2024 has been a year of climate extremes. Hurricanes Milton and Helene have wreaked havoc across several countries, including parts of the US, Cuba, and Mexico. We’ve also seen wildfires in the Amazon, record heatwaves in Europe, floods in Southeast Asia, and severe droughts in Africa.
These are not isolated incidents. Climate change is making extreme weather events deadlier and more frequent.
Hurricanes Helene and Milton were 20-30% more intense due to climate change. Here’s how that happened:
- Global warming has increased ocean temperatures, which were responsible for the hurricane’s faster intensification and stronger wind speeds.
- Rising sea levels made storm surge impacts worse. Higher water levels penetrate further inland, affecting more people.
- Our now warmer atmosphere holds more water, resulting in heavier rainfall. This, combined with higher storm surges, means more disastrous consequences.
In the last 20 years, extreme wildfires have become twice as frequent and intense.
Climate change has made our weather hotter and drier, with more heatwaves and droughts, making forests more prone to wildfires. Bad forest management has also played a part — monocultures are less resilient than diverse forests.
Just until a few weeks ago, Brazil’s Amazon and Pantanal wetland regions experienced their worst wildfires in recent history, with a total of 22.38 million hectares burned.
While many of the fires seem to have been started by humans, scientists found that “human-induced warming from burning fossil fuels” made the Pantanal June wildfires “about 40% more impactful and 4-5 times more likely.” So even in the case of man-made fires, our forests are less and less resilient, and fires spread faster.
It doesn’t stop there. Other recent extreme weather events were also brought to you by climate change:
- Global warming made the 2023 devastating droughts in the Amazon River Basin 30 times more likely.
- Climate change more than doubled the likelihood of extreme fire weather conditions that led to wildfires in Eastern Canada this summer.
- The deadly heatwaves that affected Europe in July would have been “extremely rare or even impossible without human-caused warming.”
- Climate change made the 2020-2023 droughts in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya 100 times more likely.
Scientists have been warning us about all of this for decades. Yet, politicians and corporations have made little progress. Empty pledges and unambitious goals are not enough. We need to reduce fossil fuel emissions now.
Is there anything you can do?
From getting involved in green initiatives in your local community to supporting climate organizations with your time or money, participating in protests and voting for candidates who push for climate solutions, it’s more important than ever to advocate for system change and talk about the climate to others around you. Change is possible!
Sources:
World Weather Attribution, Dr. Helen Hooker, climate change and tropical cyclones scientist at the University of Reading.
Cunningham et. al, Increasing frequency and intensity of the most extreme wildfires on Earth, Nature Ecology & Evolution, Jan 2024
World Weather Attribution
