Frequent fires in the Arctic tundra have transformed the ecosystem from being a carbon sink to a net emitter of greenhouse gases, according to a report from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) covered by the Guardian. The newspaper quotes Rick Spinrad, a NOAA administrator, saying: “Our observations now show that the Arctic tundra, which is experiencing warming and increased wildfire, is now emitting more carbon than it stores, which will worsen climate change impacts.” The New York Times notes that the Arctic tundra acted as a carbon sink for “thousands of years” and switched to be a source of emissions “for the past two decades or so” as a result of fossil fuels heating up the planet. NOAA’s Arctic Report Card, launched at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, also says that the Arctic heated up faster than the global average this year for the 11th year in a row, the New York says. It continues: “The period from October 2023 to September was the second-warmest for the region since 1900. In the Northwest Passage, the sea route that links the Atlantic and the Pacific through the islands of northern Canada, the area covered by sea ice this summer was the lowest since records began. Parts of Arctic Canada had their shortest snow season on record.” National Public Radio (NPR) adds that, according to the report card, inland caribou (North American reindeer) populations have declined by 65% in recent decades, saying: “One main reason is that they’re often eating less. Arctic winters are getting wetter, and freezing rain can create an icy crust on the snow. It’s often not worth the energy for caribou to break through the ice for a nibble of the lichen found underneath.”

There will be “no winners” in “tariff wars, trade wars and sci-tech wars”, Chinese president Xi Jinping told a meeting with “heads of major international economic organisations”, state news agency Xinhua reports, adding that China is “willing to maintain dialogue, expand cooperation and manage differences” with the US. The Financial Times also covers the meeting, which included the heads of the IMF and World Bank, saying Xi pledged that China will “meet its ambitious GDP growth target” of 5%. A commentary in state news agency Xinhua argues that China and the US “share immense potential for cooperation”, as they have both played a “significant role” in fighting climate change and pushing for the Paris Agreement. Lin Boqiang, dean of Xiamen University’s China Institute for Studies in Energy Policy, writes in business news outlet Caijing that developed countries might “shift their emission reduction burdens through unconventional trade measures” to seek “economic benefits” and enhance their “international standing”.

Meanwhile, a second Trump administration may target Chinese companies in the US solar industry, where Chinese investments so far “have gone under the radar”, the Financial Times says. The US’ anti-dumping tariffs on solar products from Southeast Asian countries could “significantly raise procurement costs for US companies and squeeze profit margins”, state-run newspaper China Daily says. Chinese battery giant CATL and Stellantis will invest $4.33bn to build one of Europe’s largest electric vehicle battery factories in Spain, “encouraged by lower costs and government funding”, Reuters reports. The Financial Times trails the story on its frontpage. Bloomberg reports that Europe’s “bid to build a homegrown battery industry to break China’s dominance” in the EV sector is “failing” as EV demand “wanes” [demand is still rising but at a lower rate] and local manufacturers “struggle to master” the battery technology. China has become the world’s “largest offshore wind power manufacturing base”, with the country accounting for 60% of the “global capacity” in “complete” turbines and 80% of global share of “core components”, China Daily reports. Another China Daily article says that China is expected to have enough capacity to “produce 220,000 tonnes per annum of green hydrogen”.

Elsewhere, energy news outlet International Energy Net reports that the first batch of “pilot projects for rural energy transformation” in China has seen “notable achievements”. China says it is developing rules for “green certificates for hydropower”, industry news outlet China Energy Net reports.

Around 20,000 people in southern California were forced to evacuate on Tuesday as a wind-driven wildfire in Malibu burned “near celebrities’ seaside mansions, horse farms and Pepperdine University”, AP reports. The blaze has grown to more than 2,800 acres (11km2) and is currently being fought by 1,500 firefighters, the article adds. It is unknown how the fire started, but its flames have been fanned by “Santa Ana winds”, strong gusty winds that typically occur in southern California in autumn months. The newswire explains: “The withering, dry gusts sweep out of the interior toward the coast, pushing back moist ocean breezes.” Amid the fire, students at Pepperdine University were forced to shelter in the school’s commons and library overnight, Reuters says. The Los Angeles Times reports on a couple that escaped the fire with three goats and a pot-bellied big. Elsewhere, the US east coast is bracing for “potentially dangerous” winds and rain amid an atmospheric river and a developing bomb cyclone, AP reports.

Shell and Greenpeace have settled one of the largest lawsuits against the environmental group, brought after protesters boarded a Shell floating production unit near the Shetland Islands in 2023, the FT reports, in an article trailed on its frontpage. It says: “Under the terms of the settlement, Greenpeace will donate £300,000 to the charity Royal National Lifeboat Institution after Shell argued that the protest had endangered its crew at sea. The environmental campaign organisation shook off the case by framing it as an attack by a big polluter on freedom of speech and by weaponising it to humorous effect, but faces similar attacks from other fossil fuel producers.” The Times reports that Greenpeace nicknamed the case the “Cousin Greg lawsuit” after a scene in the television drama series Succession, where a character threatens to sue the charity. Jesse Armstrong, the writer of the show, donated £25,000 to the campaign group as it defended the lawsuit, the newspaper says. Elsewhere, the Guardian reports that the UK now leads the world on cracking down on climate activism, according to research by academics.

In other UK news, the government has signed the deal to build the country’s first full scale carbon capture and storage plant in Teesside, with construction scheduled for next year, the Daily Telegraph reports. A story trailed on the frontpage of the FT says “Brussels is advising EU member states not to allow the UK deeper access to the bloc’s electricity markets, despite industry warnings of higher energy bills for consumers and a slower transition to net-zero”. The Times reports that plans to spend more than £31bn updating the electricity transmission network in the north of Scotland have been submitted to regulators. The Daily Telegraph reports that energy bills are expected to increase from April, according to analysts.

The Guardian reports on research commissioned by Friends of the Earth finding that the growth of the cloud storage sector in Ireland, driven by the activities of large technology companies such as Amazon and Meta, is so rapid it is threatening the country’s legally binding climate targets. Electricity demand from datacentres in Ireland has grown by 22.6% since 2015, compared with 0.4% for other industrial sectors, the Guardian says. By 2030, the demand for energy from datacentres to serve the increasing needs of the internet and artificial intelligence would “exceed that of Ireland’s entire industrial sector under high-demand scenarios”, it adds. Prof Hannah Daly, report author and a researcher of sustainable energy and energy systems modelling at University College Cork, tells the Guardian: “Datacentres are growing far faster than the renewable energy procured to meet their needs.” The Irish Times adds that the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council has warned failure to meet emissions reduction targets in the government’s climate plan and in carbon budgets – that set carbon polluting limits on all sectors of the economy – could lead to EU compliance fines of €20bn in 2030.

Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff writes that losing power in her family home in Oxfordshire during Storm Darragh highlighted that she is unprepared for sudden changes in situations driven by climate change and geopolitical instability. She says: “Though the capacity to stay warm, fed and vaguely aware of what’s happening in the outside world is never a bad thing in a crisis, dragging some ancient camping gear down from the loft isn’t really about being physically prepared. It’s more about mentally adjusting to the idea that the world is once again more precarious than it looks, and that even the most boring aspects of everyday life can’t simply be taken for granted.”

Elsewhere, the Daily Mail has an editorial on how chancellor Rachel Reeves should cut public spending, saying: “What about slashing billions from foreign aid, which sets the benchmark for waste, or turning off the supply of net-zero cash?” The Daily Telegraph has a comment piece by current Reform leader Nigel Farage touting his right-wing populist party, saying: “Whether it is the unfathomable numbers of immigrants arriving in Britain, the mad dash for net-zero, the housing crisis, or the erosion of freedom of speech and freedom of thought, people cannot and will not accept the status quo anymore.” The Daily Telegraph has another column saying “steel is just the start” and the UK is now “incapable of making anything physical”. Times political columnist Daniel Finkelstein notes that Reform’s efforts to convince people to turn against a milk brand that started feeding cows a harmless additive to reduce methane emissions is “a reminder that populism rests on persuading voters their will is being secretly subverted”.

Greenhouse gas emissions from tourism grew at double the rate of the global economy over 2000-19, according to a new study which highlights “alarming distributional inequalities” in countries’ contribution to the sector’s climate footprint. In 2019, the 20 highest-emitting nations were responsible for three-quarters of the sector’s emissions and the gap between high- and low-income nations’ per-capita tourism emissions exceeded two orders of magnitude, the paper notes. The paper finds that tourism was responsible for 8.8% of global emissions in 2019, after growing demand and slow technology efficiency gains saw emissions rise by 3.5% each year in the previous decade.

A new paper argues that the European Union’s goals to cut emissions by 55% by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2050 “are not sufficient for the EU to achieve its fair share of the + 2C target (let alone + 1.5C)”. To assess the bloc’s “responsible share” of the remaining global carbon budget, the researchers estimated the EU’s consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions between 1850 and 2050. They said the finding presented the EU with a “major challenge when it comes to fulfilling the principles of climate justice and promoting equitable access to the atmospheric commons”.