In 2024, the world experienced an average of 41 extra days of dangerous heat due to human-caused warming, which killed thousands and displaced millions.
A report by the World Weather Attribution and Climate Change, released on Tuesday, cautions that every country needs to prepare for rising climate risks to minimise deaths and damages in 2025 and beyond.
World Weather Attribution is an international scientific collaboration while Climate Change is an independent group of scientists and communicators.
The new report states that climate change intensified 26 of the 29 weather events studied for the report and that these killed at least 3,700 people and displaced millions.
The single biggest contributor to this is the burning of fossil fuels. This has caused every imaginable calamity—from the floods in Spain, hurricanes in the USA, drought in the Amazon, and floods across Africa.
Expert voices quoted in the report say that stopping fossil fuel burning, and to stopping it immediately is the only way ahead.
The first six months saw record-breaking temperatures, extending the streak that started in 2023 to 13 months, with the world’s hottest day in history recorded on July 22.
Globally, there were 41 extra days of dangerous heat in 2024 due to human-caused warming, scientists have found. These days represent the top 10 per cent of the warmest temperatures from 1991-2020 for locations around the world. This shows how climate change is exposing millions more people to dangerous temperatures for longer periods of the year as fossil fuel emissions heat the climate.
If the world does not rapidly transition away from oil, gas and coal, the number of dangerous heat days will continue to increase each year and threaten public health, the scientists pointed out in the report.
While many extreme events at the start of 2024 were influenced by El Niño, scientists have concluded that climate change had a far greater impact than this.
This aligns with the broader trend that as the planet continues to warm, the effects of climate change are increasingly dominating over other natural factors that influence the weather. The report sets out four resolutions for 2025 to both tackle climate change and protect people from extreme weather: a faster shift away from fossil fuels, improvements in early warning, real-time reporting of heat deaths and international finance to help developing countries become more resilient.