Climat & Collapse

People around the world suffered an average of 41 extra days of dangerous heat this year because of human-caused climate change. The figure comes from analysis done by researchers at World Weather Attribution and Climate Central. In 2024 climate records were shattered as heat across the globe made it likely to be the hottest year ever measured, with few countries spared fatal weather events.

Every December, people ask us how severe the year’s extreme weather events were. To answer this question, we’ve partnered with Climate Central to produce a report that reviews some of the most significant events and highlights findings from our attribution studies. It also includes new analysis looking at the number of dangerous heat days added by climate change in 2024 and global resolutions for 2025 to work toward a safer, more sustainable world.

Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and Morocco experienced extreme heat in July 2024, causing at least 23 fatalities, widespread wildfires and bringing public life to a hold.

The floods displaced more than 80,000 people, led to over 150,000 being injured and, on the 29th of May, to 169 fatalities with 44 people still missing (Governo do Estado de Rio Grande do Sul, 2024). Essential services were also disrupted, leaving 418,200 households without electricity and over a million consumer units without water. Dozens of municipalities lost telephone and internet services.

De extreme hittegolven deze maand in grote delen van de VS, Zuid-Europa en China zouden ‘vrijwel onmogelijk’ geweest zijn zonder de door de mens veroorzaakte klimaatverandering. Dat is de conclusie van het World Weather Attribution-initiatief (WWA).

The method used to conduct an attribution study consists of eight steps, described here. The first step is the selection of an extreme event to study. After selecting an extreme weather event to study, the first step is to define the event, which provides a framework for the study. Researchers determine the geographical boundaries of the most impacted area, the best index to quantify the meteorological extreme (eg. maximum temperature, average rainfall, etc), and the duration of the event.

Following a record hot June, large areas of the US and Mexico, Southern Europe and China experienced extreme heat in July 2023, breaking many local high temperature records.

Un guide sur l’attribution pour les journalistes - traduction

À chaque événement météorologique extrême, c'est la même interrogation : le réchauffement climatique est-il responsable ? Pour répondre à cette question, un nouveau champ de la science se dessine : la science de l'attribution. Entretien avec Robert Vautard, membre du World Weather Attribution.

Since the beginning of March, India and Pakistan and large parts of South Asia experienced prolonged heat, that at the time of writing, May 2022, still hasn’t subsided.

Une nouvelle étude du World Weather Attribution, qui travaille sur l’attribution des événements climatiques extrêmes, estime que l’épisode de fournaise dans le sous-continent indien «aurait été extraordinairement rare» dans le passé.

All available evidence taken together, including physical understanding, observations over a larger region and different regional climate models give high confidence that human-induced climate change has increased the likelihood and intensity of such an event to occur and these changes will continue in a rapidly warming climate

Whenever an extreme weather or climate-related event occurs, the media and decision-makers ask the question to what extent it is influenced by climate change. For a few years now the scientific community has been able to answer that question for relatively simple extremes: hot and cold extremes, extreme precipitation and drought. This emerging field of climate science is called Extreme Event Attribution ...

During the last days of June 2021, Pacific northwest areas of the U.S. and Canada experienced temperatures never previously observed, with records broken in many places by several degrees Celsius.

In our latest study, scientists from France, Germany, Netherlands, and the UK collaborated to examine whether and to what extent human-induced climate change had a part to play in the cold early April following a very warm March 2021 that led to large scale frost damages in grapevines and fruit trees in central France.