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More Than 150 'Unprecedented' Climate Disasters Struck World in 2024, Says UN (theguardian.com) 126

Posted by msmash from the state-of-affairs dept.
The devastating impacts of the climate crisis reached new heights in 2024, with scores of unprecedented heatwaves, floods and storms across the globe, according to the UN's World Meteorological Organization. From a report: The WMO's report on 2024, the hottest year on record, sets out a trail of destruction from extreme weather that took lives, demolished buildings and ravaged vital crops. More than 800,000 people were displaced and made homeless, the highest yearly number since records began in 2008.

The report lists 151 unprecedented extreme weather events in 2024, meaning they were worse than any ever recorded in the region. Heatwaves in Japan left hundreds of thousands of people struck down by heatstroke. Soaring temperatures during heatwaves peaked at 49.9C at Carnarvon in Western Australia, 49.7C in the city of Tabas in Iran, and 48.5C in a nationwide heatwave in Mali.

Record rains in Italy led to floods, landslides and electricity blackouts; torrents destroyed thousands of homes in Senegal; and flash floods in Pakistan and Brazil caused major crop losses.

Storms were also supercharged by global heating in 2024, with an unprecedented six typhoons in under a month hitting the Philippines. Hurricane Helene was the strongest ever recorded to strike the Big Bend region of Florida in the US, while Vietnam was hit by Super Typhoon Yagi, affecting 3.6 million people. Many more unprecedented events will have passed unrecorded.
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More Than 150 'Unprecedented' Climate Disasters Struck World in 2024, Says UN More

More Than 150 'Unprecedented' Climate Disasters Struck World in 2024, Says UN

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  • Disasters of Biblical Proportions! (Score:5, Funny)

    by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @01:14PM (#65245259) Journal

    Real wrath of God type stuff: fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, and seas boiling, 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

    Sorry, couldn't resist ...

  • Not unprecedented (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @01:28PM (#65245309)

    All but 15 of the 152 are "heat wave". I picked one of the heat waves at random... Japan..

    "The seasonal anomaly of the average temperature over Japan was +1.76ÂC in summer (June - August), tied with 2023 as the warmest for the season since 1898. It was +1.97ÂC in autumn (September - November), setting the warmest for the season since 1898. "

    So actual Summer heat is tied with 2023... already not unprecedented. Autumn temps count as a "heat wave" not because of scorching unbearable heat but because the average during Fall time is higher than the average since records began for Fall time. This does not comport to common public understanding of what heat wave means.

    There is enough actual credible evidence of global warming / climate change. There is no need to pile on... all this does is piss away your credibility and integrity and by extension the credibility of the overall cause for nothing.

  • We need more climate disasters!

    • Re:Every disaster a climate disaster (Score:5, Insightful)

      by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @01:41PM (#65245345) Journal

      Yes, we do. We should see the peaches of Georgia shrivel on the limb from excessive heat and no rain, the wheat fields of Kansas and Nebraska shrivel and die in a dust bowl, the shrimp farmers in Louisiana come up empty, and the corn fields of Illinois have stubs so we can spend more taxpayer money propping up farmers for an issue we've been told about but keep claiming doesn't exist.

      This is the literal example of an admin telling the higher ups about a security issue, but which is ignored, until the security issue becomes a breach, at which point the higher ups will look around and ask why no one told them while they're spending five times the amount to mitigate the issue compared to them having addressed the issue.

      • Re: Every disaster a climate disaster (Score:4, Interesting)

        by bazorg ( 911295 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @01:53PM (#65245383)

        This is the literal example of an admin telling the higher ups about a security issue, but which is ignored, until the security issue becomes a breach, at which point the higher ups will look around and ask why no one told them while they're spending five times the amount to mitigate the issue compared to them having addressed the issue.

        I get your analogy, but I think there are many instances with climate change that are more akin to having your network compromised and causing more problems to others than to yourself.

      • Massive famines and billions of people migrating will be a thing within 20 years. And world wars as Russia and/or China take advantage of it.
      • Meanwhile here in Alberta they are predicting that increased warmth and humidty from global warming will increase barley yields [ualberta.ca] and so help the beef industry so at least we'll still have burgers and beer.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dryeo ( 100693 )

          If you have clean selenium free water. Between the vanishing glaciers and the new coal mines, that clean water is not a given.

    • The danger is in the disasters being too gradually incrementally worse than suddenly massive disasters. When hypercanes are a thing in 2100, it will be too late because much of the Earth will be unlivable apart from N Canada and Siberia. It's also pretty certain that an Ice Age is in motion as the AMOC is shutting down.

  • I know it's in fashion to downplay it all. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @01:59PM (#65245397)

    I know it's fun to downplay each weather event as unimportant and not at all related to climate, but I live in an area where 50-60 mph wind gusts were a rare, maybe twice a year brief occurrence, and where it's now a bi-weekly event. Storms are more powerful and more frequent. How many of these events does it take for the "there is no climate change" folks to realize, uh, weather trends that continue to change year over year for decades on end actually does sorta lead us to conclude that there is actually climate change? If it were isolated to only us, and nowhere else was seeing any of these changes, I'd probably feel differently about it, but I don't think shoving our fingers in our ears and screaming it's not real is doing us a lot of good.

    Do I think some people have turned climate change into profitable industry to a sickening degree? Yes, absolutely, and they should be called out for it. But I also think it's something very real that we should address. Just because we have a scam based economy right now doesn't mean that every scammer isn't started with a kernel of truth to build their scam. Ever great scam starts with a kernel of reality, then spins the web of lies on top of it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by FrankSchwab ( 675585 )

      How about:
      "Do I think some people have turned climate change denial into profitable industry to a sickening degree?"
      Hell, Mr. "Drill Baby Drill" Trump got elected President of the USA on a platform including climate denial.

      • How about: "Do I think some people have turned climate change denial into profitable industry to a sickening degree?" Hell, Mr. "Drill Baby Drill" Trump got elected President of the USA on a platform including climate denial.

        Is this meant as some sort of dig against my point? There are for-profit industrialists using climate change for profit. There's also an alarming amount of climate change denialism. Those two things are both true.

        One thing we can say about American society? It's scams built on denialism all the way down.

        • That's absurdly fatalistic and unrealistic. It's not all of American society as some sort of unified hivemind death cult, but a large fraction of billionaires, some of whom happen to be American, and an ecosystem of hanger-ons whom also benefit from the status quo and the many morons who have their consent manufactured to go along with it against their own interests.

    • Re:I know it's in fashion to downplay it all. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by sinkskinkshrieks ( 6952954 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @03:41PM (#65245609)
      I fled an intense drought and Camp Fire in California in 2018.
      Then I made snow angels in Austin fucking Texas in 2021 when it was 14 F.
      Climate shit is really broken because of jetstream stability damage due to a massive amount of increased net absorbed energy in the Arctic Sea region due to temperature rise. Anyone denying reality now and not making it a priority is either a moron or profiteering from it.

      • It is not jet streams, it is the artic vortex. Related but different things. The jet streams are so high, they do not affect the temperature on the surface such extremely. And they have that name for a reason ... wind streams with speeds in the 400knots range.

    • So can you point me to the weather records (ideally max windspeed each day ) for the last few decades for your area. That really seems quite an incredible (literally) change, and would be well worth studying. or let me guess, crickets.

      • So can you point me to the weather records (ideally max windspeed each day ) for the last few decades for your area. That really seems quite an incredible (literally) change, and would be well worth studying. or let me guess, crickets.

        Having lived it, I don't have records off-hand. You can poke around the national weather service for Sioux Falls or South Dakota, where you can literally scroll through individual days, or individual years, and get "average wind speeds," but I'm honestly having trouble finding recorded "highest gust speeds by year" or anything resembling it. I'll do more poking around and see if I can come up with some satisfactory reply for your attempted "gotcthya, liar" response to my lived experience.

    • How many of these events does it take for the "there is no climate change" folks to realize, uh, weather trends that continue to change year over year for decades on end actually does sorta lead us to conclude that there is actually climate change?
      They do not realize, for two reasons: they are to young.
      They do not remember how the "weather" was 30+ years ago.

      Secondly, frankly: they are to uneducated and modern media brain washed.

      The winters when I was a child used to be good - snow, crispy cold - fresh air

      • How many of these events does it take for the "there is no climate change" folks to realize, uh, weather trends that continue to change year over year for decades on end actually does sorta lead us to conclude that there is actually climate change? They do not realize, for two reasons: they are to young. They do not remember how the "weather" was 30+ years ago.

        Secondly, frankly: they are to uneducated and modern media brain washed.

        The winters when I was a child used to be good - snow, crispy cold - fresh air ... now it is a nightmare. It rains ... the sky is grey ... no sun ... everything is wet and moisture and damp ... it simply is super annoying, especially if you have wind. The rain flies from one side into your body, the umbrella is useless. Everyone is sick. You get home and are wet from hair to toes. For a real winter ... For snow, you only need good boots. A nice jacket, a scarf, a hat and if you like: sunglasses. Or a hoody and a jacket on top ...

        So we have no winters anymore. 90% of the insects that would have died in winter survive. And we have the next spring full with Mosquitos and what ever. The forest eaten by pine bugs - or what ever. No snow melting, not enough water in spring or summer ...

        And the summers so hot, people can not sleep. Or depending on region, people actually die. Three or four droughts in a row. Forrest fires. And so on. Houses that never needed air con, now need air con.

        Farmers used to harvest grain in July. Now they harvest in May! Sounds like win, or not? Sure, 5 years ago you just planted lettuce, and harvest that two times, or 5 times till September. Win/Win! But now we had 4 years draught, right? Or is it 5 years? So you plant some shit, so the wind does not blow away the air ... or you keep the remains of the cut grain on the field till October ...

        See it from the bright side. Instead of ice skating on the frozen lakes and old river arms, we can sit there now with an RC boat or fly some drones. However I think somehow drones in sunlight at -10C on a snow land scape are more fun than a drone or a boat at +3C in fog and rain and mud under a grey sky.

        It's been years since we've had an all winter snowpack. Used to be that would start around October and not clear up until late March or even April. Now it's just brief snows, followed by mud, yet still somehow we're not getting enough moisture to come out of the drought.

        • You have to have the snow in the higher areas.
          So it slowly melts from March to May/June and supplies water to the groundwater and rivers.
          And on the big mountains the smelting continuous till September until it gets cold again.

          Germany gets "enough" water. But at the wrong time. Mud ... exactly. Mud instead of snow. Unfortunately it is to cold for half naked lady mud wrestling ...

  • So What? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RossCWilliams ( 5513152 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @02:02PM (#65245405)

    These reports are all pretty pointless. We know global warming is happening and the consequences are catastrophic. The question is what are we doing about it.

    The answer is research for clickbait to feed the narrative about the disastrous consequences. There is already too much emissions in the atmosphere. We have spent the last ten or twenty years talking about the problem while putting increasingly more emissions into the atmosphere each year. We need to reduce the emissions in the atmosphere and progress is considered slowing the rate at which we annually increase the amount of new emissions.

    In short, we aren't going to do anything other than talk about the problem and create intellectually interesting solutions that don't even begin to address the problem. A candle started the house on fire, so we are talking about buying a candle snuffer.

    • As long as money is involved, there will be debate until the last two humans are drowning on what to do about this.

      • Yep. This is where leadership must override political, economic, and social factions to meet the challenge of a long-term existential crisis that cannot be fixed quickly or simply.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      Don't worry, November 5, 2024 came up with a fix...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 )
        Does that "fix" involve something to the effect of "May as well enjoy the party, we won't be around to clean up after it."?

      • Don't worry, November 5, 2024 came up with a fix...

        Since January 20, 2025, I have seen nothing but breakage. What fix are you expecting?

    • Most people forgot about it or pretend it's not happening and rationalize "drill baby drill" when the consequences don't affect them, or cause unnecessary drama to distract from the real problems like this.
    • You’re too pessimistic. We’ll do something about it, but only after there are actual *big* consequences.

      Full ecological collapse of entire breadbasket regions would be different. Entire populations of farmers losing their livelihoods.

      Super-hurricanes that wreck entire cities. A slightly-bigger hurricane that causes 10s of billions of damage won’t cut it. That’s just slightly-worse weather. They’ll just blame Biden.

      Heat waves that last long enough to soften the high

    • > The question is what are we doing about it.

      Actually, the question is:
      "When will crops fail?" That's the point when it's over.

  • It appears that to grow up in an expansive wilderness--makes it unfathomable to to realize just how big the world's cities are.
    Look at the photomap of Silicon Valley. It's gray from roads and buildings: https://maps.app.goo.gl/qFctJs... [app.goo.gl]

  • and I watched it with great interest and an open mind, being a huge fan of James Burke. (See his "Connections" series to understand why.) Global warming was not talked about anywhere in the mainstream outside of scientists. The hand-wringing of the day concerned saving the rain forests from the evil Burger King that was chopping down rain forests in Costa Rica in order to create grazing lands for cattle. I made investments in 1993 that aligned with the Kyoto Accord, feeling that surely that the Clinton-Gore

  • Unprecedented? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by STRICQ ( 634164 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @03:51PM (#65245643)

    They keep using that word, I don't think it means what they think it means.

    Just remember records only go back about 150 years. The Earth is 4 billion years old.

    • And here they're talking about records that go back to 2008. No valid precedent set.
  • UN itself is an "unprecedented disaster". Can you explain why California emptied out all water reservoirs and destroyed multiple dams before the fires? Why did they make it impossible for fire insurance to operate in the the state? Why is there a recorded footage of drone setting things on fire? An illegal carrying a torch was caught by locals to be later released by police. Why there is three DEI gender-fluid persons in charge of the California fire department? Why the out of state fire tucks were stopped

    • Can you explain why California emptied out all water reservoirs and destroyed multiple dams before the fires?

      To protect the delta smelt.

      Why did they make it impossible for fire insurance to operate in the the state?

      Misplaced priorities.

      Why is there a recorded footage of drone setting things on fire?

      Because they put cameras everywhere they can.

      An illegal carrying a torch was caught by locals to be later released by police.

      I'll have to think on that one.

      Why there is three DEI gender-fluid persons in charge of the California fire department?

      Because there is a culture war on White Christian heterosexual men, the very people they rely upon to do the dirty work that they refuse to do. The people making these DEI hiring decisions hate themselves, hate their own culture, and generally just hate. They are driven by hate to a point they have become effectively suicidal. While they won't eat lead they will have themselves rend

  • Yay for complex systems! (Score:3)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Wednesday March 19, 2025 @10:21PM (#65246255)

    No matter how hard the evidence sways in any direction, neither side ever has to admit they're wrong. There is always a little uncertainty to hide in.

    It's the epistemological god of the gaps. And it's dangerous.

    The problem arises when it is used to justify doing nothing, or continuing to do things that are detrimental on the basis that certainty has not been achieved. And since it can never be achieved, deniers can ride that right into the scorched earth.

    One side risks some unnecessary discomfort incurred if they're wrong. The other side risks everything. These risks are not equivalent.

    • There's so much you can hide by avoiding context.

      151 "unprecedented" things happen in 2024.

      How many years have they made this count? Is there a clear standard for "unprecedented"? Is there a trend in this data artifact? How is it affected by historical changes in monitoring resolution?

      If either side wants to play the science game, you need to start, ahead of time, with a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement.

      1) what observations will prove you wrong;
      2) what's the logical argument that

  • It's an El Nino year. In fact, that "hottest day ever in Oregon!" recently was only 2 degrees hotter than in like 1917 which was also an El Nino year.

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