Climate change added an average of 41 days of “dangerous heat” in 2024 that harmed human health and ecosystems, according to the first annual report published by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) scientist group and the Climate Central think tank. .
The study, which reviews the extreme climate effects during the last twelve months, warns that “all countries” must prepare for increasing these risks to minimize deaths and harm in 2025 and beyond.
According to the document, the year now ending added 41 “extra” days of “dangerous heat”, a result obtained after examining the warmest temperatures between 1991 and 2020 in different areas of the planet to set a local threshold and then compare it with measurements obtained during the current year.
His analysis indicates that July 21 was “the hottest day (on average) recorded on Earth, before later breaking that record on July 22″ with the largest number of people ever recorded exposed to excessively high temperatures: 5.3 billion.
The regions with the highest number of days with added dangerous heat They were the closest to the equator and they belonged “in their vast majority” to the so-called SIDS (Small Island Developing States, for its acronym in English).
In fact, 18 of the 20 countries that experienced these high temperatures -for more than 130 additional hot days, if any- belonged to this group.
From the US to Nigeria passing through Spain
The report states that “if the world does not rapidly abandons oil, gas and coal, The number of dangerously hot days will continue to increase each year and threaten public health even more.
The document also analyzes how extreme weather affected the planet through different types of disasters: heat waves (79 episodes worldwide), floods (54), storms (48), forest fires (19), droughts (11) and cold waves (8) with the intervention in some cases of the El Niño phenomenon.
According to their data, throughout 2024 a total of 219 events met the WWA activation criteria used to identify the most shocking weather phenomenawith America (68) and Asia (63) as the most affected regions, followed by Europe (28), Africa (26) and Oceania (16), to which must be added 18 phenomena of an intercontinental nature.
The scientists, who studied 29 of these events, including the “extreme rains” in Spain -in reference to the DANA at the end of last October that caused more than 220 deaths and serious material and infrastructure damagefound “clear evidence of climate change” in 26 of them.
Some of the cases mentioned were floods in Sudan, Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chadwhich are “among the deadliest of the year”, since according to their calculations they left at least 2,000 people dead and millions displaced.
Among the worst protagonists is also Hurricane ‘Helene’, which caused more than two hundred deaths in six US states, and the drought in the Amazon region, where very intense fires were recorded.
The study’s recommendations for 2025 include a “faster” abandonment of fossil fuelsimprovements in early warning of dangerous situations, real-time reporting of heat deaths and international funding to help developing countries become more resilient.
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