Sweltering Heat, Super-Pollutants and Why the Next Twenty Years Matter

By Dr Simon Batchelor (OBE) and Professor Matthew Leach

There was a certain irony in discussing climate change while standing in one of the hottest June weeks London has experienced in recent memory.

Leaders from around the world gathered at a UK Government-led event, hosted at St. James’s Palace, and attended by His Majesty the King, to focus on one of the most overlooked aspects of the climate challenge: super-pollutants. The heat inside the Palace was unmistakable. Even His Majesty King Charles III, whose commitment to environmental issues stretches back decades, found the conditions overwhelming at moments, with a Vice-Admiral pressed into service to fan the King while guests continued their conversations.

It was an unforgettable reminder that climate change is no longer an abstract future risk. It is something we are experiencing today.

MECS was honoured to be part of the event, exhibiting our latest research on black carbon and discussing how better measurement can accelerate action, illustrated by ATEC’s data platform. Professor Matt Leach and Ed Brown had the opportunity to briefly meet His Majesty amidst the bustle of the reception. The encounter lasted only a few moments, but it reflected two long-standing commitments coming together: the King’s unwavering advocacy for environmental stewardship and MEC’s determination to develop practical evidence that helps countries reduce emissions while improving people’s lives.

The message from the day’s speakers was remarkably consistent.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres argued that the world has effectively moved beyond the 1.5°C threshold as a planning assumption, and that the carbon dioxide we emit today will shape the climate inherited by our children – and their children. It was a sobering reminder that carbon dioxide remains the defining challenge of this century.

Yet there was also another message, echoed by Ed Miliband and representatives of the Turkish COP Presidency: we cannot afford to ignore the pollutants that warm the planet much more rapidly.

Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for centuries. That means the benefits of reducing it accumulate slowly but endure for generations.

Super-pollutants are different.

Methane, black carbon and other short-lived climate pollutants remain in the atmosphere for far shorter periods, but while active, impose much stronger climate forcing than does carbon dioxide. Reduce them now and the climate responds within years rather than centuries. The choices we make today can influence temperatures over the next ten to twenty years – the period that matters for today’s children, for vulnerable communities already living on the frontline of climate change, and for buying precious time as the world undertakes the much longer task of decarbonising energy systems.

This is why black carbon deserves far greater attention.

For many years MECS has worked on modern energy cooking, demonstrating that replacing biomass and charcoal with modern cooking technologies reduces greenhouse gases while delivering health, gender and development benefits. But incomplete combustion also produces black carbon – tiny soot particles that are among the most powerful warming agents in the atmosphere, while simultaneously contributing to deadly household air pollution.

If we are serious about tackling super-pollutants, then we need to measure them with the same rigour that we increasingly apply to carbon dioxide.

That is why MECS is now exploring how black carbon can be incorporated into the next generation of metered carbon methodologies. Smart appliances already allow us to verify cooking behaviour with unprecedented accuracy. Extending these approaches – by using the same real stove usage data – to include black carbon could provide a much richer picture of the immediate climate benefits of clean cooking transitions.

Such an approach would not replace carbon accounting; it would complement it.

Carbon dioxide tells us about the long-term future of the planet.

Black carbon tells us about the cooling we can deliver within a political generation.

Both matter.

As guests left St James’s Palace, stepping back into London’s extraordinary June heat, the symbolism was difficult to ignore. Climate Week had brought together scientists, policymakers, royalty and practitioners at precisely the moment when the weather itself seemed determined to underline the urgency of the discussion.

The atmosphere inside the Palace may have been uncomfortable, but the conversations were anything but superficial.

If the world is looking for actions that can slow warming over the next two decades while improving health and accelerating access to clean cooking, tackling black carbon deserves to be much higher on the global agenda. MECS intends to help ensure that, alongside better technologies, we also develop the robust measurement systems needed to recognise, verify and reward those benefits.

Sometimes the most important climate conversations happen in the hottest rooms.

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Featured image copyright of Ian Jones photography, 2026.