2024 has put the focus on extreme weather patterns worldwide, hitting billions of people with persistent droughts, intense rainfall, and destructive storms. A recent paper led by an international team of scientists at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, highlights how these events unfolded and the factors behind them.
An international research effort, led by Dr. Wenxia Zhang, examined notable climate extremes of the past year. According to the review, “2024 has been a year of climate events that affected the lives of billions of people, including persistent droughts in southern Africa and Central America, devastating extreme rainfall in Spain, and Hurricane Helene along America’s east coast.” Dr. Zhang and her colleagues, who have been conducting an annual review of global climate extremes since 2022, published their latest findings in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.
Their work addresses the causes of these extreme events, the role of global warming, and the challenges of becoming climate-resilient. In 2024, Dr. Zhang and her team found the year to be marked by exceptional rainfall and flooding. Although many of the events have been connected to El Niño conditions in winter 2023/24, the research states that the El Niño Southern Oscillation alone does not account for all cases. “According to studies of extreme event attribution, human-induced climate change since the pre-industrial era has exacerbated extreme rainfall, tropical cyclones, and droughts, and their associated socioeconomic impacts,” the team noted.
Dr. Micheal Brody of George Mason University and the International Agricultural University said, “Improved extreme event attribution requires better understanding of climate change. More accurate attribution of extreme events is expected to inform decision-making, ranging from post-disaster recovery to future preparedness.” Accurate forecasts are also seen as critical. “Accurate forecasting and broadcasting of extreme events, followed by appropriate action, could save lives,” the study states.
Some key events of 2024 were successfully predicted yet still had significant impacts. “Some of the extreme events witnessed in 2024, such as Hurricane Helene, were well forecasted. The destructive impacts were partly due to the vulnerability of the underprepared community to a changing climate,” explained Dr. Zhuo Wang from the University of Illinois. Others noted that clear warnings alone are not enough to address widespread damage and loss. “Increasing the quality of forecasts is important, but to reduce the impacts of extreme events, it is more important to achieve proper dissemination of warnings and to act upon them to lessen existing vulnerabilities,” said Dr. Piotr Wolski from the University of Cape Town. His comments touch on the concept of “climate-resilient” communities. Between these perspectives, there is a rising sense of both prevention efforts and protective strategies to adapt.
The research team also described the frustration and anger expressed by people in Valencia, Spain, following severe floods and mudslides in October 2024. Their work calls for urgency. “It is urgent to work towards better understanding the drivers of extreme weather and climate, to better predict their occurrence, and to develop effective systems to rapidly act upon the information,” the paper reads. Only then, the scientists claim, can society be better prepared for years like 2024.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.