Running out of time: COP31 in Turkey needs to act urgently to protect the world from climate change

Summary

In this edition of Climate Change and You, we discuss what the COP31 climate summit in Turkey needs to achieve, the hottest October ever, and why soon we might not have any Himalayan glaciers left

It was in November 2024 that Sayantan and I started Climate Change & You; we're so pleased that the newsletter has been such a success over the past two years. Climate change is constantly shaping the way we live, sometimes in unforeseen ways, and Climate Change & You is our attempt not just to keep you updated on the latest news, but also to explain the changes affecting our daily lives. We thank you for your continued support!

When I was writing the first edition two years ago, the COP29 international climate summit was underway in Azerbaijan, and this year COP31 is being held in Antalya, Turkey. This year's summit is crucial because it's high time we saw real breakthroughs in international climate negotiations. For too long, the needle has moved far too slowly in the fight to end carbon emissions and stop global warming. Eleven years on from the historic Paris Agreement, the question is no longer what needs to be done to stop skyrocketing global temperatures, but how to best do it.

And so, the theme for this year's COP is 'implementation'. There are a few clear goals that need to be addressed to clear negotiation bottlenecks, and if Antalya can show the way, then we will all be going into 2027 with a greater sense of hope.

So, what's on the agenda this year? The single biggest issue is climate finance and how countries will get it. To put it in simple terms, the world's poorer countries urgently need money to a) prepare for the daily catastrophes that a changing climate is throwing their way, and b) transition their economies from fossil fuels to renewable energy without an economic breakdown. The money is supposed to come from rich countries, namely the EU nations, UK and the US, because it's their historical carbon emissions that are causing the climate crisis.

All parties agree on this fact (except the US, because Donald Trump withdrew it from the COP process as soon as he became President), and Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement explicitly states this. Getting developed countries to part with the cash has, however, been an uphill task. The Paris Agreement stated that developed countries should pay $100 billion a year to developing countries starting in 2020. That goal was never reached, and last year's COP established that climate finance needs to be tripled by 2035. That means $300 billion a year, and a broader effort to raise $1.3 trillion annually by 2035 from public and private resources. But the best (and most equitable) way to do this remained undecided, and hopefully COP31 will establish a clear and effective mechanism rooted in accountability.

The other big agenda items this year are how to hold countries to their existing climate commitments (and get them to raise their ambition), while speeding up the global shift to clean energy sources. This is crucial because 70% of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from the world's energy systems. As one UN document puts it, "Electrification is emerging as a central theme of the COP31 Action Agenda and negotiations. Expanding electrification combined with renewable energy deployment, modernization of grids, and energy efficiency improvement can reduce dependence on high-emitting fuels and bring emissions down."

A recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report laid out the goals in stark terms. The world's governments need to cut GHG emissions by 18% by 2030, 45% by 2035, and 69% by 2040 (all relative to 2025 levels) to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by 2100.

STATE OF THE CLIMATE

Running out of time

The COP process needs to deliver some much-needed consensus soon, because we're running out of time. That is the message of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) 's climate update report, published on the first day of COP31. The State of the Climate Update 2026 report summarises the ways climate impacts are ratcheting up each year and the steps the world's governments urgently need to take. The main takeaways are these:

--The mean average surface temperature between January and September this year was 1.47 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times (1850-1900). This puts 2026 on course to become one of the hottest years on record, and 2023-2026 to be the four hottest years ever recorded.

--The heat is being cranked up because the concentration of atmospheric GHGs is increasing at an alarming rate due to fossil fuel use. The level of CO2 -- the primary GHG -- was 356.42PPM (parts per million) in 1992, when the world's governments created the COP process. In 2025, it was 426.8ppm, trapping more solar radiation than ever before. Since 1750, atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased by 53%.

--The global ocean absorbs 90% of the heat trapped on Earth, and is heating up at an unprecedented rate. 2026 is on track to become the tenth consecutive year of record ocean heat. The current El Niño in the tropical Pacific is releasing more ocean heat into the atmosphere than in previous episodes, simply because more heat is stored in the ocean due to CO2 emissions.

--Earth's energy imbalance (the amount of heat reflected back into space vs. the amount of heat trapped in the atmosphere) is also increasing. It is currently rising at 0.3W/sqm, compared with 0.13W/sqm between 1960 and 2025.

--The Earth's cryosphere (planetary water that exists in a solid state) is melting fast. Around the world, glaciers lost over 400 gigatonnes of ice in 2025, making it the fourth consecutive year of mass loss across all of the planet's 19 major glaciated regions, including the Himalaya.

--As a result, global risk is multiplying. The report makes special mention of the catastrophic ice rock avalanche flood in Nepal in August, and India's April heatwave, which exposed 146.5 million people to extreme heat.

THE NEWS IN BRIEF

-This explainer in The Guardian is an excellent primer on all the issues before COP31, and how the main goals could be achieved in Turkey.

-This opinion piece in the Hindustan Times lays out the case for urgent climate finance and what COP31 needs to do to achieve it.

-India should pay its hill states a 'green bonus' for maintaining their forest cover, this Mint opinion piece argues, but only if they achieve their conservation goals.

CLIMATE CHANGE TRACKER

Going, going, gone

1.5 degrees of warming is often considered the safety threshold for climate change impacts. As the UN stated a few months ago, it is now inevitable that we will overshoot that threshold in a few years (the world is currently about 1.4 degrees Celsius hotter than the baseline global temperature of 1900). However, even this relatively lower rate of heating is causing permanent damage to the Earth's cryosphere.

According to a new report from the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, written by 80 scientists, the 1.5 degrees overshoot needs to be contained for as short a duration as possible. Even a temporary overshoot will trigger ice and glacier loss at a massive scale, and damage the cryosphere for centuries. Under current global policies, the world is projected to warm by at least 2.8 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, which would be catastrophic for Earth's glaciers, snow, and ice cover.

The report warns that even if heating were brought back below 1.5 degrees by 2100, the damage would still be severe, and that governments should make every effort to bring heating down to under 1 degree Celsius by the end of the century to avoid catastrophic melting. In the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, for example, with 2.8-3.0 degrees of warming, only 43% of glacier cover would remain, while at 1.5 degrees of warming just 83% of ice mass would remain. Under 1 degree of warming, we would see the amount of snow and ice we are accustomed to.

PRIME NUMBER

1.75

Warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is catastrophic for many Earth systems. And this risk increases for every subsequent fraction of warming. Which is why the fact that October warming went way beyond that limit should set off alarm bells. The EU's premier climate agency, Copernicus, announced on Saturday that last month was the hottest October on record globally, with the average global surface temperature 1.75 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Moreover, it was the third consecutive month to breach 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming. The planet is currently warming at 0.3 degrees Celsius per decade, and with a Super El Niño raising the baseline heat, scientists worry we may breach 2 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the next decade. That would be catastrophic.

That's it from me, dear reader. Sayantan will be back in a fortnight with the next edition of Climate Change & You.