Climate crisis ‘wreaking havoc’ on Earth’s water cycle

Global heating is supercharging storms, floods and droughts, affecting entire ecosystems and billions of people

The climate crisis is “wreaking havoc” on the planet’s water cycle, with ferocious floods and crippling droughts affecting billions of people, a report has found.

Water is people’s most vital natural resource but global heating is changing the way water moves around the Earth. The analysis of water disasters in 2024, which was the hottest year on record, found they had killed at least 8,700 people, driven 40 million from their homes and caused economic damage of more than $550bn (£445bn).

Rising temperatures, caused by continued burning of fossil fuels, disrupt the water cycle in multiple ways. Warmer air can hold more water vapour, leading to more intense downpours. Warmer seas provide more energy to hurricanes and typhoons,

supercharging their destructive power. Global heating can also increase drought by causing more evaporation from soil, as well as shifting rainfall patterns.

Deadly flash floods hit Nepal and Brazil in 2024, while river flooding caused devastation in central Europe, China and Bangladesh. Super Typhoon Yagi, which struck south-east Asia in September, was intensified by the climate crisis, as was Storm Boris which hit Europe the same month.

Droughts also caused major damage, with crop production in southern Africa halving, causing more than 30 million people to face food shortages. Farmers were also forced to cull livestock as their pastures dried up, and falling output from hydropower dams led to widespread blackouts.

“In 2024, Earth experienced its hottest year on record and water systems across the globe bore the brunt, wreaking havoc on the water cycle,” said the report’s leader, Prof Albert van Dijk.

He said 2024 was a year of extremes but that was not an isolated occurrence. “It is part of a worsening trend of more intense floods, prolonged droughts, and record-breaking extremes.” The report warned of even greater dangers in 2025 as carbon emissions continued to rise .

The 2024 Global Water Monitor Report was produced by an international team of researchers from universities in Australia, Saudi Arabia, China, Germany and elsewhere. The team used data from thousands of ground stations and satellites orbiting the Earth to assess critical water variables such as rainfall, soil moisture, river flows, and flooding.

They found rainfall records are being broken with increasing regularity.

For example, record highs for monthly rainfall were set 27% more often in 2024 than in the year 2000 and daily rainfall records were set 52% more frequently. Record lows were set 38% more often. “So we are seeing worse extremes on both sides,” said Van Dijk.

In southern China from May to July, the Yangtze and Pearl rivers flooded cities and towns, displacing tens of thousands of people and causing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage to crops. The river floods in Bangladesh in August after heavy monsoon rains affected almost 6 million people and destroyed at least a million tonnes of rice.

Meanwhile, in Spain in October more than 500mm of rain fell in eight hours, causing deadly flash floods. The city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, was inundated with two months’ worth of rain in just three days in May, transforming roads into rivers.

“Heavy rainfall events also caused widespread flash flooding in Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing more than 1,000 people,” Van Dijk said. The flooding also displaced 1.5 million people.

In the Amazon, drought struck. “Wildfires driven by the hot and dry weather burned through more than 52,000 sq km in September alone, releasing vast amounts of greenhouse gases,” Van Dijk said. “From historic droughts to catastrophic floods, these extreme events impact lives, livelihoods, and entire ecosystems.”

The researchers said seasonal climate forecasts for 2025 and current conditions suggested droughts could worsen in northern South America, southern Africa, and parts of Asia. Wetter regions such as the Sahel and Europe may face elevated flood risks.

“We need to prepare and adapt to inevitably more severe extreme events,” said Van Dijk. “That can mean stronger flood defences, developing more drought-resilient food production and water supplies, and better early warning systems. Water is our most critical resource, and its extremes – both floods and droughts – are among the greatest threats we face.”

Source: The Guardian

Climate change supercharged late typhoon season in the Philippines

Climate change is making the Philippines more vulnerable to tropical storms, with rising temperatures already putting the country at nearly double the risk of deadly typhoons, scientists said in a report.

The unprecedented formation of four typhoons around the Philippines last month was made 70% more likely as a result of global temperature rises of 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit), researchers with the World Weather Attribution group said in a report.

Though scientists are cautious when it comes to attributing individual weather events to climate change, the consensus is that warmer oceans are intensifying rainfall and wind speeds across the globe.

“Climate change made the conditions that formed and fueled the typhoons nearly twice as likely,” the group said.

Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated and more than 170 people killed during an unprecedented sequence of six tropical cyclones that landed in the country in October and November, raising concerns that storm activity was being turbocharged by higher sea surface temperatures.

“The storms were more likely to develop more strongly and reach the Philippines at a higher intensity than they otherwise would have,” said Ben Clarke, a weather researcher at Imperial College London, one of the report’s authors.

If temperatures rise to 2.6 Celsius above pre-industrial levels, those same storm conditions would be 40% more likely compared to now, he added.

An analysis published last month by U.S. weather researchers Climate Central said that hurricanes had intensified significantly as a result of record-breaking ocean warming, with wind speeds up by 18 miles per hour (29 kph).

Scientists believe warmer ocean temperatures are intensifying tropical storms by increasing the rate of evaporation. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its latest assessment that there was “high confidence” that global warming would make storms more intense.

It is still unclear whether or not rising temperatures would extend the normal typhoon season or make tropical storms more frequent, but climate activists are concerned.

“We used to have what we called a hazard calendar – now it is just basically the whole year around,” said Afrhill Rances, the Philippines’ representative with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Scientific report - WNP Typhoons.pdf

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Source: Business World

Climate change made 2024 the hottest year on record.

Scorching temperatures across the world set troubling new records. This is what it felt like  

Over and over, the numbers tell the same story: 2024 was Earth’s hottest year on record, knocking the previous record holder 2023 out of the top spot.

But temperatures alone can’t describe the human cost: humidity that challenges the body’s ability to cool itself; nighttime temps that rob people of sleep; power outages; wildfire smoke; ruined crops; rising cases of mosquito-borne disease.

Meanwhile, record-breaking water temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico fueled hurricanes Helene and Milton. Helene’s torrential rains caused flooding across six states in the U.S. Southeast, killing over 200 people.

Other parts of the world have their own stories to tell about the impact of 2024’s extreme heat. Here are some of those accounts.

1 PHOENIX | May–September Arizona’s capital experienced 113 straight days of daytime temperatures topping 100° Fahrenheit, with hundreds of heat-related deaths recorded. Phoenix has one of the world’s largest urban heat-island magnitudes: City temperatures are about 12 degrees higher than those in surrounding rural areas.

2 MEXICO CITY | May–June An extreme heat wave, on top of an extended drought, caused blackouts and was linked to over 120 deaths. The resulting water scarcity raised fears that North America’s largest metropolis was just weeks from Day Zero — a theoretical day when the region would run out of water.

3 SÃO PAULO | August–September Extreme heat in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter plus prolonged drought fueled wildfires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. Fine particles in São Paulo’s air were 14 times the World Health Organization’s recommended limit, causing the city to be ranked as the world’s most polluted for four consecutive days, from September 9 to September 12.

4 RIO DE JANEIRO | March During a heat wave in Brazil, the maximum measured temperature reached 107.6° F. But it felt even hotter. The heat index — a measurement that also includes humidity — soared to a record 144.1° F, testing the limits of humans’ heat tolerance.

5 PARIS | July–August Temperatures during the Olympics may not have broken records, but they were still scorching. Without climate change, Paris would have been about 5 degrees cooler, researchers determined. That made the Games more dangerous for athletes. Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, heating at a rate twice the global average.

6 LONGYEARBYEN | July–August August temps in the world’s northernmost settlement, on Norway’s Spitsbergen Island, were the highest ever recorded for that month, soaring to 68° F — more than 3 degrees higher than the previous record, set in 1997. In July, ice caps there broke the all-time record for daily melting, losing ice at a rate five times the norm.

7 BAMAKO | February–April Heat waves across West Africa’s Sahel region caused power cuts and spikes in hospital admissions. From April 1 to April 4, a hospital in Mali’s capital recorded a total of 102 deaths; the previous year, the hospital noted 130 deaths for all of April. Climate change amped up daytime highs by 2.7 degrees and kept nights 3.6 degrees warmer than usual.

8 GAZA | April A three-day heat wave exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in Palestine. Nearly 2 million displaced people in refugee camps and overcrowded shelters lacked protection from the heat and faced water and food shortages, power outages, limited access to health care and spikes in waterborne diseases.

9 DELHI | May–June India’s capital territory endured 40 straight days of daytime highs reaching 104° F, with a new record set on May 28 of 121.8° F. The unrelenting heat killed over 100 people, the nonprofit organization HeatWatch India estimates.

10 MANILA | April The Philippines’ megalopolis of over 14 million people sweltered through a deadly 15-day heat wave, an event that would have been impossible without climate change. The heat brought water shortages, crop losses and school closures.

11 EAST ANTARCTICA | July At winter’s peak, temperatures across a big chunk of the continent hovered at –4° F, about 50 degrees higher than normal. The event was the largest temperature anomaly anywhere this year.

Source: Science News December