Global temperatures in 2020 are expected to be more than 1.1C above the pre-industrial average, the Guardian reports, based on the latest year-ahead forecast from the UK’s Met Office. The paper says: “The hottest year on record currently is 2016, when there was an El Niño effect, and the years since have all been close to the record.” It adds that at current rates, the world could breach the threshold of 1.5C “within two decades”. BBC News reports that the world only broke through the 1C threshold in 2015, adding that each year since then has seen temperatures “close to or above this mark”. Its piece notes that this time last year, the Met Office had predicted global average temperatures of 1.10C, with the actual figure in January to October coming in at 1.11C. It quotes Met Office scientist Dr Doug Smith saying: “The forecast for 2020 would place next year amongst the six warmest years on record, which would all have occurred since 2015.” The Press Association, via ITV News, says the Met Office forecast is based on “key drivers of climate change, including greenhouse gases, but does not take into account unpredictable events such as a large volcanic eruption”. It adds that the past decade, from 2010 to 2019, has almost certainly been the warmest in records dating back to the 19th century. The Daily Mail, Evening Standard and Daily Telegraph all have the story.

Major banks and insurers would be subject to a climate risk “stress test” for the first time in 2021, Reuters reports, under proposals from the Bank of England. The newswire adds that there will be “no pass or fail mark when the results are published in the second quarter of 2021, and no individual firm will be named”. according to a discussion paper released for consultation on Wednesday. The stress test will look at how lenders and insurers would cope with 3C of warming, says the Financial Times coverage, with scenarios including a sudden fire sale of “brown assets”, as well as the impacts of more frequent severe weather events. The paper says: “In the most severe scenario, lenders and insurers would be tested against temperature rises of as much as 4C by 2080.” The paper adds: “The BoE is not ruling out naming and shaming individual companies in the future if it feels not enough action is being taken.” BBC News says the exercise is “one of the most ambitious attempts to date to quantify the risk that climate change poses to the financial system”. The Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Independent all cover the proposals from the Bank of England.
Writing in the Financial Times, Bank of England governor Mark Carney says: “The transition to net-zero carbon emissions is both a physical necessity to stabilise the global rise in temperatures and the law of the land in the UK. To achieve net-zero, companies must put a transition plan in place, creating enormous opportunities and major risks…The financial sector can play a decisive role — provided it understands the risks and develops the tools to manage them.” In a piece for BusinessGreen, Stephanie Morton of NGO ClientEarth says that UK financial regulators are failing to enforce disclosure regulations and allowing companies to ignore climate risks. Writing in Time Magazine, Bill McKibben says that putting pressure on the world of finance “could be one of the most effective ways to fight climate change”.

Average maximum temperatures in Australia reached a new all-time high on Wednesday, BBC News reports, reaching 41.9C. The new high pushes the previous record of 40.9C – set just a day earlier – into second place, its article says, adding that a state of emergency has been declared in New South Wales due to its ongoing “bushfire crisis”. The broadcaster continues that more intense heat is forecast for the rest of the week. It says that Australia has warmed by slightly more than 1C since 1910, with most of that heating occurring since 1950. The Guardian notes that Wednesday’s new record high was a full degree above the previous mark set the day before. It quotes the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s manager for climate monitoring saying: “Natural variability and global warming are pushing in the same direction. That’s why we have broken records. The Daily Telegraph, Independent, Axios and the New York Times all report on the new record high for Australia, while Reuters also reports on the state of emergency in New South Wales. Meanwhile, the Guardian reports the comments of a former senior civil servant saying that the country is “not moving fast enough” to cut its emissions. A separate Guardian article reports that 96% of Australian businesses back a target of net-zero emissions by 2050, according to a survey of 200 firms carried out by the Carbon Market Institute.
Separately, Reuters reports on the unseasonal 6C temperatures in Moscow yesterday, noting that the last time the Russian capital breached 5.3C on 18 December was in 1886 – and the usual level closer to minus 6C.

Terence Mordaunt, a major Conservative Party donor, has taken over leadership of the UK-based climate sceptic lobby group known as the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), DeSmog UK reports, citing Companies House records. It says Mordaunt, the co-owner of Bristol port, was a financial backer of prime minister Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign and also supported the Vote Leave pro-Brexit group. DeSmog UK quotes Mordaunt speaking to website openDemocracy earlier this year, in which he falsely claimed: “No one has proved yet that CO2 is the culprit. It may not be.” It says Mordaunt has been a board member of GWPF since 2017. Separately, Bloomberg reports on a commitment to sustainability principles by the hedge fund CQS, whose owner Michael Hintze is a major Tory donor and financial backer of GWPF.

After the COP25 UN climate summit in Madrid ended with “a whimper not a bang”, E3G’s Quentin Genard and Jennifer Tollmann reflect on the year ahead, arguing Europe “holds the key” to turning the unfavourable “geopolitical tides” on climate action. They write: “The expectation towards the EU is that it will lead the dance. But it takes two to tango. In the absence of a climate-active US, all eyes are on Europe and whether it can bring the world’s biggest emitter – China – along with it.” Meanwhile, an editorial in the Japan Times urges the country to “revamp” its climate change commitments. It says: “Whether Japan changes its dependence on coal, the government must consider if relying on nuclear power to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — and hesitating to upgrade its emissions reduction plan because the restart of idled nuclear plants is lagging — is the right path forward in its effort to combat climate change.” Separately, the Economist reports on last week’s COP25, saying the talks were “particularly dispiriting”.

Writing in Climate Home News, Guy Platten, secretary general of the International Chamber of Shipping, writes that his industry is responsible for more than 2% of global CO2 emissions. Platten says: “Many of the complaints levelled at global shipping have been justified. In fact, we concede that in the past we have been slow to respond to the threat of global heating: despite working hard to improve air quality and cut our CO2 emissions, we have not done enough.” He sets out a $5bn research and development fund “whose ultimate aim is to bring about the full decarbonisation of the global shipping industry”. BBC News reports on the $5bn shipping innovation fund, saying the money would come from a $2 levy on each of 250m tonnes of ship fuel burned each year. Its report says: “Environmentalists welcomed the proposal but also described it as too little, too late. They say it’s outrageous that international shipping pays no fuel taxes, unlike lorry owners. Green groups argue that if ships were taxed at the same level as lorries, 70 times more cash for developing clean engines would be raised in Europe alone.”

Mangrove belts of 1km or more can “fully mitigate” coastal lowlands in Central America from economic losses caused by hurricanes, a new study says. The researchers assemble “a regionwide panel dataset that measures local economic activity using nightlights, potential hurricane damages using a detailed wind field model, and mangrove protection by mapping the width of mangrove forests on the path to the coast”. The results show that hurricanes have “negative short-run effects of economic activity”, the researchers say, but that “wide mangrove belts are capable of mitigating these losses”.

Rising air-conditioning ownership in Melbourne, Australia, could see peak electricity demand increase by 84% in the second half of this century, a new study suggests. Using a collection of models, the researchers “examine projected climate change impacts on electricity and gas demand in the temperate/oceanic climate of Melbourne”. With no change in air-conditioning use, “climate change under radiative forcing RCP 8.5 increases peak electricity demand by 10%, and decreases peak gas demand by 22% between 2000 and 2100”, the study finds. However, factoring in rising air-conditioning demand sees peak electricity demand surpass peak gas demand in the second half of the century, the authors note.

A new study suggests a link between the “volatility” of winter temperatures across China and the “precipitous decline in Arctic sea ice”. The researchers focus on “temperature whiplash”, which indicates rapid switches between warm and cold extremes, and find that “northeast-, northwest-, southwest-, southeast-China and the Yangtze River Valley have experienced increasingly volatile winters after 1980”. The study’s observation-based detection analysis” suggests “the dominance of intrinsic atmospheric variability over both anthropogenic warming and sea ice decline during 1980-2018 in driving winters in China to be more volatile over this period”.