The UK will likely face its hottest day on record this week, with temperatures of up to 41C forecast and an unprecedented red extreme heat warning in place in much of England, BBC News reports this morning. There is blanket coverage of the heatwave and its deadly risks across the weekend and Monday morning frontpages of newspapers including the Sunday Times, i newspaper, Daily Mirror, Guardian, Daily Express, Independent, Sun and Daily Telegraph. The UK’s Met Office raised its heatwave forecast on Sunday, saying there is now a 90% chance the UK will set a temperature record this week, and a 60% chance of reaching 40C, the Financial Times reports. Alongside the Met Office’s red warning, the UK Health Security Agency has issued a “level four” warning for England, which the government is treating as a “national emergency”, BBC News adds. It reports that the extreme temperatures are forecast to impact much of England, from London and the south-east up to Manchester and York. It adds: “London is set to be one of the hottest places in the world on Monday, with temperatures soaring above the Western Sahara and the Caribbean.” London is forecast to be several degrees hotter than Dakhla in western Sahara (24C), Nassau in the Bahamas (32C), Kingston in Jamaica (33C), Malaga in Spain (28C) and Athens in Greece (35C), BBC News reports. The current highest temperature recorded in the UK is 38.7C, which occurred in Cambridge in 2019, it adds. A second BBC News story says heat-related deaths could triple in England by 2050 without government action on overheating in homes, according to the country’s climate advisers.

In their coverage of the heatwave, several newspapers report that outgoing UK prime minister Boris Johnson “skipped” a Cobra crisis meeting on the heatwave on Saturday – “apparently to host a party at his luxury Chequers retreat”, according to the Independent. The Guardian reports that the event was a “thank you party for supporters”. The story makes the frontpage of the Sunday Mirror with the headline: “Boris’s heatrave”.

In other heatwave coverage, Press Association publishes comments from scientist Prof Hannah Cloke, who describes the heatwave as a “wake-up call for climate change”. The Times reports that the meteorologist who created the Met Office temperature colour scale has said that he “never expected” the deep red of 40C to be used on a UK map, with the colour intended to illustrate events in Africa and the Middle East. Bloomberg publishes four charts that show increasing heatwaves in the UK are putting more people at risk.

In addition to the UK heatwave, there is widespread coverage of extreme heat sweeping much of western Europe, which is fanning devastating wildfires in France, Portugal and Spain. The Observer reports that, in the region of Gironde in south-western France, more than 12,000 people were evacuated on Saturday as strong winds “frustrated efforts to contain a fire that raced across pine forests”. The fire, and a second near Bordeaux, have cleared nearly 10,000 hectares of land, the Observer adds. In Spain, firefighters have been “battling a series of fires after days of unusually high temperatures which reached up to 45.7C”, the Observer says. Reuters reports that the heatwave has killed 659 people in Portugal and 360 people in Spain over the past week. The deadly fires in Portugal have killed at least one person, the Independent says. The Financial Times reports that fires in Spain, Portugal and France follow similar blazes in Italy, Greece, Croatia and Turkey earlier this year. The Daily Telegraph reports that the European heatwave is putting UK chemical supplies at risk, “as water levels for a key shipping route run dangerously low and put trade in doubt”. The Guardian examines how newspaper frontpages around the world have covered the European heatwave and extreme heat in China and North America, based on a popular Twitter thread by Carbon Brief’s deputy editor Dr Simon Evans.

Elsewhere in Canada, a village entirely destroyed by a wildfire in 2021 has been evacuated following new wildfire risk, the Guardian reports.

In a story trailed on its frontpage, the Observer reports that UK cabinet minister and COP26 president Alok Sharma has “suggest[ed] he could resign if the incoming prime minister fails to commit to” net-zero. In an interview with the Observer, Alok Sharma said a total commitment to net-zero from the next prime minister would be essential to avoid “incredible damage” to the UK’s global reputation. He tells the newspaper: “Anyone aspiring to lead our country needs to demonstrate that they take this issue incredibly seriously, that they’re willing to continue to lead and take up the mantle that Boris Johnson started off. I want to see candidates very proactively set out their support for our net-zero agenda for green growth.” Asked whether he would resign if candidates were weak on net-zero, Sharma says: “Let’s see, shall we? I think we need to see where the candidates are. And we need to see who actually ends up in No 10.”

It comes as UK publications continue to cover how climate change has featured in the Tory leadership contest. Four of the five remaining Tory leadership hopefuls – Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss and Tom Tugendhat – have now committed to maintaining the government’s legal net-zero target, the Guardian reports. And a second Guardian story says Mordaunt has promised to create “millions of green jobs” if elected leader. However, the Sunday Telegraph carries an interview with Truss where she appeared to suggest she would lift the ban on fracking for fossil fuels in the UK. She tells the newspaper: “On the subject of fracking, I think it depends on the local area, and whether there is support in the local area for it. But I certainly think we need to be doing all we can to lower the cost of energy for consumers.” The Times also reports on the interview. The Guardian carries an analysis on fears for the net-zero target under a new Conservative leader. And the Times carries polling of Conservative Party members, finding only 4% of those surveyed said that hitting the net-zero target was one of their three priorities for the next Tory leader. (Only around 0.3% of people in the UK are members of the Conservative Party.) The Times adds: “Hitting net-zero came bottom of a list of ten policy areas, behind cutting personal taxes, increasing defence spending and strengthening Britain’s global standing.” In the Spectator, director of the Social Market Foundation James Kirkup writes that “none of” the candidates has “an answer good enough or big enough to meet the scale of the financial and political crisis the country is just starting to hit”, in terms of energy bills and the cost of living. Kirkup praises Tugendhat and Sunak for mentioning energy efficiency but criticises other candidates for pledging to cut the “green levies” that help pay for further improvements, noting, in reference to Carbon Brief analysis published in January: “David Cameron tried this genius move once. It added more than £2bn to bills.”

In the US, there is widespread coverage of how President Joe Biden has promised executive action after his climate plans have been repeatedly thwarted by the Democratic senator Joe Manchin. The New York Times reports that, “after a year of fruitless negotiations”, “ Biden bowed to political reality on Friday, conceding that he had been unable to persuade a holdout coal-state Democrat [Manchin], or any Republicans in the Senate, to back legislation that had been his greatest hope to confront the climate crisis”. According to the newspaper, Biden told reporters: “I will use every power that I have as president to continue to fulfil my pledge toward dealing with global warming.” The Guardian adds that Biden issued the statement from Saudi Arabia on Friday after “Manchin’s opposition became clear on Thursday night”. The New York Times publishes an explainer titled: “How one senator doomed the Democrats’ climate plan.” The New York Times also publishes a second explainer on “four ways the US can still fight climate change” with Biden’s diminished powers through executive action. In addition, Bloomberg examines how Biden’s team “slow-walked [its] green agenda in [a] failed bid to woo Manchin”.

China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday released the data on energy production in June, reports China Energy News. The production of raw coal, crude oil, gas and electricity “all maintained growth”, with growth rates of 15.3%, 3.6%, 0.4%, 1.5% year-on-year respectively, the state-run industry newspaper notes. In terms of power generation, the article notes that, in June, fossil power fell 6% year-on-year, and nuclear power fell 9%; hydro, wind and solar power all grew, by 29%, 16.7% and 9.9% year-on-year. Meanwhile, according to another dataset released by NBS on Friday, ​​the country’s steel, cement and oil refinery output fell in June, by 2.3%,12.9%, 9.7% year-on-year respectively, reports Yicai, a Shanghai-based financial outlet.

The NBS spokesman Fu Linghui highlighted the figures of energy consumption, new energy vehicles (NEV) and solar cell production on Friday at a press conference by the State Council, China Energy News writes in a separate report. Citing the data by NBS, he said that in the first half of 2022, the share of total energy consumption met by clean energy grew by 1.3 percentage points, while NEV and solar cell production increased by 111.2% and 31.8% year-on-year respectively. The state-run newspaper Global Times also reports on the figures of NEV and solar cell production. Additionally, China Energy News highlights the “rapid” sales growth of NEV in the first half of the year, citing official from National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) – the country’s top economic planner – saying that the sales of NEV reached 2.6m units from January to June, up 120% year-on-year.

Separately, another report by China Energy News writes that State Power Investment Corporation (SPIC), a major state-owned electricity generation company, has launched two major nuclear power projects at the Haiyang plant in Shangdong province. The first, consisting of two reactors with a combined 2.5 gigawatt (GW) capacity can meet the residential electricity demand of more than half of the population in Shandong province, save raw coal consumption of about 17.1m tonnes per year and reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by about 32m tonnes, the outlet says. The second project, a long-distance inter-regional nuclear power supply project of 900MW (megawatts), planned for commissioning in 2023, can meet the heating demand of about 1 million people, replace 0.9m tonnes of raw coal consumption and cut CO2 emissions by 65m tonnes, the article says. Shanghai-based outlet Jiemian covers one of the launches.

Elsewhere, a separate report by China Energy News says that, according to China Meteorological Administration (CMA) on Thursday, the National Climate Center monitoring shows that as of 12 July, high temperature events have “lasted 30 days, covering an area of 5.021m square kms, affecting more than 900 million people”.The power grid electricity load in several areas ‘’hit a record high”, the outlet notes. Finally, the state news agency Xinhua reports that a forum “aiming to promote EU-China cooperation on climate change” was held in the representative office of the European Commission in Madrid on Thursday.

AP reports that, according to chancellor Olaf Scholz, Germany’s decision to restart coal and oil-fired power plants in response to the war in Ukraine is a temporary measure, and his government is still dedicated to doing “everything” to combat climate change. “In a video message [on] Saturday, Scholz expressed regret over Germany’s decision to fire up 16 dormant fossil fuel power plants and extend the operating permission for 11 more”, says the media outlet. Scholz is quoted saying that “the fact that because of Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine we now have to temporarily use some power plants that we had already taken out of operation is bitter…but it is only for a very short time”. Bloomberg also reports on Scholz’s comments. It reports that Scholz said Germany’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2045 remains in force and that Germany would proceed with its plan for adopting renewable sources such as wind, biomass, solar energy and hydrogen.

Meanwhile, Der Spiegel reports that, much like many parts of Europe, Germany is currently facing a heatwave it is not prepared for. The article says that “temperatures in Germany are expected to rise again…[with] more than 35C possible”. It quotes a brief dossier by researchers and doctors saying that “the Federal Republic of Germany is not prepared for the disaster caused by possible large heatwaves…even the development of long-term heat resilience in cities, municipalities and healthcare facilities is starting much too slowly”. Bloomberg reports that Germany reached a new solar power record amid the heat.

Elsewhere, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reports that Bavarian state premier Markus Söder, who leads the Christian Social Union (CSU), is calling for further relief for the population due to the energy crisis, including “an extension of the tank discount, a state fee moratorium and a follow-up regulation for the €9 [monthly public transport] ticket”. Söder told the Bild: “My suggestion would be a €365 annual ticket for all local public transport throughout Germany.” The CSU also calls for an energy-saving premium to be paid to consumers to reduce electricity consumption if they dispose of an old device properly and buy a new device that uses 30% less energy, reports Die Welt.

Finally, Reuters reports that the war in Ukraine could speed up Germany’s green energy transition despite the reactivation of coal power plants, a study published on Sunday showed. The article explains that an increase in coal-fired power generation, which the German government approved earlier this month, will not raise CO2 emissions in the European Union because the production will be limited by the EU emissions trading system, according to the study. The study’s author Markus Zimmer is quoted as saying that “[Coal-fired power generation] will be pushed out of the market”.

Most UK national newspapers carry comment reacting to the threat of a record-breaking heatwave. An editorial in Saturday’s Times says the extreme heat “underline[s] the urgency of addressing climate change”. It adds: “Yet the strategy of ‘net-zero’ has barely featured in the contest to succeed Boris Johnson. The fact that Britain on its own cannot make an appreciable difference to climate change is no reason for going slow. If Britain is to have diplomatic influence on international climate agreements, it requires honesty about the costs of climate change…Polling suggests widespread public awareness of the need to tackle climate change and pollution. Policymakers need to respond to those concerns rather than assume they are a minority cause…Vague ambitions of action at an unspecified future date will not be adequate to pre-empt them.”

An editorial in the Guardian says: “In one sense the timing is fortunate…Any candidate prepared to stand up in the middle of a record-breaking hot spell and pledge to weaken climate commitments would be unfit to lead this country.” An editorial in today’s Daily Mirror argues that “we cannot ignore that extreme weather swings are evidence of global warming”. It continues: “We either halt it by reducing global pollution, particularly carbon emissions, or we wreck our planet. The scientific evidence is conclusive and hitting net-zero by 2050 in the UK will give us opportunities as well as challenges to green the economy. The cost will be enormous but it is a price we must pay. Because the cost of the alternative would be far, far greater.” In contrast, the Daily Telegraph carries an editorial which falsely claims that “governments have decided to prioritise reversing warming, which is probably not possible, rather than adapting to it”. (In fact, under the Paris Agreement and national policies such as the UK’s Climate Change Act, governments have pledged to limit warming to “well below” 2C, not “reverse” it.) The newspaper is prepared to admit, though, that “the long-term ramifications of climate change and how to address them will have a great impact on our lives”. An editorial in the Sunday Times uses the heatwave to reminisce about the “alarming news” that “99 flake” ice-creams are being sold less than before. The Sun uses an editorial to moan about how officials have been issuing advice for how to cope with the life-threatening heat: “Will this government ever stop treating the nation like children?”

Away from the editorials, many newspapers carry comment pieces. In the Observer, Will Hutton writes: “The experience is provoking the millions of private conversations that ultimately drive a collective response. On climate change scepticism, the right is unambiguously wrong – it might not even prove the route to the Tory leadership. It is certainly not the route to winning general elections.” Today’s Guardian has a piece by Bill McGuire, a professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL and a climate activist, who argues: “Too many of us still think that global heating will just mean that the world will get a bit warmer and that somehow we will muddle through. This is plain wrong. So be scared, but don’t let this feed inertia. Instead channel the emotion and use it to launch your contribution to tackling the climate emergency. Things are going to be dreadful, but – working together – we still have the time to stop a dangerous future becoming a cataclysmic one.” The letters page of the Guardian today also carries the views of Calum Paton, an emeritus professor of public policy at Keele University, who says: “Let us hope that those Tory MPs who flirt with climate change denial feel the heat and have to lie down during voting hours [when choosing a leader this week].” And Saturday’s Times has a comment panel on its news pages by Dr Mark McCarthy from the Met Office who explains that “what was remarkable” in the UK’s 1976 heatwave “is now common”. In the Financial Times, environment and clean energy correspondent Leslie Hook looks at the “vicious cycle” of relying on air conditioning: “Access to air conditioning exacerbates the injustice at the root of climate change: people who are poor produce the least emissions, yet they are also the most exposed to the effects of warming. Meanwhile the rich can afford to buy their way out of it, or at least make themselves more comfortable.” The Guardian also carries a comment piece on “climate-wrecking” air-con units by sustainability consultant Smith Mordak.

Predictably, the right-wing publications promote the views of climate sceptics. The Spectator invites Rupert Darwall to argue that “the next Tory leader should commit to ditching net-zero”. The Daily Telegraph’s associate editor Camilla Tominey says the heatwave means that “work-shy Britons have found a new reason to stay at home”. Trevor Kavanagh in the Sun argues that the “heatwave is no crisis but that hasn’t stopped BBC and nanny state going into overdrive – we need to get a grip”. And the Daily Express allows the climate-sceptic columnist James Whale to make the (wildly) misleading rebuttal to human-caused global warming: “Planets move and we have been getting closer to the sun for thousands of years. Climate fluctuates over centuries.”

Finally, the Daily Telegraph carries a comment piece (not online) by Labour MP Darren Jones who chairs the energy select committee. He writes: “We knew all about global warming…It’s absurd that we weren’t prepared for this extreme heat.” Also in the Daily Telegraph, employment editor Lucy Burton argues “city centres will become permanent ghost towns if we fail to prepare for heatwaves”. An editorial in the same paper says: “There’s a growing realisation within the Tory ranks that net-zero might be a noble cause, but we cannot impoverish the consumer to get there. We need market and technology-led solutions.”

In addition, Bob Ward, policy and communications director at LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, publishes a blog on why the “heatwave faced by the UK and the rest of Western Europe must be viewed as an unnatural disaster”. And the Sunday Times publishes a feature on “how to build the heatwave-proof houses of the future”.

The Financial Times carries an opinion piece from columnist Constanze Stelzenmüller about the consequences of the gas crisis in Germany for Europe. The author refers to the German federal network agency saying that “the situation is tense and a worsening of the situation cannot be ruled out”. Gas prices have already risen by more than 130% since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, to more than €170 per megawatt hour, says Stelzenmüller. She adds that “Germany is falling behind on filling up its gas storage facilities to create reserves for winter”, however, “being asked for solidarity by Germany after seeing it ignore criticism and steadfastly pursue its national economic interest for years may be a step too far for many [European countries]”. The article says there is no European gas-sharing arrangement, only a handful of hastily concluded bilateral “solidarity” agreements. Stelzenmüller concludes that an EU-wide energy security strategy is needed.

New research finds that Antarctic bacteria could adapt to survive beyond their “ancestral thermal limit” as the planet warms. However, the study finds a physiological limit at 30C, beyond which populations cannot grow. The authors grew hundreds of generations of bacteria in a laboratory, gradually increasing the temperature to allow the bacteria to adapt. “Larger organisms with smaller populations and living at temperatures closer to their upper thermal tolerances are even more likely to go extinct during extreme heatwaves,” the study concludes.

The third, fifth and sixth coupled model intercomparison projects (CMIPs)  – which formed the basis of the fourth, fifth and sixth assessment reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, respectively – have been “conservative” in warming projections up to 2020, according to new research. The authors compare temperature projections from CMIP3, CMIP5 and CMIP6 with observations, and find that “the observed warming is closer to the upper level of the projected ones, revealing that CMIPs future climate scenarios with higher greenhouse gas emissions appear to be the most realistic ones”. The results “could suggest” that CMIP models have a similar cold bias in warming projections up to the end of the current century, the authors add.