World Weather Attribution & Climate Central, 27 december 2024

When Risks Become Reality: Extreme Weather In 2024

Every December, we’re asked if it was a bad year with respect to extreme weather. The answer is increasingly clear: yes.
Fossil fuel emissions continue to rise, resulting in higher global temperatures and escalating climate extremes that bring relentless harm across every continent. The past 12 months have provided an unprecedented cascade of heatwaves and floods, wildfires and droughts, underscoring the dangerous reality of living in a 1.3°C warmer world than when we started burning fossil fuels.

This report looks back at 2024, highlighting the devastating consequences of climate change and exposing our collective unpreparedness again and again in the 29 extremes we studied in depth.

Heatwaves continue to claim lives, floods devastate communities, and droughts obliterate crops and livelihoods. Although El Niño made some extreme weather events more likely, its influence on extreme
weather was often over emphasised.