Rome braced for record 43C heat
Temperatures continued to reach extreme highs across many parts of the northern hemisphere on Monday, with the mercury in parts of Italy poised to hit 45C on Tuesday and wildfires raging in Greece and Spain signalling the latest fierce warning of the effects of the climate crisis.
In Italy, where temperatures later in the week could push close to the European record of 48.8C, set in the Sicilian town of Floridia in August 2021, Italians were warned to brace themselves for “the most intense heatwave of the summer and also one of the most intense of all time”.
The health ministry has sounded a red alert for 16 cities including Rome, Bologna and Florence.
Temperatures are expected to hit as high as 43C in Rome on Tuesday, smashing the record of 40.5C set in August 2007.
Key events
Here are pictures showing the impacts of the extreme weather being felt in the northern hemisphere:
Kerry: We can begin to change the broader relationship through climate talks
Speaking in Beijing after a meeting with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, US climate envoy John Kerry has said that the two countries “can begin to change the broader relationship [between them] through climate talks”.
Among the things climate experts hope will emerge from the meeting and the relationship between China and the US going forward is progress made on tackling methane and coal production.
Methane is a greenhouse gas – a gas that traps heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet – responsible for roughly 30% of global heating.
China has pledged to start reducing coal consumption, but not until 2026, and new coal power project approvals have accelerated since last year.
China continues to justify its use of coal as an economic security issue. Meanwhile, the US is the top oil and gas producer in the world and its fossil fuel exports have boomed,
As Reuters explains, China’s rapid growth and increasing emissions have led many – including the European Union – to argue that China should also be contributing aid, Reuters reports. Earlier this month, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said contributions from Beijing could boost UN climate funds.
Beijing has rejected these calls, and refers to its classification as a “developing country” under the 1992 deal. It has resisted suggestions that those classifications be revisited, accusing the West of attempting to skirt its historical responsibility for climate change.
It has, however, signalled a willingness to offer climate finance to developing countries through different instruments, like a South-South Climate Cooperation fund it launched in 2015. That fund, however, has only delivered 10% of the $3.1bn pledged, according to think tank E3G.
John Kerry, speaking in Beijing following a meeting with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, says, “Biden looks forward to being able to move forward and change the dynamics,” Reuters reports.
Earlier this month, meanwhile, the US and China began to discuss the issue of climate finance, which wealthier countries provide to poorer nations for the clean energy transition and climate adaptation, as an area of potential cooperation.
This arrangement, first agreed at UN climate talks in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, is based on the idea that rich countries have a greater responsibility to tackle climate change because they contributed the bulk of climate-warming emissions to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.
More comments now out of that meeting between US climate envoy John Kerry and top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi, as the pair meet as part of climate talks between the two countries responsible for the highest carbon emissions – emissions that are driving the climate crisis currently causing record global temperatures, heatwaves and floods.
“President Biden is very committed to stability in the US-China relationship and also to achieve efforts together that can make significant difference to the world,” Kerry says.
He adds that, “Biden values his relationship with president Xi”.
China and Vietnam evacuate tens of thousands ahead of typhoon Talim
Meanwhile prolonged high temperatures in China are threatening power grids and crops and raising concerns about a repeat of last year’s drought, the most severe in 60 years.
Tens of thousands of people were evacuated in southern China and Vietnam on Monday as typhoon Talim barrelled towards land, AFP reports.
The China Meteorological Administration said typhoon Talim made landfall on the coast of Guangdong province at around 10:20 pm (1420 GMT).
Powerful winds, storm surges and lashing rains were forecast to hammer the southern coastline from Guangdong to Hainan provinces on Monday night, it said.
The forecaster had issued an orange alert, the second-highest warning in a four-tier colour-coded system.
It said the storm was expected to lose speed by Tuesday morning and “weaken and dissipate over northern Vietnam” on Wednesday.
Authorities in Vietnam said they were preparing to evacuate about 30,000 people from the areas forecast to be hardest hit in Quang Ninh and Hai Phong provinces from Monday afternoon.
Talim “might be one of the biggest to hit the Gulf of Tonkin in recent years”, Vietnam’s top disaster response committee said in an online statement.
Wang Yi has called Kerry, “our old friend” following their meeting in Beijing.
US climate envoy John Kerry is speaking following a meeting with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
Kerry’s third visit to China as US climate envoy marks the formal resumption in top-level climate diplomacy between the two countries. The former Secretary of State is the third top US official to visit Beijing in the past month.
Kerry says, addressing Wang Yi, “Our hope is now that this could be the beginning of new cooperation to solve the differences between us.”
China leads the world in renewables – and coal production
Oliver Milman
Joe Biden’s administration hopes to prod China to act more rapidly to curb its emissions, particularly from coal as well as methane, a potent greenhouse gas emitted during fossil fuel production and agricultural development. Kerry acknowledged that China is doing “an incredible job” of building out renewable energy such as wind and solar. “But on the other hand, we see new coal coming online, which undoes the benefit of that,” he said.
China, which leads the world in renewables as well as coal production, still retains broader unresolved grievances with the US, such as over trade and surveillance, but Xie said that the two countries would aim to “seek common ground while shelving our differences” during the climate talks.
“Kerry and Xie are both pragmatists and they will try to move the ball down the field, which is important given the backdrop of extraordinary heat on every continent,” said Rachel Kyte, dean emeritus of the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
Kyte said there is hope the two superpowers could help rally other countries to phase out methane emissions, as well as make progress on the vexed topic of international climate finance.
“The relationship between the US and China is critical to this,” she said.
Questions, comments, powerful graphs? Send them to me on Twitter here.
This is my favourite climate crisis graph. It shows where we are now – and how much worse things stand to get if we don’t drastically curb emissions, especially from fossil fuels. In other words, this is just the beginning.
Fossil fuel companies earned record subsidies in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency, which found that oil subsidies rose by 85% compared to 2021.
China and US alone responsible for 40% of global emissions
Oliver Milman
John Kerry, the US climate envoy, has called for more rapid action to confront the climate crisis in a crucial visit to China that is taking place against a fraught backdrop, with both countries currently baking under record heatwaves and Kerry facing hostile opposition from Republicans back home.
Kerry’s meeting with Xie Zhenhua, his Chinese counterpart, for three days of formal talks in Beijing is the first substantive summit between the world’s two largest carbon emitters on the climate crisis since relations were frozen last August, when Nancy Pelosi, the then-House of Representatives speaker, visited Taiwan, a move condemned by China’s leadership.
The visit comes amid roiling heatwaves across the world, including in the US, where more than a third of the population is under heat warnings and where, in California’s Death Valley, a temperature close to the hottest ever recorded reliably in the world was reached on Sunday. China, meanwhile, has just had its national record temperature set in the western region of Xinjiang, where it reached 52.2C (125F).
This year is likely to be, globally, the hottest ever recorded and represents “real life unfolding before our eyes as a consequence of the choices we make or don’t make”, Kerry said of the cooperation between China and the US, which together are responsible for around 40% of the world’s planet-heating emissions. “The world and the climate crisis demand that we make progress rapidly and significantly,” said the envoy. “It is vital that we come together to take action.”
Second day of US-China climate talks begins
The extreme global temperatures underscore the urgency in talks that resume today between China and the United States on climate change.
US climate envoy John Kerry met Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua in Beijing, urging joint action to cut methane emissions and coal-fired power.
“In the next three days, we hope we can begin taking some big steps that will send a signal to the world about the serious purpose of China and the United States to address a common risk, threat, challenge to all of humanity created by humans themselves,” Kerry said.
“It is toxic for both Chinese and for Americans and for people in every country on the planet.”
Rome braced for record 43C heat
Temperatures continued to reach extreme highs across many parts of the northern hemisphere on Monday, with the mercury in parts of Italy poised to hit 45C on Tuesday and wildfires raging in Greece and Spain signalling the latest fierce warning of the effects of the climate crisis.
In Italy, where temperatures later in the week could push close to the European record of 48.8C, set in the Sicilian town of Floridia in August 2021, Italians were warned to brace themselves for “the most intense heatwave of the summer and also one of the most intense of all time”.
The health ministry has sounded a red alert for 16 cities including Rome, Bologna and Florence.
Temperatures are expected to hit as high as 43C in Rome on Tuesday, smashing the record of 40.5C set in August 2007.
Opening summary
This is the Guardian’s live coverage of the extreme heat, floods and other climate disasters affecting the northern hemisphere.
My name is Helen Sullivan, and I’ll be bringing you the latest. You’ll find me on Twitter here.
Rome is likely to get as hot as 43C on Tuesday, smashing the record of 40.5C set in August 2007. Asia, Europe and the United States are suffering under extreme heat on as global temperatures surpass alarming highs.
The heatwave is happening as the US and China hold climate talks, with US climate envoy John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua urging joint action to cut methane emissions and coal-fired power, with Kerry signalling “big steps”.
“In the next three days, we hope we can begin taking some big steps that will send a signal to the world about the serious purpose of China and the United States to address a common risk, threat, challenge to all of humanity created by humans themselves,” Kerry said on Monday.
Here are the other key recent developments:
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Temperatures continued to reach extreme highs across many parts of the northern hemisphere on Monday, with the mercury in parts of Italy poised to hit 45C on Tuesday and wildfires raging in Greece and Spain signalling the latest fierce warning of the effects of the climate crisis
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Scorching temperatures persist across the US, especially in the south-west. California’s Death Valley, one of the hottest places on Earth, hit 128F, but fell short of the record 130F. Other parts of the state broke heat records, like Mount Shasta at 100F and Barstow at 116.
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Houston, Texas, confirmed its first heat-related death. Victor Ramos, 67, was found in his home in south-west Houston, which did not have air conditioning.
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The intense floods that tore through south-eastern Pennsylvania this week left five people dead and two children missing.
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Wildfires rage on in Greece, where evacuation efforts are under way in coastal towns outside of the capital of Athens. This week will continue to be at a high risk of fires, the Greek meteorological service has warned.
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Typhoon Talim has made landfall in the Guangdong province of southern China. Tourist destinations in the area are closing and evacuation efforts are under way.