Methane emissions from the global energy sector remain stubbornly high, with no clear signs of decline, even as countries ramp up climate commitments. A new report by the International Energy Agency warns that closing this gap could not only curb warming but also significantly ease global gas shortages.

Released as part of the Global Methane Tracker 2026, the analysis shows that tried-and-tested measures could unlock up to 200 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas annually—a volume that could reshape supply dynamics during a time of geopolitical strain.

Methane emissions plateau despite rising commitments

Despite pledges now covering over half of global oil and gas production, methane emissions from fossil fuels remained near record highs in 2025. The report highlights a widening “implementation gap” between ambition and actual reductions.

Around 70% of emissions are concentrated in just 10 countries, underscoring how targeted action could deliver outsized results. At the same time, performance varies drastically, with the most efficient producers emitting over 100 times less methane than the worst performers.

Energy crisis sharpens urgency

The urgency is heightened by ongoing disruptions in global energy markets, particularly the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has cut close to 20% of global LNG supply.

The IEA estimates that 15 bcm of gas could be made available quickly through existing methane abatement measures in key exporting and importing countries. Over time, broader action could deliver nearly 100 bcm annually, with another 100 bcm unlocked by eliminating non-emergency gas flaring.

“This is not only a climate issue,” said Tim Gould. “There are also major energy security benefits that can come from tackling methane and flaring, especially at a time when the world is urgently looking for additional supply amid the current crisis.”

Low-cost solutions within reach

The report emphasises that around 70% of methane emissions—roughly 85 million tonnes—can be reduced using existing technologies. Notably, over 35 million tonnes could be avoided at no net cost, making methane abatement one of the most cost-effective climate actions available.

A major share of emissions—about 80% in oil and gas—comes from upstream operations, making this a critical focus area for policymakers.

Coal sector under scrutiny

Experts say the coal sector remains a blind spot in global methane mitigation efforts.

“Coal, one of the biggest methane culprits, is still being ignored,” said Sabina Assan of Ember. “There are cost-effective technologies available today, so this is a low-hanging fruit for tackling methane. We can’t let coal mines off the hook any longer.”

India and other major emitters need sharper focus

For countries like India, the report and accompanying expert commentary point to an urgent need to prioritise methane from coal mining—an area often overlooked in climate strategies.

“Methane emissions from coal mining have not received enough attention,” said Rajasekhar Modadugu. “Major coal mining countries, including India, should focus on existing technologies and the feasibility of capturing or eliminating these emissions.”

Satellites and policy frameworks gaining traction

The report also highlights the growing role of satellite monitoring in identifying large methane leaks, alongside new frameworks developed with international bodies to help governments respond more effectively.

With improved data transparency and emerging markets for low-methane fuels, the IEA suggests the groundwork is already in place. The challenge now lies in execution.

As Gould put it, “Setting targets is only a first step—real progress depends on policies, implementation plans and concrete action

Climate change is rewriting the boundaries between human spaces and snake habitats. Kerala’s deadly summer of 2026 is the latest — and most visible — chapter in a global crisis hiding in plain sight.

By Dipin Damodharan & Lakshmi Narayanan

The pencil drawing of a crowned king is still on the wall. It sits low — only as high as a small boy could reach. Dikshal was eight years old when he drew it, and eight years old when he died, bitten by a cobra that had slipped into his home in Chirayinkeezhu, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, seeking refuge from the punishing April heat. The snake was found later, hiding beneath a sewing machine.

His family had heard about the snakebite deaths spreading across Kerala. They had covered the gaps in their walls with sheets, reasoning that the heat inside would keep snakes away. They had never seen a venomous snake near their home before. When Dikshal woke complaining of a wound, his father Dileep could not make out the bite mark — there was only one puncture, not the two most people expect. The family rushed him to the nearest taluk hospital. Staff, uncertain whether it was a snakebite, did not administer anti-venom. By the time Dikshal reached the Medical College Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram, he had stopped breathing.

He was not alone. On April 18, eight-year-old Aljo from Kodakara in Thrissur district died after being bitten by a common krait while asleep. His brother Anoj was also bitten and remained in treatment. Within days, Kerala had recorded around five snakebite deaths in a single week, prompting widespread alarm. The answer to where all these snakes had suddenly come from, scientists and field workers say, is not sudden at all. Kerala lost 660 people to snakebites over the last decade.

The Physics of a Cold-Blooded Crisis

Snakes are ectotherms — cold-blooded creatures whose body temperature, metabolism, and behaviour are governed entirely by their external environment. Mithun A.S., an experienced snake rescuer who has worked across Kerala, explains it plainly: snakes depend entirely on external sources to maintain their body temperature. When the environment becomes too hot to sustain them, they do not adapt. They move.

“When temperatures cross a threshold, their metabolism accelerates, their need for food increases, and their natural burrows become unbearably hot,” Mithun says. “They have no choice but to come out and find somewhere cooler.”

In a Kerala summer that has broken decade-long heat records, that somewhere is increasingly inside our homes. As cold-blooded animals, snakes cannot regulate their body temperature or sweat, so they come out in search of cooler conditions. This is also the breeding season, which increases the likelihood of human-snake encounters.

What makes this moment particularly dangerous, Mithun notes, is the combination of heat and hunger. As metabolism speeds up, snakes need to feed more frequently. They are not only seeking cool shelter — they are also actively hunting. The two imperatives together drive them deeper into human territory than they would ordinarily venture.

The Microclimate We Built for Them

Krishnan T.J., a SARPA volunteer and snake expert with years of field experience across Kerala, has a precise term for what is happening to our homes. They have become microclimates — islands of thermal relief in an increasingly hostile landscape.

“Our bathrooms, our wells, our shaded corners — these are now the coolest places available to a snake within range,” Krishnan says. “The water sources outside are drying up. The burrows are overheating. The snake is not invading. It is surviving.”

The ecological concept behind this observation is microhabitat compression — as climate change narrows the zones where temperature, moisture, and shelter align, both humans and wildlife converge on the same shrinking refuges. In Kerala’s case, that refuge is often a tiled bathroom floor, the space beneath a bed, or the cool shadow of a sewing machine.

Krishnan points to the role of ornamental plants that climb walls, cracks in compound walls, and gaps in roofing as the entry points snakes most commonly exploit. “People grow decorative creepers along their walls and think nothing of it,” he says. “For a snake, that is a ladder.” The physical infrastructure of the Kerala home — designed for ventilation and shade in a warm climate — has inadvertently become optimal snake habitat.

Breeding Season and the Invisible Danger

Muhammed Anwar, nodal officer for Mission SARPA under Kerala’s Forest Department, adds a dimension that makes the current moment even more acute. April and May are not just the hottest months in Kerala — they are also when the Big Four venomous species hatch.

“The cobra, the krait, the Russell’s viper — this is their breeding season,” Anwar explains. “The hatchlings carry venom as potent as the adults. They are smaller and harder to see. And they are looking for exactly the same cool, damp spaces that the adults are.”

This convergence — record heat, accelerated snake activity, and a new generation of venomous juveniles dispersing across the landscape — is what transformed April 2026 into something beyond a seasonal spike. Anwar is particularly concerned about the structural features of Kerala homes that create easy access. “Ornamental plants climbing walls, gaps in compound walls, cracks where pipes enter — these are the highways,” he says. “And once inside, a snake will settle in the coolest spot it can find. That is often exactly where a child sleeps.”

Anwar has been at the centre of Kerala’s effort to reduce snakebite deaths since the SARPA programme launched in 2020. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has stated the programme’s goal as bringing snakebite deaths in the state to zero. The infrastructure — over 1,200 trained rescuers, a public app, and rapid response protocols— is among the most developed in India. But Anwar is candid about the limits of even the best response system when the underlying environmental conditions keep worsening.

India’s Hidden Epidemic

What is unfolding in Kerala is a concentrated, visible expression of something far larger across the subcontinent. India had an estimated 1.2 million snakebite deaths between 2000 and 2019 — an average of 58,000 per year. Over a quarter of those deaths were children under 15. Most occurred at home, in rural areas.

India accounts for approximately half of all snakebite-related deaths globally. Every year, an estimated 5.4 million people worldwide are bitten by snakes, resulting in as many as 138,000 deaths and three times as many cases of permanent disability. The World Health Organization classified snakebite as a neglected tropical disease in 2017, with a target to halve deaths by 2030. That target now looks increasingly difficult to meet — not because medicine has failed to advance, but because the climate is accelerating the problem faster than health systems can absorb it.

A landmark study published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases in 2025, conducted by Indian and South Korean scientists, modelled the future distribution of India’s Big Four venomous species under climate change scenarios through 2080. Climate change is anticipated to significantly impact the distribution of snakes, leading to notable shifts in their habitats towards human-dominated landscapes. Under future scenarios, many northern and northeastern states — including parts of Assam, Manipur, and Rajasthan — are projected to show dramatically increased snakebite risk, in regions that currently have minimal suitable snake habitat. The snakebite map of India is being redrawn.

Did You Know? Kerala lost 660 people to snakebites over the last decade. India as a whole records between 46,000 and 58,000 snakebite deaths every year — more than any other country in the world, and roughly half the global total. The WHO has set a target to halve global snakebite deaths by 2030. Climate scientists say rising temperatures will make that target significantly harder to achieve unless the environmental drivers are addressed alongside the medical ones.

A 2025 cross-sectional survey published in Nature Communications found that nearly half of snakebite deaths in India occur outside hospital settings, falling overwhelmingly on rural, low-income households. Dikshal’s father told reporters the family had no safe place to sleep. Kerala declared itself free of extreme poverty in November 2025. The distance between that declaration and a child dying on a floor because his family could not afford a bed illustrates precisely how climate risk compounds existing vulnerability — not abstractly, but fatally.

A Global Pattern

The Kerala deaths of April 2026 are not anomalous. They are, in the language of climate science, a signal. Research published in The Lancet Planetary Health has established a direct correlation between rising temperatures and snakebite incidence. An Oxford University study projects that by 2050, 41% of the global population will be exposed to extreme heat events — with South Asia absorbing the largest share. Similar patterns of snakes moving into urban and peri-urban spaces have been documented in Australia and across sub-Saharan Africa as temperatures rise. According to a Climate Central analysis, in 47 countries, every single day of what scientists classify as “risky heat” was attributable to climate change.

The communities most exposed are precisely those least equipped to respond: rural households with limited access to antivenom, local hospitals uncertain about diagnosis, and families who cannot afford the beds and mosquito nets that would keep a sleeping child above the floor.

The Ecological Argument

There is a dimension of this crisis that public health conversations consistently underweight. Snakes are not the enemy. As Krishnan T.J. puts it: “The snake did not choose to come into your home. Your home became the safest place in its world.”

Snakes play a crucial ecological role by controlling populations of rats and rodents, which spread diseases like leptospirosis and plague and damage crops. The panic-driven killing of non-venomous species disrupts the very ecological balance that keeps those populations in check. Mithun A.S. has watched this cycle play out repeatedly. “Every summer, people kill dozens of harmless snakes out of fear. The rats multiply. The crops suffer. And the venomous snakes, the ones people are actually afraid of, keep coming — because the food is there.”

The WHO’s classification of snakebite as a neglected tropical disease recognised the medical emergency. What remains underrecognised is its ecological dimension — that snakebite mortality is, at least in part, a symptom of ecosystem breakdown driven by rising heat.

What Must Change

Muhammed Anwar’s immediate guidance is practical: maintain clean surroundings, remove woodpiles and debris from around homes, seal wall cracks and pipe gaps, trim ornamental climbing plants, use torches at night, sleep on raised beds with nets properly secured. If a snake is spotted, do not attempt to catch or kill it — call SARPA. If bitten, follow the Do it RIGHT protocol: Reassure, Immobilise, Go to Hospital, Tell the Doctor. Do not waste time on traditional remedies. The first hour is the only variable that can be controlled once a bite has occurred.

But beyond the immediate, Anwar, Krishnan, and Mithun all point to the same deeper truth: the precautions help at the margins. They do not address the driver.

As long as temperatures continue to rise — compressing the thermal refuges available to both humans and reptiles, pushing snakes into spaces that used to be ours alone — the encounters will multiply. Kerala’s SARPA programme is one of the most sophisticated snakebite response systems in India. It cannot outrun the climate.

The snakes entering Kerala’s bedrooms and hiding beneath its sewing machines are not acting out of aggression. They are doing what every living creature does when its habitat becomes uninhabitable. They are looking for somewhere cooler to survive.

So, increasingly, are we.

Climate models converge on a familiar disruption—with new uncertainties

A subtle but consequential shift is unfolding across the tropical Pacific. After months of relative calm, ocean surface temperatures are climbing again—an early signal that El Niño may return by mid-2026, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

The agency’s latest seasonal outlook suggests that the climate system is moving decisively away from neutral conditions. By the May–July window, models indicate a strong likelihood of El Niño forming, with further intensification possible as the year progresses.

“Climate models are now strongly aligned,” says Wilfran Moufouma Okia, pointing to growing confidence in forecasts that, just months ago, remained uncertain.

The quiet power of ENSO

At the centre of this shift lies the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)—a vast, coupled ocean-atmosphere system that acts as one of Earth’s most powerful climate regulators. Its warm phase, El Niño, is defined by elevated sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific.

Though cyclical, ENSO is far from predictable. Events typically emerge every two to seven years, lasting up to a year. Yet each iteration differs in intensity, spatial structure and downstream effects.

This variability is precisely what makes ENSO both scientifically fascinating and societally critical.

El Niño: A world tilted toward warmth

If El Niño does take hold, it will arrive in a climate system already primed for heat. The WMO projects a near-global prevalence of above-average land temperatures in the coming season, with especially strong signals across parts of North America, Europe and northern Africa.

El Niño tends to nudge global temperatures upward by releasing heat stored in the Pacific Ocean into the atmosphere. When layered onto long-term warming driven by greenhouse gases, the effect can be pronounced—as seen in 2024, which set new global temperature records.

Still, scientists are careful not to overstate the connection. Climate change has not been shown to increase the frequency of El Niño events. What it does appear to do is amplify their consequences—intensifying rainfall extremes, droughts and heatwaves in a warmer, more moisture-laden atmosphere.

Rainfall rearranged

El Niño’s influence extends well beyond temperature. It reorganises atmospheric circulation, shifting rainfall belts and storm tracks across continents.

Historically, El Niño years bring:

• Wetter conditions in parts of South America, East Africa and the southern United States
• Drier conditions across Australia, Indonesia and sections of South Asia

At the same time, the Pacific hurricane season often becomes more active, while the Atlantic basin tends to quieten.

Yet these are tendencies, not guarantees. Each event unfolds with its own geographical signature.

The forecasting challenge

Despite improving models, predicting ENSO remains notoriously difficult—particularly during the Northern Hemisphere spring. This period, known as the “spring predictability barrier,” is when forecasts are most prone to error.

“It is a transitional time for the climate system,” Okia explains. “Confidence improves after April, as the signal becomes clearer.”

For now, projections suggest that the developing El Niño could be moderate to strong, though the full trajectory will only become apparent in the months ahead.

Why it matters now

For policymakers, farmers and disaster planners, the implications are immediate. ENSO forecasts inform decisions on crop cycles, water storage, and emergency preparedness months in advance.

But there is a broader scientific significance, too. Each El Niño event offers a natural experiment—an opportunity to observe how a warming world responds to one of its most powerful internal oscillations.

If 2026 does usher in another El Niño, it will not simply be a repeat of past events. It will be a test of how climate variability and climate change now interact in real time.

And increasingly, those two forces are no longer easy to separate.