In December, scientists said global warming had helped intensify Cyclone Chino to a Category 4 storm as it collided head-on with Mayotte, devastating France’s poorest overseas territory.
DROUGHTS AND WILDFIRES
Some regions may be wetter as climate change shifts rainfall patterns, but others are becoming drier and more vulnerable to drought.
The Americas suffered severe drought in 2024 and wildfires torched millions of hectares in the western United States, Canada, and the Amazon basin – usually one of Earth’s wettest places.
Between January and September, more than 400,000 fires were recorded across South America, shrouding the continent in choking smoke.
The World Food Programme in December said 26 million people across southern Africa were at risk of hunger as a months-long drought parched the impoverished region.
ECONOMIC TOLL
Extreme weather cost thousands of lives in 2024 and left countless more in desperate poverty. The lasting toll of such disasters is impossible to quantify.
In terms of economic losses, Zurich-based reinsurance giant Swiss Re estimated the global damage bill at US$310 billion, a statement issued early in December.
Flooding in Europe – particularly in the Spanish province of Valencia, where over 200 people died in October – and hurricanes Helene and Milton drove up the cost, the company said.
As of Nov 1, the US had suffered 24 weather disasters in 2024 with losses exceeding US$1 billion each, government figures showed.
Drought in Brazil cost its farming sector US$2.7 billion between June and August, while “climatic challenges” drove global wine production to its lowest level since 1961, an industry body said.