Each December, individuals ask us how extreme the 12 months’s excessive climate occasions have been. To reply this query, we’ve partnered with Local weather Central to provide a report that opinions among the most important occasions and highlights findings from our attribution research. It additionally consists of new evaluation trying on the variety of harmful warmth days added by local weather change in 2024 and world resolutions for 2025 to work towards a safer, extra sustainable world.

Key messages

• Excessive climate reached harmful new heights in 2024. This 12 months’s record-breaking temperatures fueled unrelenting heatwaves, drought, wildfire, storms and floods that killed 1000’s of individuals and compelled thousands and thousands from their properties. This distinctive 12 months of utmost climate reveals how harmful life has already turn into with 1.3°C of human-induced warming, and highlights the urgency of transferring away from planet-heating fossil fuels as shortly as potential.
• Local weather change contributed to the deaths of no less than 3,700 individuals and the displacement of thousands and thousands in 26 climate occasions we studied in 2024. These have been only a small fraction of the 219 occasions that met our set off standards, used to determine probably the most impactful climate occasions. It’s seemingly the full variety of individuals killed in excessive climate occasions intensified by local weather change this 12 months is within the tens, or tons of of 1000’s. 
• Globally, local weather change added on common 41 extra days of harmful warmth in 2024 that threatened individuals’s well being, based on new evaluation by Local weather Central. The international locations that skilled the best variety of harmful warmth days are overwhelmingly small island and creating states, who’re extremely weak and regarded to be on the frontlines of local weather change. The evaluation highlights the vast reaching impacts of utmost warmth which are underreported and never effectively understood.  
• Many excessive occasions that befell to start with of 2024 have been influenced by El Niño. Nonetheless, most of our research discovered that local weather change performed an even bigger function than El Niño in fueling these occasions, together with the historic drought within the Amazon. That is per the truth that, because the planet warms, the affect of local weather change more and more overrides different pure phenomena affecting the climate. 
• Document-breaking world temperatures in 2024 translated to record-breaking downpours. From Kathmandu, to Dubai, to Rio Grande do Sul, to the Southern Appalachians, the final 12 months have been marked by a lot of devastating floods. Of the 16 floods we studied, 15 have been pushed by local weather change-amplified rainfall. The consequence displays the fundamental physics of local weather change — a hotter environment tends to carry extra moisture, resulting in heavier downpours. Shortfalls in early warning and evacuation plans seemingly contributed to very large loss of life tolls, whereas floods in Sudan and Brazil highlighted the significance of sustaining and upgrading flood defences. 
• The Amazon rainforest and Pantanal Wetland have been hit exhausting by local weather change in 2024, with extreme droughts and wildfires main to very large biodiversity loss. The Amazon is the world’s most vital land-based carbon sink, making it essential for the steadiness of the worldwide local weather. Ending deforestation will defend each ecosystems from drought and wildfire, as dense vegetation is ready to take in and retain moisture. 
• Sizzling seas and hotter air fueled extra damaging storms, together with Hurricane Helene and Storm Gaemi. Particular person attribution research have proven how these storms have stronger winds and are dropping extra rain. Analysis by Local weather Central discovered that local weather change elevated the depth of most Atlantic hurricanes between 2019 and 2023 – of the 38 hurricanes analysed, 30 had wind speeds that have been one class greater on the Saffir-Simpson scale than they might have been with out human-caused warming, whereas our evaluation discovered that the danger of a number of Class 3-5 typhoons hitting the Philippines in a given 12 months is rising because the local weather warms. 

Resolutions for 2025

• A sooner shift away from fossil fuels – The burning of oil, fuel and coal are the reason for warming and the first purpose excessive climate is turning into extra extreme. Final 12 months at COP28, the world lastly agreed to ‘transition away from fossil fuels,’ however new oil and fuel fields proceed to be opened world wide, regardless of warnings that doing so will lead to a long run dedication to greater than 1.5°C and due to this fact prices to individuals world wide. Extremes will proceed to worsen with each fraction of a level of fossil gas warming. A speedy transfer to renewable vitality will assist make the world a safer, more healthy, wealthier and extra steady place. 
• Enhancements in early warning – Climate disasters in 2024 highlighted the significance of early warning programs, that are one of many least expensive and best methods to minimise fatalities. Warnings must be focused, given days forward of a harmful climate occasion, and description clear directions on what individuals have to do. Most excessive climate is effectively forecast, even in creating nations. Each nation must implement, check and regularly enhance early warning programs to make sure individuals are not in hurt’s manner.
• Actual-time reporting of warmth deaths – Heatwaves are the deadliest sort of utmost climate. Nonetheless, the risks of excessive temperatures are underappreciated and underreported. In April, a hospital in Mali reported a surge in extra deaths as temperatures climbed to almost 50°C. Reported by native media, the announcement was a uncommon instance of well being professionals elevating the alarm in regards to the risks of utmost warmth in real-time. Well being programs worldwide are stretched, however informing native journalists when emergency departments are overwhelmed is a straightforward technique to alert the general public that excessive warmth could be lethal.
• Finance for creating international locations – COP29 lately mentioned methods to extend finance for poor international locations to assist them address the impacts of utmost climate. Growing international locations are answerable for a small quantity of historic carbon emissions, however as our analysis has highlighted this 12 months, are being hit the toughest by excessive climate. Again-to-back disasters, just like the Philippines typhoons, or devastating floods that adopted a multi-year drought in East Africa, are cancelling out developmental good points and forcing governments to succeed in deeper and deeper into their pockets to reply and get well from excessive climate. Making certain creating international locations have the means to spend money on adaptation will defend lives and livelihoods, and create a stabler and extra equitable world.