The record-breaking heat in the UK in 2022 was made 160 times more likely by human-caused climate change, according to new Met Office analysis covered by the Guardian and other publications. The Guardian says: “Scientists at the Met Office calculated that such heat is now expected every three to four years. Without the greenhouse gases emitted by humanity, such a warm year would be expected only once every five centuries.” The analysis adds that the average annual temperature in 2022 was a record 10C, beating the previous record of 9.88C set in 2014, and is 0.89C above the average of the last three decade, the paper adds. The Times, which trails its coverage on its frontpage, adds that 15 of the UK’s top 20 warmest years on record have all occurred this century, with the entire top 10 within the past 20 years. Many other publications carry the story, including the Independent, Daily Telegraph, Reuters, Metro, Time, i newspaper, Daily Mirror and CBS News.

Half of the world’s glaciers will disappear with 1.5C of global warming – the world’s best-case scenario for limiting climate change, according to a new study covered by many publications. The Washington Post reports: “With every additional increment of temperature increase, the study finds, the outlook becomes worse. 3C of warming, the research finds, would translate into a loss of over 70% of global glaciers and result in about five inches of global sea level rise.” The Guardian adds that the scale and impacts of glacial loss are greater than previously thought. Other publications including the Daily Mail, CNN and the Independent have the story. Read Carbon Brief’s summary for a full breakdown of the new findings.

The World Bank is considering making action on climate change “more central to its mission”, according to a draft roadmap seen by Climate Home News. It reports: “The 20-page document, dated 18 December, says the bank will ‘broaden’ beyond its current ‘twin goals’ of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. Its new mission ‘will emphasise the importance of sustainability and resilience to reflect more clearly that our mission includes global public goods (GPGs), such as climate change’.” Climate Home News adds that the document “suggests changing rules so the bank lends more of its money, switching focus from the world’s poorest countries to more polluting middle-income ones and factoring climate vulnerability into its borrowing criteria”. An adviser for Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley, who has led calls for the bank to reform, tells Climate Home News that the draft plan was “too little, too slow”.

Farmers in England will receive increased payments for protecting and boosting nature on their land, the UK government has said as it faces pressure to deliver on its long-awaited post-Brexit “environmental land management scheme” (Elms). BBC News reports: “It is hoped the increase in payment rates will encourage more farmers to sign up to new environmental land management schemes (Elms)…Farmers’ union the NFU welcomed the rise but warned it could be ‘too little too late’ in the economic climate.” Press Association reports that farming minister Mark Spencer announced up to £1,000 extra cash for English farmers protecting nature under the new “sustainable farming incentive” (SFI) at the Oxford Farming Conference. He added that there will also be an average increase of 10% in payment rates for farmers who are in Countryside Stewardship agreements for “ongoing work such as maintaining bird-friendly seed margins, creating scrub habitat, and managing upland grass areas to provide habitat for bugs and ground-nesting birds”, according to PA. The Daily Telegraph adds that farmers are also set to be paid double for planting new hedgerows.

It comes as the Guardian reports that the UK government has been accused of being “pathetically nervous” about encouraging people to eat less meat after excluding the aim from its upcoming land-use strategy.

Wind supplied more than a quarter of Britain’s electricity for the first time last year, according to new National Grid data reported on by the Daily Telegraph. The data shows that wind was the second largest source of electricity in Britain over 2022, supplying 26.8% of power. This represents a gain of five percentage points compared to 2021, the paper notes. It adds: “During the windiest month, February, turbines generated 41.4% of national supply. Meanwhile, a windy day on December 30 saw turbines’ output hit 20.918 gigawatts – the most Britain’s growing fleet has managed so far.” The data shows that “Britain had the greenest day and month on record” in 2022, the Press Association says: “February was the greenest month since records began, with just 126 grams of carbon per unit of electricity. The greenest day on record was on December 28, at 52 grams of carbon.” BBC News also has the story.

An editorial in the Guardian urges governments in Europe to take faster action on climate change in the wake of record winter temperatures across the continent. The editorial says: “Warm winter days do not instinctively feel like an extreme weather event. Unlike the freezing bomb cyclone endured by the US at Christmas, or the floods that swept through the Philippines, they are unlikely to cause immediate widespread death and devastation…Yet the heatwave should alarm us all.” It continues: “Economics and traditional national security concerns now point in the same direction as environmental protection – there is no excuse for delaying further. The door is closing fast, but there is still a way out. The UK, and other nations, must take it while they can.”

Elsewhere in the Times, chief business commentator Alistair Osbourne notes that the record heat has prompted “a big drop in wholesale gas prices, with lower demand helping Europe keep its storage plants well stocked”. He continues: “What’s that mean for the Brits? Short answer: energy bills for the second half of this year that’ll fall below the government’s £3,000 price guarantee, at least on forecasts from Investec and Cornwall Insight. The upshot? Sunak and chancellor Jeremy Hunt will need to find far less moolah in the coming financial year to subsidise our energy bills: £3bn on Investec estimates versus £25bn for 2022-23.”

An editorial in the LA Times examines what recent severe storms in the US could mean for California’s prolonged drought. It says: “Living in California in the 21st century means simultaneously dealing with downpours and severe water shortages…So if we get those, then can we say the drought is over? Alas, no. We’ve been running a water deficit for so long, due to a succession of extremely dry years, that average rainfall and snowfall won’t cut it. Even double the normal rain and snow won’t be enough to lift us out of drought. We need to recoup a portion of what we didn’t get each year since the wet winter of 2017, when Californians last exulted that the dry times were done.”

Elsewhere, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal explores how US fossil fuel giant Exxon is “taking Europe to court”.

New research finds that losses in economic growth from “intense” hurricanes could increase by 10-146% in the US, compared to 1980-2014 levels, if global warming reaches 2C above pre-industrial temperatures. The authors use an “event-based macroeconomic growth model” to determine how intense hurricanes affect economic growth in the US. They find a “disproportional increase of indirect losses with the magnitude of direct damage”, which can cause incomplete economic recovery between consecutive intense landfall events. “Higher insurance coverage can compensate for this climate change-induced increase in growth losses,” the study concludes.

European countries need to implement a “steep uptick in overall investment” to reach a pathway to net-zero, investing almost €90bn per year over 2021-25, a new study finds. The authors “conduct a meta-analysis to derive the required technology-level investment shifts for climate-relevant infrastructure until 2035”. They find that the required investment shifts are most drastic for power plants, electricity grids and rail infrastructure. “Our findings highlight the need for sustainable finance policies that take into account the financing structures of these sectors specifically,” the paper concludes.

Compound drought–heatwave (CDHW) events around the world could become 10 times more frequent by the late 21st century, under the extremely high warming RCP8.5 scenario, according to a new study. The authors use simulations from a large climate-hydrology model, satellite observations, field measurements and reanalysis data to assess the physical mechanisms behind CDHWs. “Limits on water availability are likely to play a more important role in constraining the terrestrial carbon sink than temperature extremes,” the study finds. It adds that more than 90% of the global population and gross domestic product could be exposed to increasing CDHW risks in the future, with more severe impacts in poorer and more rural areas.