There is continuing widespread media coverage of Hurricane Milton’s impact on Florida. At least 16 people have been killed as it swept across the US state yesterday, officials tell CBS News. The tropical storm moved across the Florida peninsula on Thursday and then over the Atlantic Ocean, leaving more than 2.6 million customers without power around the state, the news outlet adds. The New York Times reports that the hurricane continues to lash the east coast of the state with rain and that communities have prepared for storm surges and the resulting floods. Officials say the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is able to meet the needs of people immediately affected by the hurricane, but US president Joe Biden says the agency will need more money to deal with such disasters, NBC News reports. It adds that Milton poured so much rain over parts of Florida’s Tampa Bay area that it “qualified as a one-in-1,000-year rainfall event”. The Atlantic notes that the recent spate of intense hurricanes comes after early predictions of a “monstrous” 2024 Atlantic hurricane season followed by an unexpected lull during the typical peak in late August and early September. “It is an indication that our collective sense of how hurricane season should proceed is fast becoming unreliable,” the article explains.

Several outlets, including the New York Times, report on the wave of online disinformation that has accompanied the arrival of Milton and the other recent hurricane, Helene. These include conspiracy theories about the storms being created by the Democrats ahead of next month’s election, or that they are being used to clear the way for lithium mining, the newspaper says. It says the increased threat of major storms creates space for “climate denialists, lobbyists for the oil and gas industry and rumormongers to exploit people’s concern and confusion”. BBC News clarifies that, while such claims are false, “there is a link to human activity because of the way climate change is making these storms generally more intense”. (See Carbon Brief’s explainer.) The Guardian notes that Florida governor Ron DeSantis is himself a climate sceptic, “whom campaigners blame for failing to prepare the state adequately for volatile weather events”. It says that DeSantis and officials in other Republican states “have been reluctant” to improve building regulations in order to ensure new homes are future-proofed. At the same time, the newspaper points out that Biden and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris have not used the hurricanes to stress the importance of climate action. Given this, it says “there is little sign as yet that this US storm season will sharpen political debate about the climate crisis”.

A UN technical expert group has arrived at a decision on a framework for Article 6.4 carbon markets under the Paris Agreement, including a mechanism that aims to prevent developers violating human rights or harming the environment, Climate Home News reports. Meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, ahead of the COP29 climate summit next month, the supervisory body has agreed on a system by which projects seeking to generate Article 6.4 carbon credits will have to carry out a risk assessment that will be checked by independent auditors, the article explains. It adds that the body also agreed on the development of carbon-credit methodologies and carbon-removal activities, with the aim of “ensuring that emission reductions claimed by projects are credible”. This lays the groundwork for the full launch of Article 6 carbon markets at COP29, with the technical experts deciding to hash these details out themselves rather than leaving them to diplomats to agree on, the article continues. However, Climate Home News says it “understands that governments will still have the option of rejecting the body’s ‘standards’ wholesale or directing it to make further changes”. The Financial Times also reports on the news, noting that carbon trading is “among the top priorities for negotiation” at COP29. The newspaper says the technical group was able to overcome “major sticking points between jurisdictions”, such as the US and the EU. It adds that some observers still raised concerns about the integrity of the standards that have been agreed, and about the decision to accelerate the process away from negotiations. On the issue of COP29’s focus on setting a new climate finance goal, the newspaper says: “Little progress was made when ministers met on Wednesday, according to people in the room.”

In a related story, the Daily Telegraph has a piece written by Vivek Maru, chief executive of the legal empowerment organisation Namati, about concerns over a carbon-offsetting project on pastoral land in rural Kenya. The article warns that governments and standard-setting bodies must “enforce fundamental principles of carbon justice”.

Major clean-energy companies have pledged more than £24bn of new private investment across the UK, ahead of a meeting with prime minister Keir Starmer today, the Guardian reports. The article explains that the Labour government is under pressure to attract such funds, as its plans to decarbonise the nation’s power supply by 2030 rely heavily on the expectation of private investment. It points to the Spanish company Iberdrola and the Danish firm Ørsted as being among those promising billions of pounds of investment ahead of the first Council of Nations and Regions event in Edinburgh. The Times says that Iberdrola, which owns ScottishPower, will spend £24bn on upgrading the country’s high-voltage power cables and building more wind farms. The Independent notes that the company’s decision to increase its planned investment in electricity infrastructure comes after the government pushed through a “clutch of divisive solar projects” earlier this year. It quotes ScottishPower’s chief executive, Keith Anderson, who said waving through those projects “sends a clear message” and “gives us a lot of confidence”.

Separately, the UK government has approved proposals to build more pumped storage hydropower projects in England and Scotland, in an effort to strengthen the nation’s energy storage infrastructure, according to the Daily Telegraph. The newspaper says several hydro projects, across up to a dozen lochs, are already being planned in Scotland. In more low-carbon energy news, French company EDF is in talks with investors to raise up to £4bn to finish the long-delayed Hinkley Point C project in Somerset, according to the Guardian. Another Guardian story reports that Sir John Armitt, the chair of the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), has said that the country must get ready for road pricing to make up a £35bn shortfall in tax revenues from the transition to electric vehicles – due to the accompanying decline in petrol tax revenues.

Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald recounts a conversation between former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott and former UK prime minister Liz Truss, at the latter’s book launch in Australia, in which both took aim at climate action and framed it as one of various threats to “the west”. Abbott, a prominent climate sceptic, referred to the “net-zero mind virus” and said “I am confident that the climate cult will not survive the lights going out”, according to the newspaper. Elsewhere, DeSmog examines the climate policy records of the two remaining candidates to be leader of the Conservative party – Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick. It says Badenoch describes herself as a “net-zero sceptic”, stating that she wants to reduce emissions, but not in a way that would “bankrupt” the country. Jenrick has similarly taken aim at what he calls Labour’s “net-zero zealotry” and both candidates have advocated for more fossil fuel extraction, the article says.

England has faced its second worst harvest on record for cereal crops and oilseed rape due to record rainfall last winter, according to analysis from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) covered by BusinessGreen. The overall harvest of these key crops fell 15% on the previous year and was 18% below the average for the past five years, the article adds. The figures have led to concerns about “Britain’s food security in the face of worsening climate impacts”, it explains. The news outlet points out that an assessment by the World Weather Attribution service earlier this year found that climate change made storm rainfall during the period 20% heavier. The Guardian reports that the poor weather conditions hit the rapidly developing UK wine industry particularly hard, with producers reporting that harvests are down by between 75% and a third. Separately, the Independent reports that, with Halloween approaching, “pumpkin farmers are in a particularly scary situation as they face mass crop failures following extreme weather conditions”.

All nations that have signed up to the Paris Agreement are meant to come forward with new climate plans, ideally ones that keep the treaty’s 1.5C temperature goal within reach, by February next year. This includes China. However, unlike most countries, Chinese president Xi Jinping’s decision about his nation’s target “could make or break the Paris Agreement”, according to an article in Foreign Policy by Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air analyst Lauri Myllyvirta and E3G policy advisor Byford Tsang. “The 1.5C target has been in danger for a while, but China’s scale and role in driving emissions put the country in the unique position of being able to single-handedly limit warming so that it stays as close to that target as possible. Global emissions need to peak urgently, and that is simply not realistic without China changing course,” they write. Despite this unique position, the article notes that China “appears to be gravitating toward a weak, conservative set of near-term targets”, with current trends suggesting they will “fall short” of what is needed for the nation’s upcoming goals and its 2060 net-zero target. The analysts argue that “policy inertia and conservative thinking” may stop China from capitalising on the significant gains it has made in the real world, including a significant clean energy expansion and dominance in low-carbon industries. “Weak targets that allow the expansion of the fossil-fuel industry would pull the rug out from under the clean energy sectors that have been China’s star economic performers of the past couple years,” they write. The article notes that China will likely wait for the results of the US presidential election to announce its target and will probably feel more pressure if Democratic candidate Kamala Harris wins. However, it says the Chinese leadership should be mindful of its diplomatic alliances with other developing nations and commit to a Paris-aligned climate target to go beyond “lip service to multilateralism and global climate action”.

An Independent editorial points to the extreme heat and weather events that have marked 2024, most recently Hurricane Milton striking Florida, as clear indications of climate change. “All this evidence of climate change should help silence the remaining sceptics – but even if it doesn’t, the peoples of the world and their more responsible leaders will be reminded of the urgent need to tackle the crisis,” it says. The editorial notes the “deep irony” that Florida is “the home base of two of the US’ most powerful climate change deniers” – meaning Donald Trump and Republican state governor Ron DeSantis. An editorial in the Guardian makes a similar point. It begins by spelling out the evidence that climate change is strengthening hurricanes, including analysis suggesting that the warmer oceans that have fuelled recent hurricanes were made hundreds of times likelier by global warming. It continues: “What marks Florida out is the disparity between the concern rightly given to the consequences of the storms and the widespread unwillingness of many there to acknowledge the causes of extreme weather – still less the role in it that the US plays.” Again, the editorial points to Republicans Trump and DeSantis, but it also notes that the Democrat presidential hopeful Kamala Harris has thrown their weight behind more fossil fuel extraction. “The Democrats, however, have at least diagnosed the problem and begun to address it, albeit inadequately. The other party doesn’t even want to hear its name,” it concludes.

A new study finds that the 2016 south-west Pacific marine heatwave that stretched over 1.7m square kilometres was due to a “rare” combination of an extreme El Niño event and a strong Madden-Julian Oscillation. Using sea-surface temperatures and atmospheric reanalysis data, along with an ocean model, researchers examine the drivers of the heatwave. They find that low wind speed and high humidity both contribute to the “exceptional warming” observed in the region. They conclude: “The hazardous ecological impacts of this extreme event highlight the needs for improving our understanding of marine heatwave-driving mechanisms that may result in better seasonal predictions.”