Climate
crisis exposed people to extra six weeks of dangerous heat in 2024
Analysis
shows fossil fuels are supercharging heatwaves, leaving millions prone to
deadly temperatures
Damian
Carrington Environment editor
Fri 27 Dec
2024 00.00 EST
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/27/climate-crisis-dangerous-heat-2024
The climate
crisis caused an additional six weeks of dangerously hot days in 2024 for the
average person, supercharging the fatal impact of heatwaves around the world.
The effects
of human-caused global heating were far worse for some people, an analysis by
World Weather Attribution (WWA) and Climate Central has shown. Those in
Caribbean and Pacific island states were the hardest hit. Many endured about
150 more days of dangerous heat than they would have done without global
heating, almost half the year.
Nearly half
the world’s countries endured at least two months of high-risk temperatures.
Even in the least affected places, such as the UK, US and Australia, the carbon
pollution from fossil fuel burning has led to an extra three weeks of elevated
temperatures.
Worsened
heatwaves are the deadliest consequence of the climate emergency. An end to
coal, oil and gas burning was vital to stopping the effects getting even worse,
the scientists said, with 2024 forecast to be the hottest year on record with
record-high carbon emissions.
The
researchers called for deaths from heatwaves to be reported in real time, with
current data being a “very gross underestimate” because of the lack of
monitoring. It is possible that uncounted millions of people have died as a
result of human-caused global heating in recent decades.
“The impacts
of fossil fuel warming have never been clearer or more devastating than in 2024
and caused unrelenting suffering,” said Dr Friederike Otto, of Imperial College
London and the co-lead of WWA. “The floods in Spain, hurricanes in the US,
drought in the Amazon, and floods across Africa are just a few examples. We
know exactly what we need to do to stop things from getting worse: stop burning
fossil fuels.”
Joseph
Giguere, a research technician at Climate Central, said: “Almost everywhere on
Earth, daily temperatures hot enough to threaten human health have become more
common because of climate change.”
The Guardian
revealed in November that the climate crisis had caused dozens of previously
impossible heatwaves, as well as making hundreds of other extreme weather
events more severe or more likely to happen.
The new
analysis identified local “dangerous heat days” by calculating the threshold
temperature for the hottest 10% of days from 1991-2020. These days are
associated with increased health risks.
The
researchers then compared the number of days exceeding this threshold in 2024
to those in a scenario without global heating to calculate how many extra hot
days were caused by the climate crisis.
They found
the average person was exposed to a further 41 days of dangerous heat,
highlighting how the climate crisis was exposing millions more people to
dangerous temperatures for longer periods of the year.
Indonesia,
home to 280 million people, experienced 122 days of additional dangerous heat,
as did Singapore and many Central American states.
In the
Middle East, people in Saudi Arabia endured 70 additional hot days, in a year
when at least 1,300 hajj pilgrims died during extreme heat.
Brazil and
Bangladesh endured about 50 extra hot days, while Spain, Norway and the Balkan
countries had an additional month of high temperatures.
Five billion
people, almost two-thirds of the global population, experienced raised
temperatures made at least twice as likely by global heating on 21 July, one of
the hottest days of the year.
Hurricanes
were also supercharged by the climate crisis in 2024. Kristina Dahl, the
vice-president for science at Climate Central, said: “Our analyses have shown
that every Atlantic hurricane this year was made stronger by climate change,
and that hurricanes Beryl and Milton, which were both category five storms,
would not have reached that level were it not for climate change.”
Recent WWA
analysis showed that an extraordinary sequence of six typhoons in the
Philippines in 30 days, which affected 13 million people, was made more likely
and more severe by global heating.
Julie
Arrighi, the programmes director at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre,
said: “Another devastating year of extreme weather has shown that we are not
well prepared for life at [the current level] of warming. In 2025, it’s crucial
that every country accelerates efforts to adapt to climate change and that
funds are provided by rich nations to help developing countries become more
resilient.”
Measures
should include better early warning systems, which saved lives, and the
reporting of heat deaths, the researchers said.
“In most
countries there is no reporting on heatwaves at all, which means the numbers we
have are always a very gross underestimate,” Otto said. “If we can’t
communicate convincingly that actually lots of people are dying, it’s much
harder to raise awareness that heatwaves are by far the deadliest extreme
events, and they are the extreme events where climate change is a real
gamechanger.”
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