Extreme weather in 2024 affected around 18 in every 1,000 people across the globe, according to preliminary figures from the International Disaster Database. Mongabay has compiled the data into an interactive dashboard below.
Intense droughts, floods, storms, heat waves and other climate-driven disasters claimed more than 11,500 lives and affected at least 148 million people all over the world, though figures are likely higher, as data are missing for several events.
Floods were among the deadliest disasters of 2024, with 132 recorded events impacting approximately 43 million people. However, the devastation was not evenly distributed. The Global South experienced more than 10 times as many flooding events as the Global North, but the floods affected 900 times more people in the Global South.
In January, flooding in the Democratic Republic of Congo left 350,000 people in need of humanitarian aid as homes, schools and hospitals were destroyed and access to clean drinking water severely limited in some areas.
Catastrophic floods then hit southern Brazil in July, submerging 90% of the state of Rio Grande do Sul and displacing more than half a million people.
While some parts of the world flooded, a severe drought gripped Southern Africa, affecting roughly 24.7 million people in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Angola and Namibia. A food shortage followed as farmers were unable to grow enough crops.
East Asia faced an “extraordinary” typhoon season, rivers in the Amazon rainforest were pushed to their lowest-ever levels and the world’s corals continue to face the largest bleaching event on record due to high ocean temperatures.
Analyses of the year’s extreme weather events and historical comparisons are still ongoing, but the latest report by World Weather Attribution (WWA) indicates that climate change played a more significant role than El Niño in most of the events studied.
“As the planet warms, the influence of climate change increasingly overrides other natural phenomena affecting the weather,” authors of the WWA report wrote.
The world average temperature in 2024 was roughly 1.3° Celsius (2.3° Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Scientists warn that the Paris Agreement’s target to limit global warming to below 1.5°C (2.7°F) — a threshold critical to avoiding the most severe impacts of climate change — is likely to be surpassed within the next decade.
The last 10 years are officially the top 10 hottest years on record, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a New Year message, “This is climate breakdown — in real time.”
Banner image: Millions of people were impacted by extreme weather events in 2024. Image is a compilation by Mongabay, using photos by Mark König, Mike Newbry and Saikiran Kesari via Unsplash.
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