A record El Ni帽o climate phase will unleash unprecedented heat and extreme weather, and the UK food system is vulnerable, climate minister Katie White told New 女生小视频.

At the same time, she pushed back against 鈥減anic and fear鈥� after environment minister Angela Eagle told Britons they should 鈥渟tore a bit of food that can keep you going for a while鈥� in case of El Ni帽o storms and flooding.

鈥淟ook, am I going out and buying loads of extra beans? I鈥檝e always got a few cans of beans, but that鈥檚 mainly so I鈥檓 ready for when I鈥檝e not had a chance to go to the shop,鈥� said White. 鈥淪o I鈥檓 not going out and doing that.鈥�

The UK Met Office, the national weather service, has that the UK is likely to face an unusually warm, wet and stormy autumn and winter due to El Ni帽o, which occurs every two to seven years. While late winter in the UK has often been cold and dry during El Ni帽o, the current event is so strong that it could remain warm and rainy into spring.

If fields become too muddy, tractors may not be able to sow crops like winter wheat, as happened in the 2023-24 El Ni帽o, or the plants could fail to sprout. Continued wet weather could undermine spring barley. Farmers could be forced to spend more on livestock feed and housing, raising meat and dairy prices as well.

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Closer to the tropics, crops like rice could fail due to heat, drought and weakened monsoons. A UK government last week warned that El Ni帽o could increase UK prices for imported foods such as rice, cocoa and coffee.聽This comes after heatwaves and drought linked to global warming reduced crop yields in the northern hemisphere this summer, resulting in the worst-ever wheat, barley, rape and oat harvest in the UK. 聽

鈥淲e will have a wetter start to this winter鈥� On the back of a very dry summer, that is difficult,鈥� said White. 鈥淭he food system is vulnerable.鈥�

Large countries including China, Brazil and Germany have been building up stores of key foods like wheat, rice, corn and sugar. But the UK doesn鈥檛 keep substantial public food reserves.

White argued that the UK would be better off helping local farms and groceries to become more resilient to climate shocks. A task force she established that includes military experts and scientists will meet in October to scrutinise readiness for climate security threats, including to food.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 think we need to be in a position of grain stores, but I do think we do need to be looking at where the vulnerabilities are in the food system and how we support local production in the most sustainable way,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 going to be working with farmers and also on local supply chains.鈥�

Farmers will probably have to plant more weather-resistant varieties or different crops entirely, according to at the University of Oxford. The UK also needs to reduce its reliance on imports for 40 per cent of its food. But 鈥済rain storage is definitely part of the answer鈥� as well, she says.

El Ni帽o flooding could also threaten housing and infrastructure, and these risks will continue as climate change makes most of the world warmer and wetter. The UK should not only build anti-flood engineering works such as the Thames Barrier, but also restore ecosystems like wetlands to absorb excess water, said White. Extreme heat, which killed at least 35,000 people in Europe this year, is likely to bake the continent again next summer.

The long-term solution is for the UK and other countries to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, she said, a goal that right-wing parties have been increasingly attacking in the UK, the European Union and the US.

Yet the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which White is a part of, is reportedly set to the Jackdaw gas field off Scotland, and may consent to the Rosebank oil field as well. These would result in at least 275 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over their lifetime, equivalent to about three-quarters of the UK鈥檚 current annual greenhouse gas emissions.

White said she couldn鈥檛 comment as the approvals are up to energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh, but noted that 鈥渙il and gas is part of our mix going forward鈥�.

Emergency briefing on the nature and climate crisis

Hear from three of the world鈥檚 leading climate scientists at New 女生小视频 Live 2026

She argued that the growth of renewable energy, which now generates more than half of UK electricity, would reduce fossil fuel emissions over time, pointing out that the UK has almost as many public electric vehicle chargers as petrol pumps. Her department also just 拢30 million of funding for 1000 community-owned solar, hydro and wind projects.

This month, the UN the world will soon fail the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5掳C above pre-industrial levels and will have to rely on CO2 removal 鈥� ranging from tree planting to carbon-sucking machines 鈥� to bring temperatures back down in the future. The UK鈥檚 Advanced Research and Invention Agency is funding 拢57 million of research into geoengineering techniques like spreading sun-blocking particles in the atmosphere.

White said the UK has no plans to deploy geoengineering and she is concentrating on reducing climate impacts in the near term.

鈥淢y focus as climate minister is鈥� adaptation and resilience because I know that next summer is likely to be very, very hot,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut also for this winter, how do we accelerate electrification? Because that is the best way to bring people鈥檚 bills down.鈥�

Israeli airstrikes on oil facilities in Tehran on 7 March led to sulphur dioxide emissions equivalent to a small volcanic eruption, potentially exposing people as far away as China to acid rain and toxic air pollution.

As part of the US and Israeli campaign against Iran, warplanes several oil depots and a refinery that night, sparking that lit up the sky and smoke for days. Black rain containing soot and hydrocarbons fell on the Iranian capital, and residents reported eye and skin irritation and difficulty breathing.

Now, data from a new generation of Chinese satellites has shown that the plume of sulphur dioxide released by these explosions and fires covered 300,000 square kilometres, passing over Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and China.

The brief attack prompted a days-long spike in emissions, injecting a total of 29,800 tonnes of sulphur dioxide, according to at Wuhan University in China and his colleagues. For comparison, Iceland鈥檚 Eyjafjallaj枚kull volcano was emitting about 聽per day when its ash cloud shut down air travel in Europe in 2010.

The concentrations of sulphur dioxide measured by the satellites reached levels that could impair lung function, irritate the eyes and throat, and exacerbate asthma or bronchitis, especially among children and older people, says .

鈥淎lthough the major emission event lasted only one to two days, the research notes that the potential impact on the regional atmosphere should not be neglected,鈥� he says. Pollutants may have been rained out over water sources and agricultural land, potentially contaminating drinking water and food, he adds.

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Sulphur dioxide reacts with different compounds of hydrogen and oxygen in the air to form sulphuric acid, leading to smog and acid rain. During the Great Smog of 1952, sulphuric acid and other pollution from burning coal killed an .

The attack on Tehran released about sulphur dioxide than some coal-fired power plants in high-income countries emit in a year, although a coal plant in a nation that doesn鈥檛 require scrubbers on smokestacks can emit far more of it.

Besides sulphur dioxide, the burning oil facilities emitted soot and heavy metals. According to at the University of York, UK, the massive quantity of sulphur dioxide emitted suggests the plume held harmful quantities of even more dangerous pollution. This might include nitrogen oxides and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, as well as unburned hydrocarbons like benzene, all of which to cancer.

鈥淸Sulphur dioxide] would be emitted with a whole range of other things,鈥� says Carpenter. 鈥淭hat amount in one single fire has huge implications for people鈥檚 health鈥� over thousands of kilometres.鈥�

These fine particles can stay aloft for days, travelling with the wind. It was impressive that the study was able to trace the evolution of the plume over such a wide area, she says.

The plume only lasted for about three days, which probably isn鈥檛 enough time to cause cancer. And the satellites measure sulphur-dioxide concentrations through the entire atmosphere, so the toxin concentration at ground level is unclear. But the pollution could potentially have triggered asthma attacks, strokes or even heart attacks in especially vulnerable people, according to Carpenter.

Arctic fires are releasing carbon stored for thousands of years

A study of soils around the Arctic and boreal forests has found that some wildfires are releasing carbon stored over millennia, meaning higher CO2 emissions than assumed

The Fengyun 3 satellite constellation that the study drew upon provides atmospheric concentrations of sulphur dioxide and other major pollutants to the public within three hours, which could improve disaster response, says Yin. 鈥淪atellite data are useful for pollution assessment and early warning for downstream areas.鈥�

Satellites have revealed the fracking heartland of the US is leaking a powerful greenhouse gas at a record-breaking rate.

The methane escaping from the oil and gas wells of the Permian basin, which straddles Texas and New Mexico, has the potential to warm the atmosphere by almost as much as the carbon dioxide released by all homes in the US annually.

Methane, also known as natural gas, is pumped out of the region鈥檚 wells and captured for use, but the satellite analysis has shown they are also inadvertently leaking 3.7 per cent of that gas into the atmosphere.

The leakage rate is more than twice that assumed by the US Environmental Protection Agency, well above the average 1.9 per cent for 11 other major US basins, and higher than that recorded in any US oil and gas field before.

The findings undermine the dominant narrative in the US that its energy sector has become much cleaner in recent years as it switched to burning natural gas instead of coal for power.

鈥淎ny emission rate greater than 1 per cent or so is significant in terms of the greenhouse gas consequences of using natural gas. And at 3.5 per cent or 3.7 per cent, natural gas is far worse for the climate than is coal,鈥� says Robert Howarth at Cornell University in New York, who wasn鈥檛 involved in the research. Last year, he found oil and gas production in North America was to blame for a puzzling surge in methane levels.

The new research, led by Yuzhong Zhang at Harvard University, analysed state of the art measurements of methane columns in the atmosphere taken over 11 months during 2018 and 2019 by the satellite-based TROPOMI system. Launched in 2017, it started sending back data in 2018 that is much higher resolution than previous surveys and provides daily coverage.

Ritesh Gautam at the US-based Environmental Defense Fund, part of the team behind the study, said the high leakage rates were due to excessive burning and venting of methane to the atmosphere. He says that oil and gas production has grown so fast in the Permian in the past five years that there isn鈥檛 enough infrastructure to gather all the methane. 鈥淭his higher than average leak rate does suggest an opportunity to reduce emissions,鈥� says Gautam.

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The US鈥檚 worst ever oil spill, at a BP rig a decade ago, may have been almost a third larger than previously thought. The finding, published today, comes as the oil giant launched a new bid to burnish its environmental credentials.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 saw nearly 800 million litres of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, which satellite tracking suggested covered an estimated 149,000 square kilometres. But an analysis suggests that the real extent of the spill may have been 30 per cent greater, because much of the oil was invisible to satellites. The study also found that the oil extended much deeper than satellites had detected, with toxic concentrations 1.3 kilometres down.

A US team arrived at this estimate using data from 25,000 samples of water and sediment from the area, much of it only released in recent years by BP, in addition to satellite and aerial images. It used these to model how far the oil is likely to have spread, accounting for ocean currents, temperature and the biodegradation of oil.

The results suggest the spill reached as far as the West Florida shelf, Texas shores and Florida Keys.聽鈥淭he environmental damage extends substantially beyond what was previously estimated both in space and time,鈥� says Claire Paris-Limouzy at the University of Miami, Florida.

Dolphin deaths

While these previously undetected hydrocarbons weren鈥檛 picked up by satellites, they were found at levels 鈥減otentially lethal and sublethal鈥� to marine organisms at different depths. 鈥淭he impact on marine life was, and still is, larger than expected,鈥� says Paris-Limouzy. The spill has been linked to , lobsters and smaller animals such as sea cucumbers.

While the researchers say their analysis should change perceptions of the disaster and the risk from future spills, they note that satellites are still the quickest, main way of detecting oil spills and directing clean-ups.

The Deepwater Horizon crisis . On Wednesday the company said the spill had 鈥渢ested us to the core鈥�, as it announced plans to reduce its carbon footprint to net zero by 2050. 鈥淚f BP is really 鈥榞reen鈥�, its leadership should continue efforts to assess the long-term impact and restore the Gulf of Mexico,鈥� says Paris-Limouzy.

BP has become the biggest oil and gas company to promise to cut its carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

Bernard Looney, BP鈥檚 new chief executive, said today that it was 鈥渘o longer enough鈥� to provide reliable and affordable energy, it had to be cleaner too. 鈥淔or BP to play our part and serve our purpose, we have to change,鈥� he said in a statement. The company said it would need to 鈥渇undamentally transform鈥� itself to meet its net zero ambition.

However, the pledge doesn鈥檛 cover emissions produced when oil and gas is burned by the firm鈥檚 customers, which amounts to BP鈥檚 biggest contribution to climate change.

The company also made no promise to rein in hydrocarbon exploration and production over the next decade, which .

It is also unclear how and when BP might transition into renewables. The company said today that the share of its $16bn-plus annual spending that goes on non-oil and gas work will rise over time, but gave no figures or dates. The company came 7^th in of oil companies鈥� investments in low-carbon projects.

Campaigners said key questions weren鈥檛 answered by BP. 鈥淗ow will they reach net zero? Will it be through offsetting? When will they stop wasting billions on drilling for new oil and gas we can鈥檛 burn?鈥� said Charlie Kronick at Greenpeace UK, in a statement.

Repsol of Spain last year became the first oil and gas company to set a net zero goal. More details on how BP will deliver its ambition are expected in September.