People around the world experienced an average of 41 extra days of dangerous heat this year due to human activities Climate changeAccording to a group of scientists who also said that climate change has worsened much of the world’s harmful weather throughout 2024.
The analysis by researchers at World Weather Attribution and Climate Central comes at the end of one climate record-breaking year after another. Heat all over the world 2024 will likely be the hottest year on record It has been measured and has contributed to a large number of other deadly weather events from which few survive.
“The finding is devastating but not at all surprising: climate change played a role, and often a major role, in most of the events we studied, leading to higher temperatures, drought, and drought.” Tropical cyclones Frederic Otto, head of World Weather Attribution and a climate scientist at Imperial College, said during a press conference on scientists: “Heavy rainfall is more likely and more intense across the globe, devastating the lives and livelihoods of millions, and often more. Countless people.” “Results.
“As long as the world continues to burn fossil fuels, the situation will get worse,” Otto warned.
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Millions of people have suffered from stifling heat this year. Northern California and Death Valley bread. High daytime temperatures scorched Mexico and Central America. The heat has endangered already vulnerable children in West Africa. High temperatures in southern Europe forced Greece to close the Acropolis. In countries in South and Southeast Asia, the heat led to the closure of schools.
The Earth has seen some The hottest days ever measured And for her Hottest summer yetwith a 13-month hot streak that barely breaks.
To conduct the heat analysis, a team of volunteer international scientists compared daily temperatures around the world in 2024 with the temperatures that would have been expected in a world without climate change. The results have not yet been peer-reviewed, but the researchers are using peer-reviewed methods.
They found that some areas experienced 150 or more days of extreme heat due to climate change.
“The poorest and least developed countries on the planet are the places where the numbers are highest,” said Christina Dahl, vice president for climate science at Climate Central.
What’s worse is that heat-related deaths often go unreported.
“People don’t have to die from heat waves,” Otto said. “But if we can’t communicate convincingly, but in reality a lot of people are dying, it will be much more difficult to raise that awareness.” “Heatwaves are the deadliest extreme event on record, and they are the extreme events where climate change is a real game-changer.”
This year was a warning that the planet is dangerously close to the Paris Agreement’s warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to the pre-industrial average, according to scientists. The Earth is expected to soon exceed this threshold, although it is not considered to have been breached until this warming continues over decades.
The researchers closely examined 29 extreme weather events this year, which together killed at least 3,700 people and displaced millions, and found that 26 of them had clear links to climate change.
The El Niño weather pattern, which naturally warms the Pacific Ocean and changes weather around the world, has made some of this weather more likely earlier in the year. However, the researchers said most of their studies found that climate change played a larger role than that in fueling the events of 2024. Warmer ocean waters and warm air fueled more destructive storms, while temperatures led to record heavy rainfall, the researchers said.
Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center on Cape Cod, who was not involved in the research, said the science and results were sound.
“Extreme weather will continue to become more frequent, intense, destructive, costly and deadly until we can reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” she said.
The United Nations Environment Program said in the fall that more extreme weather events can be expected without action, as more global warming carbon dioxide was sent into the air this year by burning fossil fuels than last year.
She said: “Countries can reduce these impacts by preparing for and adapting to climate change, and while the challenges faced by individual countries, systems or places around the world differ, we believe that every country has a role to play.”
These warnings come amid fears in many countries that the US government, under President-elect Donald Trump, will begin to back away from commitments made by Washington in January to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and work towards a transition to more sustainable energy production.
Trump made that clear He believes concerns about climate change are overblown, and has previously dismissed the idea of human-caused global warming as a hoax. In his first term as president, Trump rescinded 100 environmental rules enacted by his predecessor Barack Obama.
