deemed necessary to aid our understanding of the data. Specifically, this was a bottom-up process where information gleaned from the concordance lines informed our interpretation (Gillings and Mautner Forthcoming ). We first focused on consistent collocations to identify discourse patterns cutting across the entire period. The transient collocates then helped us to explain the fluctuation indicated by the UFA technique.

This section combines the results of our UFA and corpus-assisted discourse analyses. Each sub-section starts from an exploration of the UFA output, presenting the fluctuation in the collocates of the term under analysis across time (see Figures 1 – 4 ). The black dots on each graph indicate a comparison point, the x-axis shows the time periods, and the y-axis displays the agreement statistic (AC1). Note that the scale changes from one graph to another. The lists of collocates generated through the UFA technique are shown in the Supplementary Material .

Fluctuation of climate change collocates within the tabloid subcorpus.

Fluctuation of global warming collocates within the tabloid subcorpus.

Fluctuation of climate change collocates within the broadsheet subcorpus.

Fluctuation of global warming collocates within the broadsheet subcorpus.

4.1 Climate change in the tabloid subcorpus

Figure 1 demonstrates the fluctuation in the collocates of climate change in the tabloid subcorpus, considering 53 collocates in total ( Table A1 , Supplementary Material ) and their distribution across the 32 comparison points. We can see in Figure 1 that the collocations of climate change are remarkably consistent in the tabloid reporting, indicating that there was no drastic shift in the term’s usage. For all but the very first comparison point, AC1 was at least 0.8, reaching nearly 100 per cent agreement in the mid-2000s (between January 2004 and December 2007) and again from the mid- to late 2010s (between January 2015 and December 2019).

The first comparison point (between (i) January 2003 and June 2004 and (ii) July 2003 and December 2004) seems to be an outlier, showing the lowest AC1 (around 0.5), suggesting a certain level of disagreement between the collocates. A close examination of these collocates indicates that this disagreement relates to the way that the tool calculates the minimum relative frequency of collocation: the first sampling point provided the smallest amount of evidence (226 instances of climate change ) and it was thus used as the benchmark for calculating the collocation frequency threshold (in this case, a minimum collocation frequency of 5). The term climate change occurred 477 times in the second sampling point, and thus the cut-off point rose to 11 occurrences. Several collocates that coincided with those in the first sampling point were discarded for being below the threshold. We will come back to this point later (Section 6) when we discuss the implications of the thresholds for the analysis.

Although the UFA technique did not indicate drastic changes in the collocates of climate change in the tabloids, only one collocate ( tackle ) was deemed consistent (see Table A1 ). It collocated with climate change in all but the sampling points between 2010 and 2013. Climate change also collocated with tackling , fight, and combat in the earlier years (January 2003 to December 2009). Combined, these collocations indicate that references to the need to address the problem, particularly through the use of these metaphors, were prominent between 2003 and 2009, but lost ground in the years between 2010 and 2013, and only starting to regain force from 2014 onwards.

Between 2003 and 2008, the tabloid reporting frequently framed climate change as a serious threat to the planet (cf. threat ), highlighting the harmful impacts of climate change on the Earth’s system (cf. impacts ). There were also mentions of actions to address the impacts of climate change (cf. action ), although some instances related to the lack of necessary action.

The marked down slope in Figure 1 indicates that agreement in the collocates of climate change started to decline in the first half of 2007. This relates to mentions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5 and the release of the 4th Assessment Report (cf. panel and intergovernmental ). The IPCC’s predictions and warnings continued to be mentioned in the following years, which explains the plateau in the middle of the graph. There were also mentions of the United Nations Climate summits (cf. summit , conference, UN, Copenhagen, and Paris ) which aimed to reach a global agreement to set targets to curb greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (cf. targets ).

References to the UK specifically emerged around 2007 and remained until 2019. The tabloids frequently mentioned the 2008 Climate Change Act (cf. bill and act )—the UK’s legally binding commitment to cut its GHG emissions 6 —the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (cf. department, committee, and energy ), and those who represented the UK in international climate negotiations in 2009 and 2010 (cf. secretary , shadow , Ed, Miliband, Chris, and, Huhne ).

Agreement among collocates started to rise again from 2015 onwards, with the reporting of discussions around the Paris Agreement 7 (cf. agreement ). The tabloids highlighted the commitments made by the various signatory countries and also the USA withdrawing from the agreement in mid-2017. It is interesting to note the resurgence of the collocate action in the second half of 2016, unveiling frequent mentions of the need to take action on climate change. The collocate protesters in 2019 relate to mentions of protests in London. While carrying a negative tone (by linking protests with disruption in traffic and at Heathrow Airport, and arrests), this suggests an increase in public engagement with the climate cause, which had not been clearly explicit until that point in time.

4.2 Global warming in the tabloid subcorpus

Figure 2 shows the fluctuation in 74 collocates of global warming across the 32 comparison points in the tabloid subcorpus ( Table A2 ). Unlike in Figure 1 where we found a degree of stability, Figure 2 presents relatively more instability with regards to the collocates of global warming . The UFA graph indicates three distinct periods where there is the possibility for discoursal shifts: (i) the earlier years (2003–2009) when there was a high degree of similarity across the collocates (all with an AC1 above 0.9, excluding the very first data point which was 0.8); (ii) the middle, from 2010 to 2015 (AC1 between 0.7 and 0.8); and (iii) a high degree of fluctuation between 2016 and 2019 (AC1 between 0.6 and 0.7).

The consistent collocates of global warming in the tabloid corpus ( Table A2 ) relate mainly to the causes and effects of climate change (cf. blamed, cause, caused, and effects ). The tabloid reporting frequently mentioned that increased GHG emissions are causing global warming (cf. due , blame ) and posing a threat to the planet (cf. threat ), hence actions are needed to tackle the problem (cf. tackle, fight, and combat ). Following the tendency already seen through the collocates of climate change (see Section 4.1), this line of discourse prevailed across the entire period under analysis but received greater emphasis in the initial years (2003–2009).

Reference to scientific evidence became increasingly more frequent from 2007 onwards (cf. scientists, evidence, experts, science, study, and theory ). In fact, these collocates pointed towards two contradictory views which operated simultaneously in the tabloid reporting all the way until the end of 2019. Whilst some instances referred to the scientists’ predictions and warnings about the dangers of global warming, others uncovered the voice of climate change sceptics, either questioning whether global warming was caused by human activities or claiming that there was a pause or slowdown in global warming in the early 21st century.

The downslope starting around 2010 is explained by the recurrent mentions of claims made by the think-tank Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF, cf. policy and foundation ) and its director (cf. Benny, Peiser ). The GWPF advocated that man-made climate change had been exaggerated (cf. exaggerated ) and threw fierce criticisms on the UK government’s climate policies. In fact, reference to climate change scepticism appeared in various sampling points between 2010 and 2018 (cf. sceptical and sceptic(s) ), and was most salient between 2016 and 2017 when Donald Trump called global warming a hoax and started to scrap Barack Obama’s policies to curb emissions.

The emergence of the collocate 2c in the second half of 2015 marks the beginning of the final downslope in the graph. It relates to the reporting on efforts to reach an international agreement to curb carbon emissions (cf. dioxide ) and keep global warming below the critical 2°c increase, given the melting of polar ice fields (cf. ice ) and rise of sea levels (cf. rising ). Note that 1.5c emerged as a collocate around 2017, when 2c was no longer a collocate, which may be an indication that by that time the discussion revolved around a lower threshold for the planet’s tipping point. However, mentions of temperature need to be interpreted with caution. We cannot ignore that different newspapers may have different writing styles and norms for reporting it (e.g., 1.5c, 1.5 C, 1.5 Celsius , etc.), each treated by the corpus analysis program as an independent lexical item. An accurate picture of the collocational behaviour of these different forms would require standardization of items, which goes beyond the purposes of this study.

4.3 Climate change in the broadsheet subcorpus

We turn now to the broadsheet subcorpus. Figure 3 presents the fluctuation in the 160 collocates identified for climate change in the broadsheet subcorpus ( Table A3 ). It is immediately clear that the shape of the graph is highly similar to that in Figure 1 ; there is no drastic fluctuation from one sampling point to another, with AC1 remaining between 0.8 and 0.9, except for the first comparison point.

Like the tabloids, broadsheet newspapers frequently mentioned that climate change poses a serious threat to the planet (cf. threat and posed ) and hence it needs to be tackled (cf. tackling, tackle, combat, combating, fight, and addressing ) to avert the looming effects of climate change on the Earth’s system (cf. catastrophic , effects, and impacts ). It is interesting to note that these collocates, as well as mentions of the IPCC, occurred across most, if not all, sampling points. Combined, these collocates serve as a clear indication that much of the discussion in the broadsheet reporting revolved around the IPCC’s approach to the problem.

Between 2003 and 2005, the broadsheet reporting focused on the scientific consensus (cf. consensus , Tyndall [Centre for Climate Change Research]) around the immediacy of the problem (cf. happening, priority, rapid, and urgency ), highlighting its causes and consequences (cf. contribution and risks ) and the need to reach a global agreement to effectively address the problem (cf. action ). Particular attention was paid to the terms and conditions in the Kyoto Protocol 8 (cf. Kyoto , protocol , agreement, and treaty ), which was expected to enter into force in February 2005.

From 2005 onwards, we start to see an increasing number of collocates related to international climate negotiations. Mentions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 9 (cf. convention , UN , and framework ) remained salient until 2016, coinciding with the reporting on the various UN Climate Change Conferences held during the same period (cf. conference, summit and the various geographic places where they took place—for example, Doha, Copenhagen, Paris ). Between 2006 and 2009, we find frequent references to Stern’s report on the economic costs of climate change (cf. Stern and economics ) 10 coinciding with mentions of campaigns to raise awareness of the gravity of the problem (cf. awareness ) and alerts on the need to prevent runaway climate change. Interestingly, while discussions around adaptation measures became more frequent from 2006 onwards and remained prominent until 2019 (cf. adapt and adaptation ), mitigation measures did not receive as much attention; mitigate emerged as a collocate briefly around 2008 and again around 2011, becoming more regular only from 2015 onwards. This suggests that discussions around mitigation measures only gained force in the later period, after the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Like the tabloids, broadsheet newspapers also reported on the UK’s plans and commitments to reduce GHG emissions. In the initial years (2003–2007), there were frequent mentions of the diverging views on the climate change levy (cf. levy ), introduced in the UK in 2001 to encourage businesses to be more energy efficient. While some proposed it to be frozen, others argued that rates should be higher; there were also those who either opposed it or wanted it to be replaced by more effective taxes. The collocate levy appeared again in 2012, when the debate revolved around exempting some selected businesses from the tax, reaching its climax in 2015 with the controversy around the removal of the levy exemption on renewable energy. From 2006 onwards, we find frequent mentions of the Climate Change Act (cf. bill , act ), the Department of Energy and Climate Change (cf. department, DECC, energy ) and its secretaries and ministers (cf. secretary , Miliband, Davey, Huhne, Barker, Stevenson, Wheelhouse, and Amber ), the Climate Change Committee (cf. committee , CCC, and commons ), and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change (cf. Grantham ). These collocates uncovered mentions of the UK’s participation in international climate negotiations and the country’s commitments, especially in relation to the EU’s binding targets for renewable energy and climate change (cf. commitments and targets ).

Although not as pronounced as we saw in the tabloids, climate change scepticism received attention in the broadsheets from around 2009 onwards (cf. denier(s), sceptic(s), denial, deny, sceptical, and hoax ). What is perhaps more interesting is that towards 2015, mentions of the role of the oil industry behind climate change denial became increasingly more evident, alongside fierce criticisms by activists of global leaders’ denial of the problem. References to climate change denial from 2017 onwards were pushed by the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States and his sceptical approach to climate change, resulting in the reversal of climate policies and the withdrawal of the country from international treaties.

4.4 Global warming in the broadsheet subcorpus

Figure 4 presents the fluctuation in the 175 collocates of global warming in the broadsheet subcorpus ( Table A4 ). Here, the collocational shifts were more gradual than those we saw in the tabloids (cf. Figure 2 ). There is relative stability from 2003 until late 2007; the AC1 statistic is between 0.9 and 1. From 2007 until late 2012 the collocates gradually get more and more dissimilar, culminating in a trough around 2012–2013 where the AC1 statistic is below 0.7. Then, there is slightly more stability all the way to 2019, but still not as much as in the early years.

The consistent collocates of global warming ( Table A4 ) suggest that the underlying discourse in the broadsheet corpus goes along the same lines as those discussed in the previous subsections. The reporting frequently mentioned the causes and consequences of global warming (cf. cause, caused, causing, dangers, effects, and man-made ), framing it as a serious threat to the planet (cf. threat ) which needs to be addressed (cf. combat, fight, tackle, and tackling ). This discourse trend was especially prominent in the initial years (2003–2007), following the tendency indicated by the collocations of climate change . Here, again, references to the scientific evidence of global warming seem to have increased in frequency from around 2005 onwards (cf. evidence ), coinciding with mentions that climate change is real (cf. happening and continues ), and campaigns and ideas to raise awareness of the issue (cf. awareness ).

Agreement among collocates started to decrease in 2007, with the reporting on the documentaries ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ (cf. documentary, inconvenient, and swindle ). From that point until 2019, we find two opposing discourses operating in parallel, as represented by the views of those two documentaries. Various collocates emerged at different points in time, thus explaining the downslope in the graph.

On the one hand, the reporting mentioned calls and pledges to slow or prevent global warming (cf. slow , prevent, and battle ) by keeping the planet’s warming below 2°c (cf. 2c, degrees, limit, and limiting ) to avoid the catastrophic consequences of climate change (cf. catastrophic, scare ). This discourse was especially evident around 2009 and became increasingly more prominent from that point onwards. On the other hand, these various collocates also unveiled claims that such predictions were inaccurate and the warnings exaggerated. Like what we saw in the tabloid reporting, climate change scepticism gained prominence from around 2008 onwards, as indicated by the collocates sceptical and hoax , and references to the GWPF think-tank. Between 2016 and 2019, we find recurrent mentions of Donald Trump and his sceptical approach to global warming, along the same lines as that seen in the tabloid reporting.

The trough around 2012–2013 is explained by the appearance of various collocates that reinforce the position of those two opposing views on climate change. On the one hand, we found frequent mentions of scientific predictions and warnings of the causes and consequences of global warming (cf. predictions , warn , consensus , danger , impact(s), and accelerate ), including the danger of reaching a tipping point (cf. runaway ) and the impact on oceans and glaciers (cf. oceans and glaciers ). On the other hand, climate change scepticism was also evident through mentions that global warming had paused (cf. theory, pause, and slowing ) and questioning that global warming was a man-made phenomenon.

In the final years, we see the emergence of the need to adapt to global warming (cf. adapt ) and the discussion around the temperature threshold heated up (cf. 1.5, 1.5c, 2c , 7c , above, below, and Celsius ), driven by negotiations around the 2015 Paris Agreement.

As demonstrated throughout Section 4, the UFA technique, supported by the corpus-assisted discourse analysis of the corpus allowed us to obtain a nuanced picture of how climate change discourse developed between 2003 and 2019. In many ways, we were surprised to see the similarities between the reporting across both tabloids and broadsheets. Quantitatively speaking, Figures 1 and 3 are eerily similar whilst Figures 2 and 4 broadly follow similar patterns. The UFA analyses pointed us towards an important overarching finding: there were two significant shifts in the discourse, thus indicating three distinct time periods when the reporting most probably revolved around the same issues. The nature of those shifts was not exactly the same across tabloids and broadsheets, but broadly speaking they occurred around similar points in time: (i) from 2003 until approximately 2007, (ii) 2008–2014, and (iii) 2015–2019.

Before exploring those shifts, we will consider one discourse that was stable throughout the whole period. Some consistent collocates pointed us towards metaphors, especially military metaphors such as the need to tackle , fight , and combat climate change. Whilst we can speculate that these metaphors were employed by journalists to shock the readership and convey the urgency of the situation, it is also possible that they may inadvertently further distance the public from the situation. In their natural context (i.e., discussion of war or conflict), these terms tend to be used to describe soldiers, rather than the general public at large, and so there is a risk that the personal responsibility to act may indeed be lost through their usage. The collocate threat also appeared in the broadsheets, further contributing to the discourse of conflict. Interestingly, whilst these metaphors are found across tabloids and broadsheets over the entire period, they are used by the tabloids primarily in the initial years.

We now explore the three distinct stages in the discourse. In addition to investigating the reasons behind the most salient shifts, we also seek to delve into the differences and similarities between the tabloids and broadsheets. For the first discourse period (2003–2007), we found that whilst both the tabloids and the broadsheets make reference to scientific evidence for climate change, this line of discourse seems to have emerged slightly earlier in the broadsheets. From the very beginning, the broadsheets reported on the immediacy of the problem and international negotiations over measures to curb the rise of global temperatures. The tabloids, on the other hand, tended to present a ‘balanced view’, giving space to both the scientific consensus around the problem as well as climate change scepticism.

From around 2007, both tabloids and broadsheets alike reported on voices of scepticism (see Section 4). It could be suggested, based on our data, that this is the point at which climate change scepticism became more widespread—not only in pushing such discourses in the first place, but critically responding to them too. This does not necessarily mean that the newspapers aligned themselves with that view. Rather, the point here is that the very fact that scepticism is being discussed at all further contributes to the dangerous counter-discourse, as it may give the impression that both positions are equally valid.

The findings so far corroborate those results from previous studies (see Section 1) by demonstrating the dichotomy inherent in the discourse around climate change in both tabloids and broadsheets from 2003 until around 2015. Despite an overall prevalence of articles advocating for the climate change cause, climate scepticism got significant airtime in the UK press between 2008 and 2015. As Boykoff (2013) argues, this concurrence of opposing views obscures people’s understanding of the threat posed by climate change, leading to counterproductive debates, raising doubts about science and governance, and above all, undermining efforts to mobilize the public and encourage engagement with decision making. Interestingly (and perhaps sadly) our analysis in this period does not align with the findings of Brügemann and Engesser (2017 : 65), who found that ‘balanced’ coverage had been ‘replaced by an active contextualization and evaluation of contrarian voices’. However, this could be due to differences in our corpus composition and even our approach—UFA only looks at the most dominant patterns.

The third period starts around 2015, when tabloids and broadsheets alike report on the 2015 Paris Agreement. From that point onwards, the ‘balanced’ coverage of climate change issues seems to have lost force and the focus shifted to calls to action, with emphasis on the need to adapt and indeed mitigate against rising temperatures. This may, in part, be due to the decision taken by many news organisations around this time to stop giving airtime to climate sceptics in the name of ‘balance’, and instead focus on scientific evidence. While still reporting on the polarized views on climate change, the broadsheets’ main focus was on the levy for businesses. The tabloids, on the other hand, focused on action: they reported on protests (albeit frequently in a negative light), and offered quite vivid descriptions of melting ice and rising sea levels. In many ways, at least within the framework of our analysis, the tabloids reported on a more tangible reality, making frequent references to the 2°C and 1.5°C temperature thresholds.

This final period (2015–2019) is of prime importance in the context of climate change as the world renegotiated the gravity and immediacy of the problem. This is thus a strength of the study as we were able to capture a range of significant events, such as the 2015 Paris Agreement, the 2016 US presidential election, and the 2019 climate change protests. This is important because events influence public discourse, and public discourse influences events, and newspapers are one of the ways in which that important negotiation takes place.

To sum up, what the above discussion demonstrates is that the tabloids and broadsheets offer a surprisingly similar image of climate change discourse from 2003 to 2019. Both identify three main discourses, generally appearing in succession: (i) climate change is an issue that should be tackled; (ii) scientific evidence is released but also called into question by sceptics; and (iii) climate change is a reality that is no longer an issue only being discussed by politicians and activists at summits—it is something that the public is now engaged in.

Using UFA was a steep learning curve; the tool definitely has a lot of ‘moving parts’, but we believe that the benefits certainly outweigh the costs. The researcher has a high degree of control over how the technique works, and fine-tuning the procedure is part of the analytical process. We carried out a significant number of trial-and-error tests before deciding on the optimal parameters to be adopted in UFA. Below, we highlight some of these parameters and reflect on their implications.

Firstly, because UFA relies on collocates as its input, we needed to ponder the criteria used to generate collocates (see Section 3). Although not inherently problematic, it required caution since we worked with two subcorpora of different sizes, and examined terms ( climate change and global warming ) whose frequency of occurrence varied considerably across time, mostly due to the fluctuating amount of data from each point in time. Thus, in our specific case, the collocation frequency threshold was an important methodological decision as it would impact the collocates returned in each sampling point. We opted to follow the recommendations laid out in McEnery et al. (2019) and let the UFA tool calculate the relative minimum collocation frequency. It achieves this by first identifying the time period with the smallest amount of evidence for collocation (due to the lowest number of occurrences of the phrase), and then makes other time periods proportionally stricter ( McEnery et al. 2019 : 422).

The importance of the sliding window is not to be underestimated either. Traditional diachronic corpus-assisted studies generally use a chunking method to group collocates together (by year or decade, for example), but this imposes our social construction of time onto the data ( Marchi 2018 ; McEnery et al. 2019 ). In reality, language is a continuous phenomenon which generally does not change on a strict time-period basis. In practical terms, UFA allows for that nuance to be introduced. By moving through the data, McEnery et al. (2019) explain, the sliding window captures the cumulative effect of language change better than previous approaches, thus enabling us to minimize the effect of time-period constraints and identify language shifts irrespective of a discrete notion of time. This was precisely one of the key reasons behind our decision to use the UFA technique.

However, it is important to note that applying the sliding window procedure to small specialized corpora is not as straightforward as one would wish, especially in cases like ours where the data was unevenly distributed across time. To determine the parameters used here, we ran tests with sliding windows of different sizes, overlapping and non-overlapping. Ideally, we would wish to work with smaller periods of time, such as adopting one-year windows and moving through the corpus month by month—but we did not have sufficient data to set these parameters. The shortage of data was also the reason we discarded the option of non-overlapping six-month windows in the tabloid corpus. We also considered three-year windows and moving through the corpus year by year. Although we had sufficient data to calculate collocates, the number of sampling points was limited to 17. Overlapping 18-month windows were chosen because: (i) they provided sufficient data for generating collocates in the two subcorpora, and (ii) they allowed us to minimize the effect of using rigid, discrete time periods to analyse discourse. This latter aspect was especially important because we are aware that the media attention to climate change issues is closely aligned with key world events, such as The UN Climate Change Conferences and the publication of IPCC reports, but that does not necessarily mean that such discourse fluctuation aligns with discrete time periods.

In summary, this article has explored how the collocates surrounding the phrases climate change and global warming fluctuated between 2003 and 2019 in the UK press. Our findings are, in many ways, in line with previously published work. However, we also added to the existing literature by presenting evidence from 2013 to 2019, which has not yet been done.

Future work may wish to focus on two areas. Firstly, one may wish to interrogate other collocates, such as greenhouse ga(s)ses and carbon emissions, so as to get a more complete picture of the discourse. As the present analysis demonstrated, looking at two different terms ( climate change and global warming ) was clearly beneficial as they attracted different sets of collocates, and hence pointed us towards different discourse patterns. Secondly, whilst analysing broadsheets and tabloids separately also proved beneficial as it highlighted important nuances in their discourses, one may wish to pay closer attention to differences across individual newspapers. This is especially relevant in our case given the uneven distribution of newspaper titles within each subcorpus: the tabloid subcorpus largely consisted of articles from the Daily Mail whilst the broadsheet subcorpus largely consisted of articles from The Guardian . More importantly, UK newspapers are distinguished by their political affiliation which in turn closely relates to their stance on climate change.

All in all, we believe that the incorporation of UFA into our corpus-assisted discourse analysis was clearly beneficial. Collocation analysis is, of course, a tried-and-tested staple of the field, but offering a way to track that fluctuation over time opens up a large number of new research opportunities that were previously very difficult or impossible to achieve. This article has demonstrated the usefulness of a new method in exploring 17 years’ of climate change discourse. We found that much of the discourse from the early years is indeed prevailing, but with two nuanced shifts indicating slight changes in discourse. Whilst we still see evidence of climate change scepticism, events of the past few years have led to an increased public awareness, and an increased drive to make a change at a grassroots level. We also see renewed calls for those in power to do more to tackle the crisis—exactly what is necessary if we are to have any hope of mitigating this colossal threat to our planet.

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‘Brachychrony’ refers to ‘time-spans which are deemed too short to merit the term “diachrony”, but long enough to allow for linguistic changes to be registered, and, thus, for the term “synchrony” to be deemed unsuitable’ ( Gabrielatos et al. 2012 : 172).

We used Factiva for texts published 2003–2010 inclusive, and LexisNexis for texts published 2011–2019 inclusive. The criteria for retrieving texts were kept identical throughout the whole process, irrespective of which database they were extracted from.

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How will climate change affect the UK?

Long and frequent summer heatwaves, more intense storms and flooding – and even freezing winters – are all signs of how global warming is affecting the UK

Most people will have noticed that it’s definitely getting hotter in the UK. Multiple and lengthy summer heatwaves, and sometimes February or April heatwaves , are far more common now than in previous decades.

Climate change isn’t just hotter weather. Warmer temperatures also mean there’s more moisture in the air, which means more severe storms and flooding. And even extremely cold snaps are now thought to be down to climate change .

How is climate change already affecting the UK?

Some of us have already experienced the effects of climate change in the form of extreme weather . Relentless summer heatwaves, however welcome they seem, are a key effect of climate change in the UK. They’re even leading to more and more wildfires across the country.

Storms and flooding are getting worse and happening more often – costing people their homes and lives.

More storms, plus sea level rises, are gradually eroding coastlines around the British Isles. And all of these changes aren’t good for plant and animal species.

Most of the UK now knows what it’s like to live through an extreme heatwave. The UK declares a heatwave when daily maximum temperatures meet or exceed a set temperature (which is different for each county) for three days in a row.

Extreme heat can be a serious health risk for those with heart and lung conditions, and more deaths are recorded in the UK during heatwave days. Heatwave deaths now reach into the many thousands in the UK .

Heatwaves in cities can also cause spikes in toxic air pollution , causing breathing difficulties and developmental problems in children.

The UK is now facing frequent record-breaking winter floods. Sometimes people die in these floods, and they can do untold damage to homes and livelihoods, sometimes in the same places, year after year.

As temperatures warm, it rains more heavily. This is partly because w armer air can hold more moisture – meaning more intense rainfall. Severe flooding often follows long droughts in the UK – because dried-out soil cannot absorb heavy rains.

While UK wildfires are small in comparison to those in  places like North America, Australia and the Amazon, they are on the rise.

Large wildfires create air pollution, and can come at a cost to local economies. They may damage important habitats for UK wildlife , including national parks, ancient woodland and peatlands.

Cold weather

Even unusually cold weather is a sign of climate change in the UK. Global warming is starting to destabilise the Gulf Stream , which is what makes UK winters generally milder and wetter than other parts of northern Europe. The result is unusually cold weather (like a ‘Beast from the East’ ), bringing snow and freezing temperatures further south than usual.

Sea level rise and coastal erosion

Climate change’s overall global effect on sea levels – plus the increase in rainfall and storm surges, and the ability of waves to wash away land – is already affecting a few parts of the UK.

The sea is so close to Fairbourne in Wales – featured in the video below – the whole village needs to be relocated.

Norfolk is another part of the UK that is facing sea level rise and erosion, and storms have led to the collapse of coastal railway lines in Devon and Cornwall.

And while it seems dramatic to think that sea levels could rise so much that whole cities and coastlines are swallowed, scientists do believe it is possible. A worst case scenario could see up to nine metres of sea level rise, with a global average temperature rise of 4ºC above pre-industrial levels.

See what that means for different parts of the UK in this projection map , which also includes the sea level rise at 2ºC of warming.

Loss of species’ habitats and threats of extinction

Even without extreme weather, a warming climate means a lot of changes to ecosystems, including habitats for some of the UK’s most iconic species.

Warmer seas and unstable climates bring more threats of extinction . This could be through changes to food chains, because of new predators or simply inhospitable living conditions for Britain’s favourite animals and sea creatures.

Seabirds, puffins, white-beaked dolphins, cod and Atlantic salmon are all found living in and around UK waters . Warming seas will drive species away or make it harder for them to reproduce, disrupting the food chain and compounding problems like overfishing.

What impacts will climate change have on the UK in future?

As temperatures rise, so will the risk of deadly heatwaves and destructive storms and flooding. If you’ve not experienced flooding in your own area, it might seem like climate change won’t really affect you. But in many parts of the UK, flood risk is going up dramatically .

Significant flooding could impact two or three million people across the country if temperatures reach 2ºC or 3ºC above pre-industrial levels, according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit . Despite this, thousands of new homes are still being built within high risk flood zones , and thousands of flood defences are in poor condition .

All these impacts of climate change on the UK can be avoided through reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This means stopping using fossil fuels and moving to renewable energy , among other solutions. The good news is that scientists now believe the impact of reducing emissions on temperatures would be immediate.

Keep exploring

What is the UK doing about climate change?

All countries need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. So how’s the UK doing on combatting climate change?

What causes climate change?

Burning fossil fuels for energy, transport and industry releases greenhouse gases, which cause global warming. Things like farming, cutting down forests and overfishing are making it worse. There is no doubt that human activities are causing climate change, which means we are also able to stop it.

How to talk about climate change with friends and family

It’s not always easy, but an open, respectful conversation about climate change is one of the most powerful things you can do. Here’s how to do it right.

What can I do to stop climate change?

Individuals can make changes to their lives to reduce their personal carbon footprint. But it’s more important to persuade decision-makers in governments and businesses to drive emissions reductions on a much larger scale. This is the best way to stop climate change getting worse.

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When will climate change turn life in the U.S. upside down?

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The words of explorer John Wesley Powell on the eve of his departure into the unexplored depths of the Grand Canyon in 1869 best describe how I see our path ahead as we brave the unknown rapids of climate change:

We are now ready to start our way down the Great Unknown. We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not. Ah, well! We may conjecture many things. The men talk as cheerfully as ever; jests are bandied about freely this morning; but to me the cheer is somber and the jests are ghastly.

Powell’s expedition made it through the canyon, but the explorers endured great hardship, suffering near-drownings, the destruction of two of their four boats, and the loss of much of their supplies. In the end, only six of the nine men survived.

Likewise, we find ourselves in an ever-deepening chasm of climate change impacts, forced to run a perilous course through dangerous rapids of unknown ferocity. Our path will be fraught with great peril, and there will be tremendous suffering, great loss of life, and the destruction of much that is precious.

It is inevitable that climate change will stop being a hazy future concern and will someday turn everyday life upside down. Very hard times are coming. At the risk of causing counterproductive climate anxiety and doomism, I offer here some observations and speculations on how the planetary crisis may play out, using my 45 years of experience as a meteorologist, including four years of flying with the Hurricane Hunters and 20 years blogging about extreme weather and climate change. The scenarios that I depict as the most likely are much harsher than what other experts might choose, but I’ve seen repeatedly that uncertainty is not our friend when it comes to climate change. This will be a long and intense ride, but if you stick through the end, I promise there will be a rainbow.

By late this century, I am optimistic that we will have successfully ridden the rapids of the climate crisis, emerging into a new era of non-polluting energy with a stabilizing climate. There are too many talented and dedicated people who understand the problem and are working hard on solutions for us to fail.

Jump to a section of this essay

What is a dangerous level of climate change, climate change’s impacts will be highly asymmetric, an immediate u.s. climate change threat: an insurance crisis, a second potential immediate u.s. climate change threat: a global food shock, “black swan” and “gray swan” extreme weather events, a “new normal” of extreme weather has not yet arrived, longer-range concerns: global catastrophic risk events, devastating impacts from climate change are accelerating, paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology, hope for the future via ‘cathedral thinking’.

Although there is a major climate change hurricane approaching, we’re busy throwing a hurricane party , charging up our planetary credit card to pay for the expenses, with little regard to the approaching storm that is already cutting off our escape routes. This great storm will fundamentally rip at the fabric of society, creating chaos and a crisis likely to last for many decades.

The intensifying climate change storm will soon reach a threshold I think of as a category 1 hurricane for humanity — when long-term global warming surpasses 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures, a value increasingly characterized over the last decade as “dangerous” climate change .

For humanity as a whole, this amount of warming is risky, but not devastating. Global warming is currently at about 1.2-1.3 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures and is likely to cross the 1.5-degree threshold in the late 2020s or early 2030s .

Assuming that we don’t work exceptionally hard to reduce emissions in the next 10 years, the world is expected to reach 2 degrees Celsius of warming between 2045 and 2051. In my estimation, that will be akin to a major category 3 hurricane for humanity — devastating, but not catastrophic.

Allowing global warming to exceed 2.5 degrees Celsius will cause category 4-level damage to civilization — approaching the catastrophic level. And warming in excess of 3 degrees Celsius will likely be a catastrophic category 5-level superstorm of destruction that will crash civilization.

We must take strong action rapidly to rein in our emissions of heat-trapping gases to avoid that outcome — and build great resilience to the extreme climate of the 21st century that we have so foolishly brought upon ourselves.

According to the Carbon Action Tracker (see tweet below), we are on track for 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming; if the nations of the world meet their targets for reducing heat-trapping climate pollution, warming will be limited to 2.1 degrees. There’s a big difference between being hit by a Cat 4 versus a Cat 3, and every tenth of a degree of warming that we prevent will be critical.

Two years on from Glasgow and our warming estimates for government action have barely moved. Governments appear oblivious to the extreme events of the past year, somehow thinking treading water will deal with the flood of impacts? https://t.co/fbM4xY9OJe pic.twitter.com/MekGIeU1Z3 — ClimateActionTracker (@climateactiontr) December 5, 2023

As climate scientist Michael Mann explains in his latest book, “ Our Fragile Moment ,” great climate science communicator Stephen Schneider once said, “The ‘end of the world’ or ‘good for you’ are the two least likely among the spectrum of potential [climate] outcomes.” So forget sci-fi depictions of planetary apocalypse. That will not be our long-term climate change fate.

But the impacts of climate change will be apocalyptic for many nations and people — particularly those that are not rich and White. People and communities with the least resources tend to be the first and hardest hit by climate change , not only because poorer people and communities are inherently more vulnerable to the impacts of any disaster, but also because the extremes induced by climate change tend to be worse in the tropics and subtropics, home to many poor nations.

In the U.S., climate change has already turned life upside down for numerous communities. For example, in North Carolina, the financially strapped, Black-majority towns of Fair Bluff and Princeville are in danger of abandonment from hurricane-related flooding (from Hurricane Floyd in 1999, Matthew in 2016, and Florence in 2018). Seven Springs, North Carolina (population 207 in 1960, now just 55) is largely abandoned.

Climate change was a key contributor to these floods; a 2021 study found that about one-third of the cost of major U.S. flood events since 1988, totaling $79 billion, could be attributed to climate change. And for the town of Paradise, California — utterly destroyed by the devastating Camp Fire of 2018, which killed 85 and caused over $16 billion in damage — climate change has been apocalyptic.

In the U.S., the most likely major economic disruption from climate change over the next few years might well be a collapse of the housing market in flood-prone and wildfire-prone states. Billion-dollar weather disasters — which cause about 76% of all weather-related damages — have steadily increased in number and expense in recent years and would be even worse were it not for improved weather forecasts and better building codes. The recent increase in weather-disaster losses has brought on an insurance crisis — especially in Florida , Louisiana , California , and Texas — which threatens one of the bedrocks of the U.S. economy, the housing and real estate market.

In California, the insurer of last resort, the FAIR plan, had only about $250 million in cash on hand as of March 2024.

“One major fire near Lake Arrowhead, where the Plan holds $8 billion in policies, would plunge the whole scheme into insolvency,” observed Harvard’s Susan Crawford, author of “Charleston: Race, Water, and the Coming Storm.”

It is widely acknowledged that higher weather disaster losses result primarily from an increase in exposure : more people with more stuff moving into vulnerable places, including those at risk of floods. Martin Bertogg, Swiss Re’s head of catastrophic peril, said in a 2022 AP interview that two-thirds, perhaps more, of the recent rise in weather-related disaster losses is the result of more people and things in harm’s way.

But this balance will likely shift in the coming decades. Increased exposure will continue to drive increased weather disaster losses, but the fractional contribution of climate change to disaster losses — at least for wildfire, hurricane, and flood disasters — is likely to increase rapidly, making the insurance crisis accelerate.

A 2023 study (Fig. 2) drew attention to a massive real estate bubble in the U.S.: the vast number of properties whose purported value doesn’t account for the true costs of floods. The study estimated that across the U.S., residential properties are overvalued by a total of $121-$237 billion under current flood risks. This bubble will likely continue to grow as sea levels rise, storms dump heavier rains, and unwise risky development continues.

Likewise, U.S. properties at risk of wildfires are collectively overvalued by about $317 billion, according to David Burt , a financial guru who foresaw the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. Insurers are already pulling out of the areas most at risk, threatening to make property ownership too expensive for millions and posing a serious threat to the economically critical real estate industry.

Climate futurist Alex Steffen has described the climate change-worsened real estate bubble this way:

As awareness of risk grows, the financial value of risky places drops. Where meeting that risk is more expensive than decision-makers think a place is worth, it simply won’t be defended. It will be unofficially abandoned. That will then create more problems. Bonds for big projects, loans, and mortgages, business investment, insurance, talented workers — all will grow more scarce. Then, value will crash, a phenomenon I call the Brittleness Bubble .

Something brittle is prone to a sudden, catastrophic failure and cannot easily be repaired once broken. The popping of the real estate Brittleness Bubble will potentially trigger panic selling and a housing market collapse like a miniature version of the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 but focused on the 20% of American homes in wildfire and flood risk zones. In his 2023 Congressional testimony , Burt estimated that a wildfire and flood-induced repricing of risk of the U.S. housing market could have a quarter to half the impact of the 2008 Great Financial Crisis.

However, the 2008 crisis was relatively short-lived, as fixes to the financial system and a massive federal bailout led to a rebound in property values after a few years. A climate change-induced housing crisis will likely be resistant to a similar fix because the underlying cause will worsen: Sea levels will continue to rise, flooding heavy rains will intensify, and wildfires will grow more severe, increasing risk.

Science writer Eugene Linden wrote in 2023, “as we saw in 2008, a housing crisis can quickly morph into a systemic financial crisis because banks own most of the value, and thus the risk, in housing and commercial real estate.”

Crawford of Harvard recently wrote : “Because insurance can help communities and households recover more quickly from disasters, and because so much of the U.S. economy is driven by spending on housing, the inaccessibility and unaffordability of insurance poses a threat to the stability of the entire economy.”

As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse , a Democrat from Rhode Island, said earlier this year, “The thing about economic crises is that they come on slowly, until they come on fast.”

How the insurance crisis may play out: the “Wholly irrational and completely ad-hoc pirate capitalism” solution

In his blunt 2023 essay, “ Insurance Politics at the End of the World ,” journalist Hamilton Nolan offers these thoughts on the potential ways this climate change-induced insurance crisis could be addressed:

The rational capitalism solution here is: We accurately price your risk and that risk becomes unaffordable and people move away from areas that are stupid to live in and therefore climate adaptation is achieved. The rational socialism solution is: We collectively embrace the idea that we need to adapt to climate change and the federal government creates long-term programs that incentivize moving away from areas that are stupid to live in and disincentivize “build as much crap in South Florida flood zones as you can now to take advantage of the real estate bubble” and generally cushion the economic blow for all the people whose lives will have to change. The path we are on today, though — the path that our current political system makes likely — is the path of Wholly Irrational and Completely Ad-Hoc Pirate Capitalism: Increasing climate change-induced disasters cause panic among homeowners as a class; politicians rush to grab dollars to enable everyone to live the same as they are now for as long as possible; and eventually the whole thing crashes into the wall of reality in a way that causes uncontainable, national pain rather than just the specific, regional, temporary pain of the smarter solutions.

When will the Brittleness Bubble pop?

When might this “crash into the wall of reality” happen and the Brittleness Bubble pop? Politicians are working extremely hard to keep their jobs by delaying this day of reckoning, artificially limiting insurance rate rises and offering state-run insurance plans of last resort. This approach — the equivalent of giving a blood transfusion to the injured, without stopping the bleeding — does not fix the underlying problem and all but guarantees that the pain of the eventual national reckoning will be much larger. Insurance is designed to transfer risk, but risk is rising everywhere.

As the hurricane season is set to begin soon and wildfire risk gradually increasing, private insurers in some states are fleeing areas considered at high risk. It's leaving so-called "residual," or last resort plans, to pick up the tab. https://t.co/3sxv9m0FOS pic.twitter.com/YTkZ9OlJE3 — Axios (@axios) May 10, 2024

Crawford addressed the issue in a 2024 essay, “ Who ends up holding the bag when risky real estate markets collapse? ” Citing financial guru Burt, she concluded: “2025 or 2026 is when things give way and it becomes very difficult to offload houses and buildings in risky places where mortgages are suddenly hard to get, much less insurance.” When asked in an interview with Marketplace if the market is due for another correction, as homeowners in places with growing risk of flooding and wildfire have to pay more for insurance, Burt said:

This is actually happening right now and is probably going to happen over the next three to five years, like a full reckoning of these new costs for 15 or 20% of the homes in the U.S. … If all their equity is already gone [because of lowered property values], their costs are going up a ton, they can barely afford it, that’s when people walk away.

In the same Marketplace story, though, Ben Keys, a professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, said, “The idea that we would expect there to be a huge wave of defaults or delinquencies feels relatively unlikely.”

But like Burt, climate change futurist Steffen predicts the real estate Brittleness Bubble will pop within five years (10 at the most).

I suspect we're less than 5 years away from a prolonged surge of value loss in real estate assets based on risk, insurability, economic brittleness and local capacities to ruggedize (or not). That kind of devaluation will echo through the whole economy. https://t.co/Qs0zyMS38g — Alex Steffen (@AlexSteffen) May 21, 2024

This reckoning could come sooner for Florida if another $100-billion hurricane hits. The Florida insurance and coastal property market did manage to withstand the $117-billion cost of Category 4 Hurricane Ian of 2022, but another blow like that might well cause a severe downward spiral in the Florida real estate market from which it might never fully recover. This vulnerability was underscored by Florida Gov. DeSantis during a 2023 radio interview with a Boston host, when DeSantis suggested homeowners should “ knock on wood ” and hope the state didn’t get hit by a hurricane in 2024.

But “knocking on wood” is not an effective climate adaptation strategy for Florida. Because of climate change, Mother Nature is now able to whip heavier bowling balls with more devastating impact down Hurricane Alley. It’s only a matter of time before she hurls a strike into a major Florida city, causing an intensified coastal real estate and insurance crisis. And the odds of such a strike are higher than average in 2024 because of record-warm ocean temperatures in the tropical Atlantic, combined with a developing La Niña event.

Watch out for increased coastal flooding in the mid-2030s

We may manage to avoid a coastal real estate market crash in the next 10 years if we get lucky with hurricanes and if our politicians continue to pump huge amounts of money to bail out the failing system.

But it will become increasingly difficult to keep the coastal property market propped up beginning in the mid-2030s, because of accelerating sea level rise combined with an 18.6-year wobble in the moon’s orbit. Thus, I expect that the longest we might stave off the popping of the coastal real estate Brittleness Bubble is 15 years.

As I wrote in my 2023 post, 30 great tools to determine your flood risk in the U.S. , beginning in 2033, the moon will be in a position favorable for bringing higher tides to locations where one high tide and low tide per day dominate. This will bring a rapid increase in high tide flooding to the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, the Southeast, the West Coast, and Hawaii. This expected acceleration in the mid-2030s is obvious for St. Petersburg (Fig. 3), plotted using NASA’s Flooding Analysis Tool and Flooding Days Projection Tool . The rapid acceleration in coastal flooding simultaneously along a huge swathe of heavily developed U.S. coast in the mid-2030s will be sure to significantly stress the coastal housing market. And according to the Coastal Flood Resilience Project , the nation is flying blind on the possible impacts: There are no national assessments of the potential loss of major, critical infrastructure assets to coastal storms and rising seas.

Another immediate danger: a series of global extreme weather events affecting agriculture, causing global economic turmoil.

In my 2024 post, “ What are the odds that extreme weather will lead to a global food shock? ” I reviewed a 2023 report by insurance giant Lloyd’s, which modeled the odds of a globally disruptive extreme food shock event bringing simultaneous droughts in key global food-growing breadbaskets. The authors estimated that a “major” food shock scenario costing $3 trillion globally over a five-year period had a 2.3% chance of happening per year (Fig. 4). Over a 30-year period, those odds equate to about a 50% probability of occurrence — assuming the risks are not increasing each year, which, in fact, they are.

Yet another concern for the U.S. is the risk of wholly unanticipated “black swan” extreme weather events that scientists didn’t see coming. As Harvard climate scientists Paul Epstein and James McCarthy wrote in a 2004 paper, “Assessing Climate Instability”: “We are already observing signs of instability within the climate system. There is no assurance that the rate of greenhouse gas buildup will not force the system to oscillate erratically and yield significant and punishing surprises.”

One example of such a punishing surprise was Superstorm Sandy of 2012, that unholy hybrid spawn of a Caribbean hurricane/extratropical storm that became the largest hurricane ever observed and one of the most damaging, costing $88 billion. And who anticipated that a siege of climate-change-intensified wildfires in western North America beginning in 2017, causing multiple summers of horrific air quality that would significantly degrade the quality of life in the West? Or the jet stream experiencing a sudden increase in unusually extreme configurations over the past 20 years, leading to prolonged periods of intense extreme weather over multiple portions of the globe simultaneously? As the late climate scientist Wally Broecker once said, “Climate is an angry beast, and we are poking at it with sticks.”

Just as concerning might be future “gray swan” events — extreme weather events that climate models anticipate could happen but exceed anything in the historical record. (“Gray swan” is an expression first coined by hurricane scientist Kerry Emanuel in his 2016 paper, “ Grey swan tropical cyclones .”) Several potential gray swan events I have written about include a $1 trillion California “ARkStorm” flood , the potential failure of the Old River Control Structure during an extreme flood that allows the Mississippi River to change course, or a storm like 2015’s Hurricane Patricia , with winds over 200 mph, hitting Miami, Galveston/Houston, Tampa, or New Orleans. The risk of gray swan events is steadily increasing.

I’m often asked if the absurdly extreme weather events we’ve been experiencing recently are the new normal. “No!” I reply. “Heat is energy, so the energy to fuel more intense extreme weather events will increase until we reach net-zero emissions. At that time, the climate will finally stabilize at a new normal with a highly dangerous level of extreme weather events.”

Barring a series of extraordinary volcanic eruptions or a major geoengineering effort, even under an optimistic “low” emissions climate scenario, the earliest the climate might stabilize is in the mid-2070s (Fig. 5); thus, the weather will grow more extreme, on average, for at least the next 50 years. Considering that CO2 emissions have not yet peaked and may be following the “Intermediate” pathway shown below, there is considerable danger that the weather will still be growing more extreme when today’s children are very old early next century. But even when net zero emissions are reached, sea level rise will continue to occur at a pace difficult to adapt to, and the climate crisis will continue to intensify.

The high probability that the weather will grow more extreme throughout the lifetime of everybody reading this essay means that we have to take seriously some very bad long-term threats. As I wrote in my 2022 post, “ The future of global catastrophic risk events from climate change ,” a global catastrophic risk event is defined as a catastrophe global in impact that kills over 10 million people or causes over $10 trillion (2022 USD) in damage. Since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been only three such events: World War I, World War II, and the COVID-19 pandemic. But climate change is a threat multiplier, increasing the risk of five types of global catastrophic risk events:

• Coastal flooding from sea-level rise and land subsidence
• Collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the powerful currents that circulate warm water in the tropical Atlantic Ocean to the Arctic and back (an August 2024 study gave a 59% chance of an AMOC collapse occurring before 2050)

The likeliest of these is a global catastrophic risk event from sea level rise, which is highly likely to occur by the end of the century. For example, a moderate global warming scenario will put $7.9-12.7 trillion dollars of global coastal assets at risk of flooding from sea level rise by 2100, according to a 2020 study, “ Projections of global-scale extreme sea levels and resulting episodic coastal flooding over the 21st century .” Although this study did not take into account assets that inevitably will be protected by new coastal defenses, neither did it consider the indirect costs of sea level rise from increased storm surge damage, mass migration away from the coast, increased saltiness of fresh water supplies, and many other factors. A 2019 report by the Global Commission on Adaptation estimated that sea level rise will lead to damages of more than $1 trillion per year globally by 2050.

Furthermore, sea level rise, combined with other stressors, might bring about megacity collapse — a frightening possibility when infrastructure destruction, salinification of freshwater resources, and a real estate collapse potentially combine to create a mass exodus of people from a major city, reducing its tax base to the point that it can no longer provide basic services. The collapse of even one megacity might have severe impacts on the global economy, creating increased chances of a cascade of global catastrophic risk events. One megacity potentially at risk of this fate is the capital of Indonesia, Jakarta, with a population of 10 million. Land subsidence of up to two inches per year and sea level rise of about an eighth of an inch per year are causing so much flooding in Jakarta that Indonesia is constructing a new capital city in Borneo.

Is the #AMOC approaching a tipping point? Here's my take after researching this topic for over 30 years. Open access, peer-reviewed, in full colour & understandable for non-experts. https://t.co/gMu6Zw5mR7 pic.twitter.com/mrgzO9NMxR — Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf 🌏 🦣 (@rahmstorf) April 11, 2024

I also expect one or more climate change-amplified global catastrophic risk events from drought will occur this century. Mexico City, with a metro area population of 22 million, has suffered record heat over the past year, is in danger of its reservoirs running dry, and is drilling ever-deeper wells to tap an overtaxed aquifer. Though the city will muddle through the crisis now that the summer rains have come this year, what is the plan for 30 years from now, when the climate is expected to be drier and much, much hotter? Although Mexico City can greatly improve its water situation by fixing a poorly maintained system that has a 40% loss rate , it is unclear how the city will be able to survive the much hotter and drier climate of 30 years from now. And at least 10 other major cities are in a similar bind.

Technology can help us adapt to a hotter climate by providing air conditioning (if you are rich enough), but technological solutions to create more water availability when the taps run dry are much more difficult to achieve. I believe water shortages will drive a partial collapse of and mass migration out of multiple major cities 20-40 years from now, significantly amplifying global political and economic turmoil. For example, a 2010 study, “ Linkages among climate change, crop yields and Mexico-US cross-border migration ,” found that a 10% reduction in crop yields in Mexico leads to an additional 2% of the population emigrating to the United States.

In his frightening 2019 book “ Food or War ,” science writer Julian Cribb documents 25 food conflicts that have led to famine, war, and the deaths of more than a million people — mostly caused by drought. Since 1960, Cribb says, 40-60% of armed conflicts have been linked to resource scarcity, and 80% of major armed conflicts occurred in vulnerable dry ecosystems. Hungry people are not peaceful people, Cribb argues.

Though climate change itself is not accelerating faster than what climate scientists and climate models predicted , devastating impacts from climate change do seem to be accelerating. That is because the new climate is crossing thresholds beyond which an infrastructure designed for the 20th century can withstand. These breaches are occurring in tandem with an increase in exposure — more people with more stuff living in harm’s way — which is the dominant cause of the sharp increase in weather-disaster losses in recent years. It’s sobering to realize that the current U.S. insurance crisis has primarily been driven by increased exposure and foolish insurance policies that promote development in risky places — not climate change — and that climate change’s relative contribution to the crisis is set to grow significantly.

Accelerating sea level rise alone is sure to cause a massive shock to the U.S. economy; according to a 2022 report from NOAA , sea level along the U.S. coastline is projected to rise, on average, 10-12 inches (0.25-0.30 meters) in the next 30 years (2020-2050), which will be as much as the rise measured over the last 100 years (1920-2020). At this level, 13.6 million homes might be at risk of flooding by 2051 , triggering a mass migration of millions of people away from the coast.

If we add to sea-level-rise-induced migration the additional migration that will result from climate change-intensified wildfires, heatwaves, and hurricanes, we are forced to acknowledge the reality that a nation-challenging Hurricane Katrina-level climate change storm has already begun in the U.S., one which has the potential to cause catastrophic damage. As I wrote in my June post, The U.S. is finally making serious efforts to adapt to climate change , there have been some encouraging efforts to prepare for the coming mass migration. But, as I argued in my follow-up post, The U.S. is nowhere near ready for climate change , we remain woefully unprepared for what is coming.

And my subsequent post, Can a colossal extreme weather event galvanize action on the climate crisis? , argues that we should not expect that any future extreme weather event or breakdown of the climate system will galvanize the type of response needed — we’ve already had at least 13 events since 1988 that should have done so, yet have not. Even if such an event did prompt strong, transformative change, it’s too late to avoid having life turned upside-down by climate change. It’s like we’ve waited until our skin started getting red before seeking shade from the sun, and we’re only now taking our first stumbling steps toward shade. Well, it’s a long hike to shade, and a blistering sunburn is unavoidable.

Given the unprecedented nature and complexity of this planetary crisis, there is huge uncertainty on how this drama may unfold; there are climate scientists who offer a more optimistic outlook than I do (for example, Hannah Ritchie , author of “Not the End of the World”), and those who are more pessimistic ( James Hansen ).

I suggest that you make the most of the current “calm before the storm” and prepare for the chaotic times ahead, which could begin at any time. I will offer my recommendations on how to do this in my next post in this series, “What should you do to prepare for the climate change storm?”

The urgency to rapidly deal with the climate crisis was succinctly summarized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its latest summary report: “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.”

But taking advantage of that window of opportunity is difficult because of human psychological and political realities. In climate scientist Peter Gleick’s 2023 book, “The Three Ages of Water,” he quotes Harvard’s E.O. Wilson, father of sociobiology, who perhaps said it best: “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”

The boat of civilization has already hit multiple rocks along the rapids of climate change and is taking on water. Perilous rapids with even more dangerous rocks and waterfalls lie before us, but the course of our boat cannot be so easily altered to avoid the rocks, because of our Paleolithic emotions and medieval institutions. As a result, we may have only a few more years — or perhaps as long as 15 years — of relative normalcy in our everyday lives here in the U.S. before the approaching climate change storm ends our golden age of prosperity. But this “golden age” was made of fool’s gold, paid for with wealth plundered from future generations.

Though this essay has dwelt on some grim realities, I am optimistic that we will prevent climate change from becoming a civilization-destroying category 5-level catastrophe. But we must fight extremely hard to correct the course of our boat and not allow its inertia to carry us into the rocks that stud the rapids of climate change. This is not a task that can be accomplished in our lifetimes.

Susan Joy Hassol, the climate communication veteran who served as a senior science writer on three National Climate Assessments, put it this way in an interview with Yale Climate Connections contributor Daisy Simmons: “This is the fight of our lives, and it’s a multigenerational task. We need what’s been called ‘cathedral thinking.’ That is, the people who started working on that stone foundation , they never saw the thing finished. It took generations to get these major works done. This is that kind of problem. And we have to all do our part. The more I act, the better I feel, because I know I’m part of the solution.”

Actions we take now will yield enormous future benefits, and the faster we undertake transformative actions to adapt to the new climate reality, the less suffering will occur. The Global Commission on Adaptation says that “every $1 invested in adaptation could yield up to $10 in net economic benefits, depending on the activity.” We should work to build our cathedral of the future with the thought that each action we take now will multiply by a factor of 10 in importance in the future.

An excellent @nytimes article on rapid growth of wind, solar, & EVs, including factories, in the US. Costs are below fossil and nuclear (see graphs). Reasons why, graphs with how fast, pictures of it happening. https://t.co/uglQDnE97t pic.twitter.com/oIpLmlp28v — Willett Kempton (@WillettKempton) September 5, 2023

But some of the hardest work has been done: The cornerstone of this cathedral of the future has already been laid. The clean energy revolution is here and has progressed far more rapidly than I had dared hope. Passage of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and 2023 Inflation Reduction Act has been instrumental in getting this cornerstone laid. Solar energy is now the cheapest source of energy in world history, and the costs of wind power and battery technology have also plummeted. Two recent reports were optimistic that climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions had finally peaked in 2023, and GDP growth has decoupled from carbon dioxide emissions in recent years, giving hope that economic growth can still occur without making the planet hotter.

At its heart, the root of the climate crisis is humanity’s spiritual inharmoniousness: We overvalue the pursuit of material wealth and we worship billionaires but undervalue growing more connected to our spiritual selves and acting to preserve and appreciate the natural systems that sustain us. Making yourself more peaceful and loving through quiet spiritual pursuits and time spent in nature will help counteract the anxiety and fear sparked by the climate crisis. But in tandem with your increased peace must come a righteous anger to “throw the money changers out of the temple” and topple the might of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers.

So put your shoulder to an oar! Help us power the boat of civilization through the rapids of climate change. All of humanity shares the same boat, and you have the opportunity to make your own unique and valuable contribution to the effort.

This is a nice way to visualize the pathway to your unique climate action. https://t.co/cjlv5XXrak — Jeff Masters (@DrJeffMasters) May 15, 2024

As promised, here is the rainbow at the end. It’s the intro image from my first and last Weather Underground blog posts, “ The 360-degree Rainbow ,” and “ So long, wunderground! ” My unique and valuable contribution to building our new cathedral has not yet reached the end of the rainbow, for a rainbow has no end — it is a full circle. One just has to fly high in a rainstorm where the sun is shining to see it.

I will continue to make my voice heard as long as climate science-denying politicians, corporations, media pundits, and wealthy individuals continue to row the boat of civilization into the rocks of climate-change catastrophe. I encourage those of you who have learned about extreme weather and climate change from me to do the same. To get started, learn from one of the best communicators in the business, climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe :

Recommended reading:

• What should you do to prepare for the climate change storm?
• Can a colossal extreme weather event galvanize action on the climate crisis?
• The U.S. is nowhere near ready for climate change
• The U.S. is finally making serious efforts to adapt to climate change
• Book review: “On the Move” is a must-read account of U.S. climate migration
• Book review: “The Great Displacement” is a must-read
• Part one of my three-part sea level rise series: How fast are the seas rising?
• Part two of my three-part sea level rise series: Eight excellent books on sea level rise risk for U.S. cities
• Part three of my three-part sea level rise series: 30 great tools to determine your flood risk in the U.S.
• Bubble trouble: Climate change is creating a huge and growing U.S. real estate bubble
• Many coastal residents willing to relocate in the face of sea level rise
• Disasterology: a book review
• The future of global catastrophic risk events from climate change
• With global warming of just 1.2°C, why has the weather gotten so extreme?
• Recklessness defined: breaking 6 of 9 planetary boundaries of safety
• Retreat From a Rising Sea: A book review
• Quick facts on climate change, extreme weather-related events, and their impacts on society
• Susan Crawford’s Substack feed on climate adaptation policy, Moving Day
• Climate futurist Alex Steffen’s newsletter

Susan Joy Hassol ( @ClimateComms ) and Bob Henson ( @bhensonweather ) provided helpful edits for this post.

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Effects of climate change

Climate change is already having visible effects on the world. The Earth is warming, rainfall patterns are changing, and sea levels are rising. These changes can increase the risk of heatwaves, floods, droughts, and fires.

What are the effects of climate change?

A changing climate impacts crop growth and human health, while many people may need to leave their homes. It places certain species at an increased risk of extinction. The effects of climate change are real, and they are already happening.

The level of climate change we will see depends on how quickly we cut emissions of dangerous greenhouse gases . Even if we were to stop all emissions today, we would not prevent some changes. However, the sooner we cut emissions, the smaller the changes will be.

Drivers of climate change

We know that greenhouse gases, aerosol emissions and land use affect our climate. Overall, human activity is warming our planet.

Changes to the climate system

Climate change can affect our climate system in lots of different ways:

• Changes in the hydrological cycle
• Warmer land and air
• Warming oceans
• Melting sea ice  and glaciers
• Rising sea levels
• Ocean acidification
• Global greening
• Changes in ocean currents
• More extreme weather

Find out more about these and other indicators of climate change on our global climate dashboard  and extremes dashboard .

Impacts of climate change

Our climate system is finely balanced, and small changes can have significant consequences.

Some of the impacts from these changes to our climate system include:

• Risk to water supplies
• Conflict and climate migrants
• Localised flooding
• Flooding of coastal regions
• Damage to marine ecosystems
• Fisheries failing
• Loss of biodiversity
• Change in seasonality
• Heat stress
• Habitable region of pests expands
• Forest mortality and increased risk of fires
• Damage to infrastructure
• Food insecurity

In a recent report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) showed the difference between 1.5°C and 2°C of global warming. But unless we reduce emissions rapidly, the world is likely to exceed 2°C of warming. By the end of this century, warming could potentially reach 4°C, possibly more.

Climate change will increase the risk of different problems around the world. Though developed countries produce most greenhouse gas emissions, developing countries are predicted to see most of the severe effects. With fewer resources to adapt to these changes, the impact on people in developing countries is expected to be higher.

Effects of climate change on the planet

Average global temperatures have risen by more than 1°C since the 1850s. 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 were the hottest years ever recorded. The figures show us that the planet has been warming since the Industrial Revolution. 

This plot shows the global temperature change from 1850 to 2022, compared to an estimated 1850-1900 baseline average temperature.

A warming planet leads to many other changes in our climate. As the planet warms, heatwaves become more likely. Over the past few years, heatwaves have been the deadliest global weather hazard.

Oceans absorb 90% of the extra heat generated by human influence. However, when water heats up, it expands to take up more volume. So, when oceans heat up, they expand too, causing the sea level to rise. We also have extra water flowing into the ocean from melting ice sheets and glaciers. Between 1901 and 2018, the global average sea level has risen by around 20 centimetres.

Some parts of the planet, such as the north and south pole, warm more quickly than other places. At the poles, glaciers and ice sheets reflect energy from the sun into space. So, when there is less ice, less energy from the sun is reflected away. The area then heats even more quickly, causing even more ice to melt.

The ice in the Arctic is melting fast. It is already 65% thinner than it was in 1975. Late summer Arctic sea ice area is currently the smallest in at least 1,000 years. If we do not reduce emissions soon, we could see ice-free summers in the Arctic by the middle of this century.

When ice sheets and glaciers melt, freshwater flows into the sea. As well as making the sea level rise, freshwater also reduces the salinity (saltiness) of the water, which can slow or change ocean currents.

Oceans also absorb around 25% of the carbon dioxide that humans release into the air. The oceans then become less alkaline, a process called 'ocean acidification'. Ocean acidification is bad because it can have negative effects on marine organisms, like coral and plankton, which are an important part of the food chain.

Changes to the UK climate and weather events

* Some, but not all, evidence supports an increase.

In the future, we project that the UK will see:

• Warmer and wetter winters
• Hotter and drier summers
• More frequent and intense weather extremes

Changes to the global climate and weather events

** Marvel et al 2019 provides new evidence drought increased in some regions during specific periods since 1900 (with aerosols possibly masking the trend when it is not detectable), and that this is connected to climate change.

*** Possible decrease in frequency and possible increase in intensity (and associated rainfall). 

Warmer air can hold more water, so rainfall is increasing on average across the world. In some places, rainfall is becoming more intense as well. However, some areas receive less rain because of changes in wind patterns.

Effects of climate change on humans

We are already experiencing the effects of a changing climate. Rising sea levels cause problems for people around the world. Nearly 4 in 10 people (39%) live within 100 kilometres from a shoreline and are at risk of flooding if sea levels continue to rise. 600 million of these people live in a 'low-level coastal zone', and 200 million on a coastal flood plain.

Even if we cut emissions, sea levels will continue to rise until the year 2100 (see the Sea Level Dashboard for more on these projections). But, if we reduce emissions enough, we can slow the rate of increase. Many people will have to leave their homes, but the number will vary depending on how we act, by reducing global emissions and improving flood defences.

Floods can also happen when heavy rainfall overwhelms drainage systems or bursts river banks. In heavily concreted urban areas and cities, the effect is more severe because the water cannot sink directly into the soil. Flooding causes severe damage to buildings and transportation, which can be very costly and hard to recover.

As our climate warms and rainfall patterns change, it may be harder to grow enough food in some areas. The climate will change which crops can grow in different regions. Some places may be able to grow new crops, but many places will experience reduced crop production, especially in hotter countries.

Colder countries are likely to see higher yields because there will be a longer growing season and higher carbon dioxide concentrations. However, these effects may not last if warming continues in the longer term. More extreme weather events could also disrupt access to food, impacting transport from farms to shops, which can affect vulnerable people.

As you can see, climate change has a lot of effects, and they impact people around the world in different ways. The level of impact depends on the climate of the area and the wealth of the country. Climate change effects are 'stress multipliers', which means that they often make existing problems more severe.

Let's look at heatwaves, for example. We expect most regions will experience more intense heatwaves. In countries that are already hot, the human heat stress limits will be exceeded more often, which is dangerous.

As another example, an increase in flooding is another danger. Countries that flood regularly, such as Bangladesh, are expected to see even more regular floods, putting more communities at risk.

This graph from Munich RE  shows events causing loss are becoming more frequent.

If our climate continues to change, many parts of the world will become more challenging places to live. People may have to leave their homes. Climate is just one of many factors that influences human migration, but it will play an increasing role in the future.

Effects of climate change in the UK

Will the uk's climate change.

Climate change is causing warming across the UK. All of the UK's ten warmest years on record have occurred since 2002. Heatwaves, like that of summer 2018, are now 30 times more likely to happen due to climate change.

UK winters are projected to become warmer and wetter on average, although cold or dry winters will still occur sometimes. Summers are projected to become hotter and are more likely to be drier, although wetter summers are also possible. By 2050, heatwaves like that seen in 2018 are expected to happen every other year.

In 50 years' time, by 2070 we project:

• Winter will be between 1 and 4.5°C warmer and up to 30% wetter
• Summer will be between 1 and 6°C warmer and up to 60% drier

Heavy rainfall is also more likely. Since 1998, the UK has seen six of the ten wettest years on record. The winter storms in 2015 were at least 40% more likely because of climate change.

• Read more about climate change in the UK

Explore climate change in your local area

You can find out more about climate change in your local area in this  climate change visualisation tool .

This tool is a collaboration with the BBC. It uses our climate projections and records to visualise climate change in the UK.

• What will climate change look like near me?

How will climate change impact the UK?

Even if we do reduce greenhouse gas emissions, sea levels around the UK will keep rising beyond 2100. Parts of the UK will be in danger of flooding, with low lying and coastal cities at particular risk.

Farming in the UK will be affected by climate change, too. Hotter weather and higher levels of CO2 may make growing some crops easier, or even allow us to produce new ones. However, with more droughts expected, water may not be as easy to access, making it harder for farmers to plan the growing season. Some crops we grow today may also be unsuited to higher temperatures.

Floods, storms, and extreme heat can cause damage to buildings, disrupt transport, and affect health. Buildings and infrastructure need to be adapted to cope with the new conditions. Businesses will have to plan around a changing climate. To help the UK understand what climate change means for the nation, the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment is published every 5 years. More details of the future conditions expected for the UK are available in the UK Climate Projections (UKCP18) . 

Stay up to date with the latest climate news

Our climate newsletter shares research and news to give you the latest updates on climate science. We publish the newsletter twice a month and it's easy to sign up.

Find out more and sign up to the climate newsletter .

Related links

• What is climate change?
• Causes of climate change
• Climate change questions
• Climate change in the UK
• Climate science
• Organisations and reports
• Attributing extreme weather to climate change
• Climate newsletter

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A woman steps off a bus onto a street in Dharga Town, Sri Lanka, which was flooded by heavy monsoon rains in 2010 © Hafiz Issadeen via Flickr ( CC BY 2.0 )

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What is climate change and why does it matter?

Climate change is the defining issue of our time . We have reached a pivotal moment in deciding our planet's future.

Find out what climate change is, why it matters and what it could mean for our collective future.

What are weather, climate and climate change?

Weather refers to atmospheric conditions, such as rain or snow, happening in a place at a specific moment in time. Climate is how much, on average, a type of weather will occur over a longer period.

Dr Joeri Rogelj is a climate scientist at Imperial College London's Grantham Institute who has contributed to and led several major climate change assessments. He explains, 'Climate change is how the characteristics of the weather we experience in a certain place change.

'It can get hotter or wetter on average or have more concentrated rain in a short period, but then get longer dry periods. All of that can be a result of climate change.'

Global warming is a term used interchangeably with climate change, although the latter is preferred because the warming atmosphere and oceans are just some of the effects we see.

'It's not just about temperature. Places are also becoming wetter or drier, and in some the seasons are moving. Most importantly, in a few regions and seasons, it may actually at times be cooler than we're used to. That's confusing if you just talk about global warming.'

This is Typhoon Utor, which affected the Philippines and China in 2013. It caused considerable damage and loss of life. Climate change influences most weather events, including tropical storms and hurricanes. © NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via Flickr ( CC BY 2.0 )

Causes of climate change

The main driver of current climate change is the emission of greenhouse gases, most importantly carbon dioxide and methane . These are primarily released when fossil fuels are burnt. Meat and dairy production, producing cement and some industrial processes, such as the production and use of fertilisers, also emit greenhouse gases.

Greenhouse gases trap heat in our atmosphere. Since the mid-nineteenth century , the world has emitted over 2.2 trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Joeri explains, 'Energy from the Sun falls on our planet and normally gets reflected back as infrared radiation. But instead of escaping back out into space, this radiation gets absorbed by molecules of greenhouse gases, which then emit them in all directions.'

This process causes more heat to be kept near Earth's surface, warming our world.

How do we know climate is changing?

There are measuring stations all around the world that keep track of air and sea temperature. From these measurements it's clear that temperatures are rising.

'There are many more indicators that tell us that the Earth is warming. For example, on a warming planet we would expect polar ice caps and glaciers to melt. It is clearly observed that those are melting,' explains Joeri.

This image of an iceberg in McMurdo Sound was captured in 2017 as part of NASA's Operation IceBridge. This is an ongoing airborne mission to monitor changes in polar ice. © NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via Flickr ( CC BY 2.0 )

We know that greenhouse gases are causing change. Thanks to studies that look at how carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation, for example, there is a scientific understanding of how the planet would warm as a result of emissions. This has allowed climate scientists to discount the theory that global warming is being caused by an increase in the Sun's intensity, for example.

It's also known that greenhouse gases are primarily emitted by fossil fuel combustion.

'To burn carbon and produce carbon dioxide, you need oxygen. The amount of oxygen that is in the atmosphere is reducing at exactly the right amount for the increase in carbon dioxide to be caused by combusting fossil fuels,' explains Joeri.

There is additional evidence in the ratios of different types of carbon. Fossil fuels are, essentially, ancient plants . Plants now and in the past preferentially take up carbon-12. In normal conditions, the ratio between carbon-12 and carbon-13 is constant.

'What we can see is that the ratio of carbon-13 in our atmosphere is going down at exactly the rate you would predict if the carbon dioxide increase was due to burning fossil fuels.'

Scientists predict that climate change will cause extreme weather events such as wildfires, floods and hurricanes to become worse ©  Quarrie Photography via Flickr ( CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 )

Effects of climate change

Climate change does not have the same effects everywhere. The planet is generally getting hotter, but some regions and seasons can at times be temporarily cooler. Some places will see drawn-out seasons, while others may experience concentrated bursts of extreme weather.

Extreme weather events - such as hurricanes, floods, heatwaves , drought and  wildfires  - are predicted to become more intense and frequent.

'Pretty much any weather event is influenced by climate change. As scientists we can estimate how much climate change has made a certain event more likely or more intense than it would have been without climate change,' explains Joeri.

When the world warms, ice melts. Arctic sea ice could disappear entirely in a warming world, and Greenland and Antarctica's ice sheets could be destabilised. This would result in large sections melting, which would add more liquid to the ocean. 

Sea level rise caused by climate change is a threat to low lying islands such as Panama's idyllic San Blas Islands, 49 of which are inhabited © Marc Veraart via Flickr ( CC BY-ND 2.0 )

Ice also reflects the Sun's energy, so without ice, more heat is absorbed by the ocean . Water expands as it warms - this is known as thermal expansion. This effect means that the ocean takes up more space, causing sea levels to rise. Even with rapid emission cuts, sea levels are expected to rise by around 26 to 53 centimetres by 2100.

Along with melting ice sheets and glaciers, rising global temperatures could cause rainforests to die and widespread species extinctions.

The effects of climate change on us

How climate change will affect you depends on who you are and where you live.

Around 190 million people currently live in areas that, due to rising sea levels, are expected to be under high tide levels by 2100. This could cause a massive displacement of populations. Low lying atoll nations such as Tuvalu and the Maldives are incredibly vulnerable to this change and could be lost to the sea.

Hundreds of millions of people rely on seafood as their main source of protein. Warming and more acidic waters could destroy marine food chains by affecting their base, such as krill or coral reefs .

Longer-lasting drought could devastate crops, threating food security. Reservoirs drying up , as well as the loss of glaciers, could make drinking water scarce. 

Pasterze Glacier is estimated to be receding at a rate of 10 metres per year. A sign shows where the glacier lay in 1995, with the ice having since dramatically retreated up the valley. ©  H Raab via Flickr ( CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 )

Increased precipitation can cause deadly flooding, as well as lowering indoor air quality. This could affect our health as dampness benefits moulds and fungi.

Around four billion people live in urban areas, and by 2050 this will have risen to an estimated 6.7 billion.

City dwellers are not exempt from climate change's effects. Urban populations usually rely on rural areas for inputs such as food and water. If climate change disrupts these important connections, it could heavily affect those in urban areas.

Natural disasters impact poor and vulnerable populations disproportionately hard and clearly expose the consequences of ignoring social inequalities . With extreme weather increasing, these populations face a heightened level of risk.

For example, the urban heat island effect amplifies the effects of temperature extremes in cities. Those unable to afford to buy and run air conditioning may find their health compromised.

The hazards of climate change also do  disproportionate harm to women and girls .

Joeri says, 'We don't know what will happen when, exactly. It's really hard to anticipate, particularly for populations that are already on the edge every year.'

People are also seeing climate change impact their mental health, experiencing a phenomenon known as eco-anxiety . 

Differences in wealth, ethnicity and health are just some of the inequalities that could determine a person's vulnerability to the effects of climate change © Kompas/Hendra A Setyawan via World Meteorological Organization Flickr ( CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 )

How does climate change affect biodiversity?

The natural world is delicately balanced . No species - including ours - is completely independent of all others. A 2019 report confirmed that over one million animal and plant species are now at risk of extinction as a result of human activities.

In the UK, an analysis of over 700 species has shown that more than 80% of trends between 1976 and 2005 indicate seasonal events are happening earlier. Differing rates of change could mean that species' lives are no longer synchronised with those they rely on.

Many plants are flowering earlier. Migrating birds arrive earlier, leave later and some even are getting smaller . Butterflies are emerging earlier . Birds and amphibians are laying their eggs earlier in the year. Some species are moving into new areas, such as kelps which form vital marine habitats.

Seaweeds are important for many reasons . They act as vital habitats. Some also help protect coastlines from erosion.

Insects are one of the most vulnerable groups, with less ability than mammals or birds to escape warmer temperatures. Loss of insects, which are a primary food source for many animals, a key pollinator of plants and whose numbers are already plummeting , could cause the ecosystem to collapse.

In aquatic ecosystems, activities to mitigate the side effects of climate change, such as building hard flood defences, can have negative effects. As sea levels rise, sea walls reduce the space for intertidal ecosystems. A rising sea could also damage important coastal habitats like sand dunes and cliffs.

Joeri says, 'The ocean looks homogenous, but it also experiences variations. There are ocean heatwaves, where if a particularly warm mass of water comes to an area like coral reefs, it induces loss and mass dieback.'

The loss of Arctic sea ice takes away a key habitat from animals including polar bears, seals and walruses. The ice is now declining at a rate of more than 12% per decade .

Climate change is just one of the stressors currently impacting nature. Sea use, invasive species, pollution and the exploitation of organisms are all factors in the threat to nature. Without drastic changes , it's expected that there will be devastating changes in biodiversity and ecosystems.

Find out more about the link between climate change and the biodiversity crisis . 

A warming planet and melting ice threatens the survival of iconic animals such as polar bears © Gary Kramer/USFWS via U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Flick r ( CC BY 2.0 )

Is there any hope for the future?

Climate change has been a known problem for around 30 years. Starting to fix it earlier might have made this daunting task much easier.

Joeri says, 'We definitely know how to reduce emissions to a significant degree. We are seeing more impacts of climate change, but we can also see a heightened interest and concern in the general public.

'Ultimately, reducing emissions is really an issue of public and political will.'

By understanding more about the planet, such as by studying the poles, scientists are able to estimate the consequences climate change will have © NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via Flickr ( CC BY 2.0 )

Over the past decades, scientists have estimated the potential impacts of the planet's average temperature rising by different amounts.

'Based on that information, governments have come together and decided that they don't want to exceed a 2°C rise. They want to be well below that and pursue efforts to make it as close as possible to 1.5 °C.'

The difference in outcomes between 1.5 and 2°C are considerable. The impacts are the difference of 70% or 99% of coral reefs dying or a summer free of Arctic sea ice once every 100 or 10 years.

Scientists have determined how much carbon dioxide can still be emitted before this temperature rise limit will be exceeded. This is called the carbon budget and it's relatively small.

Joeri says, 'It's currently 420 to 580 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide for having a two-in-three or a one-in-two chance of limiting warming to 1.5°C, starting to count in 2018.

'Today we are roughly emitting 42 billion tonnes a year. So, if you start today and are going to net-zero emissions , if you want a one-in-two chance, we should there by around mid-century.

'These numbers define the geophysical requirement. Scientists then use engineering and economic models to understand how we can transform society to stay within that emission limit.'

There are many ways that you can help the planet . One way is by reducing the amount of meat and dairy you eat. © Theo Stikkelman via Flickr ( CC BY 2.0 )

This transformation could include changes such as increasing the share of energy produced by renewables , changing the way food is produced , changing our diets to have a lower carbon footprint and changing the way we build houses and design cities .

Moving to net-zero emissions will not be a perfectly co-ordinated transition . It will take some countries to lead and show the world that moving to this new way of living and functioning is both possible and beneficial for other sustainability objectives, such as public health and food security.

But on whether we'll ever see a change for the better, Joeri says he's hopeful.

'Preferably we would have started 25 or 30 years ago, but I will take any year at which we start declining steadily towards net-zero.'

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Eco-anxiety: how to cope at a time of climate crisis

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Guest Essay

What the Lobstermen of Maine Tell Us About the Election

By Scott Ellsworth

Mr. Ellsworth, a historian, traveled to Maine for this essay.

Mid-July is peak season on the central Maine coast. The blueberries — the small, low-bush kind long prized by the state’s jam makers and pie bakers — had started to appear in the farmers markets, along with the first of the tomatoes. Bright orange tiger lilies burst from front yards, while Queen Anne’s lace and goldenrod line the two-lane roads. The summer light dazzles, falling in soft waves upon the spruce and cedar, and brightening the paint on both midcentury saltboxes and grander Victorian homes. It’s no wonder that people want to come here.

Stonington is, without a doubt, one of the prettiest towns on the Maine coast. Over breakfast one morning at Stonecutters Kitchen, I asked Linda Nelson, the town’s economic and community development director, how many Hallmark movies had been filmed there.

“Not enough,” she replied.

Stonington also happens to be the largest lobster port in America. Dozens of fishing boats are anchored in the harbor, while lobsters caught in nearby Blue Hill, Jericho and Isle au Haut Bays are exported across the country and, more recently, across the globe. I was told by locals that not one of the beautiful wooden homes that form Stonington’s classic picture postcard view is owned by a fishing family, who now live elsewhere on Deer Isle or over the bridge on the mainland. From the perspective of a lobsterman, many of whom have deep Maine roots, the P.F.A.s — People From Away, as locals call them — are a presence to be tolerated. The lobster fishermen and the tourists and part-time residents coexist in two separate worlds, one that is changing beneath the surface.

In a significant political year, when a small group of voters in a few places will most likely shape the answers to pivotal questions about our government, how does a community living out climate change feel to its residents? This part of Maine is represented by a Democrat in Congress, but the district, Maine’s second, has voted for Donald Trump twice by decent margins; this is one of those places where every vote can matter. Here, the punishing demands of the present, how hard everyday work is, how important costs and prices are, make the pivotal nature of this time feel very distant from politics.

During much of the past two decades, record numbers of lobsters have been caught off the Maine coast, providing a steady living for scores of lobster fishermen and their families. But a host of recent pressures has been building up that may upend a way of life that, for some, stretches back for generations. Indeed, as far as climate change goes, Maine’s lobster fishing community may well be America’s own canary in the coal mine.

“Everything has changed. Everything is changing,” said Dana Black, age 50, who is a fourth-generation fisherman and lives with his wife and two daughters over the bridge in Brooksville. “That’s all I’ve done,” he said. Mr. Black got his first job, on a lobster boat, when he was 12. By the time he was in high school he had gotten a taste of what kind of money could sometimes be made on the water. He skipped school one Friday to work as a sternman on an offshore boat, hauling lobster traps. By the time he got back on dry land on Monday, he recalled, “I had made 2,700 bucks.” Like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him, Mr. Black had found his calling.

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Anti-Net Zero Reform MP Owns Green Tech Company

Rupert Lowe, a newly elected MP for Nigel Farage ’s anti-net zero party Reform UK , is the owner of a firm specialising in heat pumps – a flagship clean heating technology. 

Reform’s 2024 election manifesto advocated scrapping the UK’s net zero targets and renewable energy subsidies, including those promoting the uptake of heat pumps.

Lowe, who shares Reform’s views on net zero, has previously claimed that there is a “cult of climate change” promoting unscientific theories about rising temperatures and their effects. The Great Yarmouth MP has suggested that “we are heading towards the Stone Age in a desperate pursuit” of net zero, has advocated for a referendum on the 2050 target, and has urged the government to cut its “net zero nonsense”.

However, Lowe’s register of interests shows that – despite his anti-climate views – he is the owner of Alto Energy, a UK supplier of air and ground source heat pumps. 

Heat pumps use electricity rather than fossil fuels, and are up to five times more efficient than gas boilers according to the International Energy Agency. As the UK increases the proportion of electricity that it generates via renewable energy sources, the widespread deployment of heat pumps will allow the country to reduce its emissions from heating.

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On 16 July, Alto Energy published an analysis saying that the new Labour government should “prioritise investments in green technologies like heat pumps”. 

It added: “After all, moving away from fossil fuel heating systems is crucial for achieving energy independence and net zero targets.”

Reform’s leader Nigel Farage has openly criticised the move towards heat pumps, claiming on GB News that they are “a rich man’s game”. 

Reform proposes scrapping government grants that promote the development and rollout of green technologies, which would have included a scheme used by Lowe to install heat pumps on his own properties. 

Quoted by the Sunday Telegraph in August 2019, he said: “I have chosen to install heat pumps at a new stable and horse training facility on my farm in Gloucestershire. Heat pumps are definitely the way to go now as they’ll cost me far less to run than oil or [liquefied petroleum gas]. I’m also going to get a good return on investment under the government Renewable Heat Incentive scheme, which is paying me for installing green technology”.

The Renewable Heat Incentive scheme was the predecessor of the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, which offers a £7,500 grant for households to replace their fossil fuel heating system with a heat pump.

Lowe is also a shareholder in Kona Energy, which describes itself as “one of the UK’s leading clean energy development companies”. The firm is working on battery energy storage projects to help increase the use of “renewable power on the electricity system.”

The Kona Energy website says that battery storage is critical to meeting the UK’s “legally binding commitment to become net zero by 2050”. The website – which lists Lowe as an investor – says that Kona Energy is backed “by several highly supportive investors” and that it is seeking new partners “who share the company’s mission to deliver the zero carbon future.”

Lowe told DeSmog: “I’ve had a lifetime in business, which I’m incredibly proud of, and that’s equipped me with vital tools and experience that are severely lacking in Westminster. I make no apology for my involvement in a number of companies, across a wide range of industries. If more MPs had real business experience, the country wouldn’t be in such a sorry mess.”

Kona Energy and Alto Energy did not respond to DeSmog’s requests for comment. 

Rupert Lowe’s Climate Science Denial

Lowe has openly contradicted established climate science in the past. 

In January 2020, when Lowe was a Member of European Parliament (MEP) for the Brexit Party (now Reform UK), he used a debate on bushfires in Australia, which destroyed more than 3,000 buildings and killed 34 people, to dismiss the role of climate change. 

“It’s disappointing that climate change has been blamed as the primary cause of these devastating bushfires by both our [European] parliament and other so-called climate experts”, Lowe said . 

“The cult of climate change marches on with no definitive evidence to support or deny the factual accuracy of their assertions. Logic suggests that climate change has little to do with this natural catastrophe.”

Lowe suggested the fires were caused by campfires, sparks from electric transmission lines, “discarded cigarettes”, and “arson”. Blaming climate-influenced wildfires entirely on arsonists is a common trope used by climate science deniers. An analysis by the World Weather Attribution initiative in March 2020 estimated that the bushfires had been made 30 percent more likely by human-induced climate change. 

When challenged on his remarks during the session, Lowe repeated that the fires had “nothing to do” with “dryness or heat”, adding that “we’ve had bushfires in Australia… for many centuries” and that “The biggest fires happened in 1974-75”. The claim that extreme weather has been worse in the past is another familiar climate denial argument. 

In May 2023, Lowe also appeared to defend physical confrontations with climate protesters. He shared a video on X (formerly known as Twitter) of a man who was stopped by police for grabbing climate protesters, and said it was a “scandal” that officers were confronting a person who was “doing their job for them” by “removing these climate loons from blocking up the roads”.

Reform UK’s Anti-Climate Platform

Lowe’s views on climate science and net zero correspond with the policies of his political party. 

Reform UK campaigns for net zero to be scrapped, claiming that “we must not impoverish ourselves in pursuit of unaffordable, unachievable global CO2 targets.”

Despite holding shares in two green tech companies, in July’s general election Lowe stood on a platform that claimed “net zero is crippling our economy” and that “renewables are not cheaper than fossil fuels”. Reform’s manifesto said that: “Our bills have increased dramatically in line with the huge increase in renewables capacity over the last 15 years.”

In reality, energy prices have risen dramatically since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine due to the UK’s dependence on gas. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Britain was the worst hit country in Western Europe following the invasion because of its over-reliance on gas.

Reform’s hostility to net zero can be explained by its opposition to climate science. Prior to the 2024 election campaign, Reform’s policy agenda promoted climate science denial , claiming that “climate change has happened for millions of years, before man made CO2 emissions, and will always change”. 

Authors working for the world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have said that “it is a statement of fact, we cannot be any more certain; it is unequivocal and indisputable that humans are warming the planet”.

The IPCC has stated that we are in the midst of “widespread and rapid [changes] … unprecedented over many centuries, to many thousands of years”.

Of the £2.5 million that Reform UK received in donations between the 2019 election and the start of the 2024 campaign, around 92 percent (£2.3 million) of that income was given by fossil fuel interests, polluting industries, or climate science deniers.

Farage has himself denied established climate science. Speaking on GB News in August 2021, Farage said that he was “very much an environmentalist” and that he couldn’t “abide things like plastics in our seas, pollution in our rivers.” However, on the issue of climate change, he added: “What annoys me though, is this complete obsession with carbon dioxide almost to the exclusion of everything else, the alarmism that comes with it, based on dodgy predictions and science.”

The IPCC has stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought”.

Polling by More in Common and E3G during the 2024 general election period found that a majority of people in every UK constituency are worried about rising temperatures, including 65 percent in Nigel Farage’s Clacton constituency, which is at risk of flooding and sea level rises due to climate change.

The party’s former leader Richard Tice , who is now its chairman, is also a prominent climate science denier. Tice has claimed that “there is no climate crisis”, and has also expressed the view that “CO2 isn’t a poison. It’s plant food”.

Reform previously told DeSmog that: “Climate change is real, Reform UK believes we must adapt, rather than foolishly think you can stop it. We are proud to be the only party to understand that economic growth depends on cheap domestic energy and we are proud that we are the only party that are climate science realists, realising you can not stop the power of the sun, volcanoes or sea level oscillation.

“The deniers are those who continually gaslight the public into thinking you can stop these powerful natural forces. We must use the energy under our feet, rather than send our money and jobs abroad.”

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