Wildfires in Canada that burned for more than a year. Floods that paralyzed Dubai. Searing heat waves blanketing the streets of New Delhi. The first half of 2024 revealed the devastating extremes that now characterize the rapidly changing climates of every continent.
Millions of people along the US East Coast will swelter under a heat dome this week in the nation’s most populous coastal region. Temperatures in Manhattan’s Central Park are expected to reach 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) by Friday. Meanwhile, south coastal Florida is in its second week of battling heavy rainfall near Sarasota that is estimated to occur only once in 500 to 1,000 years. Damages could exceed $1 billion.
In a new era of extreme rains, the National Academy of Sciences on Tuesday recommended a major overhaul of “probable maximum precipitation” estimates that guide infrastructure development. Nationwide, estimates haven’t been updated since 1999, and in some cases for 60 years. More than 16,000 at-risk dams and 50 nuclear power plants are both aging and facing new extreme weather events.
The report lays out how to use modern climate models to update the analysis to account for global warming — an acknowledgment that we’re entering a new phase of “extreme weather” and that the U.S. must prepare, said study co-author John Nielsen Gammon, a professor at Texas A&M University and Texas state climatologist.
Weather is no longer like a roll of dice, but more like a rigged die with three sides with sixes or sevens and eights, says Katherine Hayhoe, a professor emeritus at Texas Tech University who studies climate impacts. The very term “global warming” suggests a kind of predictability that may no longer suit our times. “These days, I think it’s much more appropriate to call it ‘global abnormality,'” Hayhoe says. “No matter where we live, the weather is becoming more and more abnormal.”
Greenhouse gas pollution caused temperatures to rise 1.3 degrees Celsius last year above pre-industrial levels. May marked the 12th consecutive month with the warmest global average temperature on record, and the oceans recorded new levels of heat every day for over a year. This has led to extreme rain and hail, more destructive storms and even unexpected cold spells, with temperatures in London, Paris, Berlin and other parts of Europe dropping to below last year’s Christmas Eve levels at the start of June.
But the more striking indicators of today’s extreme and violent weather are the heat and the associated droughts, floods and wildfires. Fires are at high risk in Greece and Spain, with the danger spreading to the French Riviera. Thermometers in Egypt hit a record high of 51 degrees Celsius (124 F) earlier this month. Floods in China have damaged infrastructure and threatened crops, while heat is testing the limits of the human body across much of South Asia. The heatwaves in Gaza have exacerbated a humanitarian crisis. Heavy rains in East Africa after years of drought have killed hundreds and swept away livestock.
Eric Fischer, a climate scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is trying to do for heat something similar to what US researchers are trying to do for precipitation. His recent work has helped document that temperature records around the world are getting colder and colder, meaning, as he and his co-authors wrote in a 2021 paper, “the likelihood of record-breaking weather extremes is increasing.”
Fischer’s work essentially predicted the extremely rare heatwave that hit western North America in 2021, causing the region’s hottest June on record and killing 1,400 people. A study Fischer led last year pinpointed locations where a heatwave of that magnitude could occur. His risk list included Paris, which will be attracting more than 1 million tourists for the Summer Olympics.
“Now that we know these events are happening more and more frequently, we should expect to see more of these spikes,” Fisher said. Realizing that in many ways impossible weather has become possible, he said he’s now investigating the next logical question: “What are the biggest events that people really should be prepared for?”
Looking ahead to the first five months of 2024, this year is set to finish as one of the warmest five years on record, with over a 60% chance of overtaking 2023 as the warmest.
One factor driving the rise in temperatures in the first half of 2024 and leading to an increase in extreme weather is the weakening of El Niño, a warming phenomenon in the equatorial Pacific that contributes to global warming. What’s more, a counterintuitive change is also driving up temperatures: Restrictions on cleaning up shipping pollution have started to reduce sulfur emissions, which are harmful to health but also help cool the atmosphere by blocking sunlight.
Scientists warn that future dangers don’t just lie in excessive weather disasters: Global warming increases the likelihood of “compound disasters” — both natural and man-made disasters occurring simultaneously, or even simultaneously — exacerbating their compounding effects.
A prime example is Texas, where high temperatures contributed to the largest wildfires in the state’s history, and unusually dry weather in Alberta, Canada, led to an early start to the wildfire season.
In other cases, the impacts have spread beyond borders: In March, Saharan dust storms moved north, turning the skies over Sicily yellow and orange and worsening air quality from Greece to Italy and France, including heavy rains in France. Higher food and energy prices have coincided with severe weather conditions, exacerbating the effects of long-standing droughts in Syria, Iraq and Iran, for example.
“The common denominator here is rising temperatures,” said Amir Agachchak, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who studies the future risks of compound events. “Temperatures are rising substantially, and that’s what’s driving these events.” [the disasters] And that probably strengthens the connections between the different risks.”
Some regions have had to deal with a variety of extreme weather events in quick succession. In the Philippines, schools and power plants were closed in April as temperatures soared. Now the government is warning that as the El Niño weather phenomenon ends and temperatures drop, rainfall could increase, adversely affecting the country’s food supply. In Chile, where forest fires killed more than 100 people in February, historic heavy rains are currently disrupting the region’s typically dry climate.
Extreme weather events can be new simply because they last longer than previously expected. In Southeast Asia, for example, climate change means heatwaves can last for months. Prolonged flooding has killed more than 500 people in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi.
Renzo Ginto, an associate professor of planetary health at the National University of Singapore’s School of Medicine at Duke University in Singapore, worries that affected countries risk focusing primarily on addressing the immediate health impacts and ignoring the underlying causes. “In this era of extreme weather, what we need now is proactive action rather than reactive action,” he says. “We’re just perpetuating a vicious cycle of emissions and extreme weather, and humanity is the ultimate victim of this cycle.”
This year’s extreme weather has affected every sector of the global economy, from power grids to air travel.
A study published in April in the journal Nature predicts that damages from climate change could cost the global economy $38 trillion per year (in 2005 prices) by 2049, far more than the estimated $6 trillion needed to reduce planet-warming emissions in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement. According to BloombergNEF, spending on clean technology will reach a record $1.8 trillion in 2023, but that’s still far from what’s needed.
Cows graze on an island of unburned grass in the aftermath of the Smokehouse Creek Fire near Pampa, Texas, in March. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
Making matters worse, some of the world’s most ambitious climate policies are under attack, with voters in Europe and the U.S. turning against plans to phase out gas stoves and sustainable agriculture measures. Emerging markets, which need to make the biggest leap into clean energy, are struggling to secure a bigger share of global green investment.
Still, focusing only on reducing emissions isn’t enough, says Rohit Magotra, deputy director at Integrated Research and Action for Development, a New Delhi-based climate consultancy and research firm. Rapid urbanization means these weather disasters will become increasingly devastating, and cities in developing countries need to build early warning systems and climate-resistant infrastructure to become more resilient.
“Extreme weather events are becoming more intense and frequent, affecting wider areas and hitting the world’s most vulnerable people,” said Magotra. “Adaptation is just as important as mitigation.”
