The world suffered an extra 41 days of dangerous heat in 2024 which fueled catastrophic disasters that scientists say would have been virtually impossible without the climate crisis.
Scientists also say that 26 of the 29 most severe disasters this year were intensified by the climate crisis driven by the use of fossil fuels.
The disasters, which included hurricanes, floods, wildfires and droughts, mark a dangerous “new normal” driven by rising global temperatures, according to a new report published by World Weather Attribution, or WWA, and Climate Central late last week.
“The impacts of fossil fuel warming have never been clearer or more devastating than in 2024,” Dr Friederike Otto, co-founder of WWA and senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London, said.
“Extreme weather killed thousands of people, forced millions from their homes, and caused unrelenting suffering. We know exactly what we need to do to stop things from getting worse: stop burning fossil fuels.”
This year saw the world experience recordbreaking heat, with the hottest day in history recorded on 22 July. The additional 41 days of dangerous heat – defined as temperatures in the top 10 per cent of the 1991-2020 baseline – exposed many millions of people to conditions that threaten human health, particularly in vulnerable regions.
The volunteer team of international scientists that prepared the new report compared daily temperatures around the world in 2024 to temperatures that would have been expected without the climate crisis.
They found that some regions saw as many as 150 days or more of extreme heat due to the climate crisis.
“Heat waves are by far the deadliest extreme event,” Dr Otto said.
She added that “if we cannot communicate convincingly” that a lot of people are dying “it’s much harder to raise this awareness”.
This year is set to be the hottest on record, beating 2023, and may mark the first time the global average temperature exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Reaching this milestone serves as a dangerous warning that the world is on track to breach the safe limit agreed upon in the Paris Agreement.
Not just heatwaves, the world suffered a number of catastrophic disasters this year. In Africa, floods in Sudan, Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, and Chad killed at least 2,000 people and displaced millions.
The report warns that if global warming reaches 2C – a scenario that could unfold as early as the 2040s – similar extreme rainfall could become an annual event, devastating communities and infrastructure.
The Amazon, referred to as the “lungs of the planet”, experienced one of its most severe droughts on record, driven by climate change, which made it 30 times more likely. The drought pushed the Amazon closer to an irreversible tipping point where the forest could shift to a drier state, leading to a massive tree dieback and the release of vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Further south, Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands, one of the world’s richest ecosystems, endured a historic wildfire season fueled by the climate crisis. Scientists found that the hot, dry, and windy conditions that enabled the fires were 40 per cent more severe due to global warming.
In the US, Hurricane Helene tore through six states, killing 230 people and becoming one of the deadliest storms to strike mainland America in decades.
The report says climate change made the high sea temperatures that fueled Helene 200-500 times more likely and increased its rainfall by 10 per cent. Just weeks later, Hurricane Milton hit the southeast, with rapid analysis showing it too was intensified by warming oceans.
“These storms are becoming stronger and more destructive because of climate change,” said Daniel Gilford, a climate scientist at Climate Central. “Human-caused ocean warming is boosting hurricane wind speeds, allowing them to reach a full category higher, on average.”
The new report paints a grim picture of the future, warning that if fossil fuel emissions are not urgently curtailed, the number of dangerously hot days will continue to grow by the year as will the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events.
“Almost everywhere on Earth, daily temperatures hot enough to threaten human health have become more common because of climate change,” said Joseph Giguere, a research associate at Climate Central. “Residents in many countries are now exposed to additional weeks of dangerous heat that would have been virtually impossible without global warming.”
The report also cautions that the impacts of the climate crisis are increasingly overshadowing natural weather patterns, such as El Niño, which traditionally play a key role in driving extreme events. While El Niño contributed to some of the extreme weather seen in 2024, the report argues the climate crisis was the dominant factor in most cases including the Amazon drought and the historic floods in Africa.
“This annual report reads like a failed scorecard,” said Ben Clarke, a researcher at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College. “The world isn’t cutting emissions or preparing for climate change quickly enough. The consequences are recordbreaking extreme weather events that cause deaths, displacement, and loss of livelihoods.”
Scientists urge governments to prioritise a rapid transition to renewable energy and scale up efforts to adapt to worsening climate impacts.
“Another devastating year of extreme weather has shown that we are not well prepared for life at 1.3-1.5C of warming,” Julie Arrighi, director of programmes at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said.
“We have the knowledge and technology to move away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy,” Dr Otto added. “The solutions have been in front of us for years.
“In 2025, every country needs to step up, not just to cut emissions, but to prepare for the extreme weather that’s already here.”
