Climate change intensified the 10 deadliest extreme events of the past 20 years

A study led by the international World Weather Attribution (WWA) network concludes that climate change intensified the 10 deadliest extreme weather events recorded around the world in the last two decades, which claimed at least 576,042 lives. The scientists in this group have analyzed three tropical cyclones, four heat waves, one drought, and two floods recorded between 2004 and 2023. They conclude that man-made climate change due mainly to the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation made these 10 events “more intense and more likely.” Among the disasters analyzed are two intense heat waves (one in 2022 and one in 2023) that affected European countries and claimed the lives of more than 90,500 people.

“What we see in this study is that climate change has already made life incredibly difficult and really dangerous,” says one of the authors, Joyce Kimotai, a researcher at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London. “And we’re only at 1.3 degrees of warming,” she adds, referring to the increase in average global temperature already recorded using the pre-industrial era as a reference, that is, before the massive burning of fossil fuels began. Last week, the UN warned that the current policies of the world’s governments are leading to a warming of more than 3ºC.

This report coincides with the deadly flooding in Spain. Although no study has yet been made attributing this event to climate change, a multitude of scientific studies suggest that the footprint of global warming can be found in the increased frequency and intensity of such events. “Without a doubt, these explosive downpours have intensified with climate change. With each fraction of a degree of warming,” says WWA director and founder Friederike Otto, “the atmosphere can retain more moisture, which leads to more intense bursts of rain.”

The report on the 10 deadliest weather events and their links to the climate crisis dates back to 2004, because that was when the first of these attribution analyses was published, referring to a deadly heat wave in Europe. Ten years later, the WWA was created, whose work focuses on producing rapid attribution analyses and which has since published 80 studies of this type. What was intended and is intended, explains Otto, is to make the population understand that climate change is not something “abstract,” but is linked to their daily lives. “Thanks to the stories that the media have written about our findings, many people now understand that climate change is already making life more dangerous and that there are also many things that can be done better to prepare for climatic extremes.”

The WWA study, published to mark the 10th anniversary of the founding of this group of experts, is based on six existing attribution studies, which have been reviewed, and four new ones that have been prepared for this occasion, explains Kimotai. The researchers conclude that “many of the 576,042 deaths were avoidable, and all countries must redouble their efforts to adapt to extreme weather.” Among the recommendations made by these experts is the need to implement early warning systems that are truly effective, as well as preparing cities and infrastructure for extreme events that will increase.

These are the events analyzed: Cyclone Sidr in Bangladesh in 2007, which caused 4,324 deaths; Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in 2008, which killed 138,366 people; the 2010 heatwave in Russia (55,736); the 2010 drought in Somalia (258,000 deaths); the 2013 floods in India (6,054 victims); Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013 (7,354 victims); the 2015 heatwave in France (3,275 deaths); heatwaves across much of Europe in 2022 and 2023 (53,542 and 37,129 deaths respectively); and Storm Daniel in Libya, which claimed the lives of 12,352 people. All of these events were made worse by climate change, either by increasing rainfall and winds in some cases, or by causing temperatures to soar and drought to develop in others.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition