(Bloomberg) — Wildfires in Canada burned continuously for more than a year. Floods that brought Dubai to a standstill. Deadly heat covers the streets of New Delhi. The first half of 2024 has exposed the catastrophic extremes that now characterize the rapidly changing climate on every continent.
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This week, millions of people along the US East Coast – the country’s most populous coastal region – will suffocate under a heat dome. Temperatures in Manhattan’s Central Park are expected to reach 35 degrees Celsius on Friday. Meanwhile, on the south side of the coast, Florida is in the second week of battling heavy rainfall so intense near Sarasota that it is likely to occur only once every 500 to 1,000 years. The damage could amount to a billion dollars.
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A new era of extreme rain prompted the U.S. National Academy of Sciences on Tuesday to recommend a major restart of the country’s “probable maximum precipitation” estimates, which determine infrastructure development. They haven’t been updated nationally since 1999, and in some cases haven’t been updated for 60 years. More than 16,000 dams at risk and 50 nuclear power plants, all aging, are facing new extremes.
The report outlines ways to use modern climate models to update the analysis to account for global warming. It’s a recognition that “super wild weather” is entering a new phase and the U.S. needs to be prepared, said John Nielsen-Gammon, a Texas A&M University professor and state climatologist who co-authored the study.
Weather is no longer an even roll of the dice. It’s more like rolling charged dice with sixes on three sides — or sevens and eights, says Katharine Hayhoe, a distinguished professor at Texas Tech University who studies climate impacts. The term “global warming” itself suggests a kind of predictability that may no longer be appropriate for the times. “Nowadays I think it’s much more appropriate to call it ‘global weirding’,” says Hayhoe. “No matter where we live, the weather gets much stranger.”
Greenhouse gas pollution has made the past year 1.3 degrees Celsius warmer than before the industrial revolution. Last May marked the twelfth month in a row of record-breaking average temperatures for the planet, and the oceans have recorded new levels of heat every day for more than a year. This has led to heavy rain and hail, even more destructive storms and even unexpected moments of cold. In London, Paris, Berlin and other parts of Europe, temperatures fell below last Christmas Eve’s levels earlier in June.
But it’s the heat and associated droughts, floods and wildfires that have become the most prolific indicator of today’s strange, wild weather. The threat of infernos is extremely high in Greece and Spain, with the risks spreading to the French Riviera. Thermometers in Egypt flirted with a record high of 51C (124F) earlier this month. Floods have damaged infrastructure and threatened crops in China, while much of South Asia has experienced temperatures that tested the limits of the human body. Extreme heat in Gaza exacerbated the humanitarian crisis. A deluge of rain after years of drought in East Africa claimed hundreds of lives and swept away livestock.
Erich Fischer, climate scientist at ETH Zurich, is trying to do something for heat that is similar to what American researchers want to do for precipitation. His work in recent years has helped keep temperature records around the world falling by ever-increasing margins, meaning there is “an increasing likelihood of record-breaking climate extremes,” as he and co-authors wrote in a 2021 paper.
Fischer’s research essentially predicted the ultra-rare 2021 heat wave that hit western North America, when the region experienced its hottest June on record and 1,400 people died. A study Fischer led last year identified places with undetected potential for heat waves of that magnitude. On his danger list was Paris, which will receive more than 1 million visitors for the Summer Olympics in August.
“Now that we know these events are becoming more common, we can expect to see more of these jumps,” Fisher says. With the realization that impossible weather was now in many ways possible, he says he explored the next logical question: “What is really the biggest event people need to prepare for?”
Based on the first five months of 2024, it has become certain that this year will end up as one of the five warmest months on record. There is now a better than 60% chance that it will overtake 2023 to top the list.
Part of what pushed temperatures higher and fueled the extremes in the first half of 2024 was the fading El Niño, a global warming event in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Extra heat is the result of a counterintuitive change: Regulations intended to clean up pollution from shipping began to reduce sulfur emissions, which – while harmful to health – can also help cool the atmosphere through sunlight to block.
Scientists warn that the danger ahead does not only come from extreme weather catastrophes. A warmer planet increases the likelihood of ‘compound events’, where multiple disasters – natural and man-made – occur at the same time or in the same place, exacerbating their combined impact.
A good example can be found in Texas, where high temperatures contributed to the state’s largest ever wildfire. Abnormally dry conditions in the Canadian province of Alberta translated into an early start to the fire season.
In other cases, the consequences spread beyond borders. In March, Saharan dust storms blew north, turning Sicily’s skies yellow and orange and worsening air quality from Greece, through Italy, to France, where heavy rain also fell. Rising food and energy prices have also overlapped with severe weather conditions, for example exacerbating the impact of years-long droughts in Syria, Iraq and Iran.
“The common denominator here is rising temperatures,” said Amir AghaKouchak, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who has studied the future risk of compound events. “The temperature has risen significantly and that is contributing to this [the disasters] and it perhaps intensifies the relationship between different dangers.
Some areas have also experienced different extremes in rapid succession. The Philippines closed schools and power plants in April as temperatures soared. Now the government has warned that increasing rainfall could damage the country’s food supply if El Niño ends and cooler conditions emerge. Forest fires killed more than 100 people in February in Chile, where historic rainstorms are currently wreaking havoc in the region’s typically dry climate.
Extreme weather can become new by extending previously unexpected periods. In Southeast Asia, for example, climate change now means heat waves can last for months. Prolonged flooding has left more than 500 dead in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi.
Renzo Guinto, associate professor of planetary health at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, worries that affected countries are focusing primarily on responding to immediate health risks and risk ignoring the root causes. “What we need now, in an era of multiple extreme weather events, is to be less reactive and more anticipatory,” he says. “We are simply perpetuating a vicious cycle of emissions and extreme events, and the ultimate victims of this cycle are people.”
This year’s strange weather has wreaked havoc on every corner of the global economy, from power grids to air travel.
A study published in Nature in April predicted that climate damage could cost the global economy $38 trillion (in 2005 dollars) per year by 2049, eclipsing the estimated $6 trillion needed to cut global warming emissions in line with the objectives of the Paris Agreement. According to BloombergNEF, spending on clean technologies reached a record $1.8 trillion in 2023, still far below what is needed.
It doesn’t help that some of the world’s most ambitious climate policies are under fire in Europe and the US as voters push back on gas stove phaseouts and sustainable agricultural measures. Emerging markets, which will need to make the biggest leap into clean energy, are struggling to capture a greater share of global green investment.
Still, just focusing on cutting emissions isn’t enough, says Rohit Magotra, deputy director of Integrated Research and Action for Development, a climate consultancy and research firm based in New Delhi. Rapid urbanization means these weather disasters are becoming increasingly devastating, and cities in developing countries need to build early warning systems and climate-resilient infrastructure so they can be more resilient.
“Extreme weather events are becoming more intense and frequent. The geographic areas they impact are also expanding, affecting some of the most vulnerable people in the world,” says Magotra. “Adaptation is just as important as mitigation.”
–With help from Aaron Clark, Audrey Wan, Rajesh Kumar Singh and Jack Wittels.
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