flood – Desdemona Despair

Residents wade through flood waters after a seasonal river burst its banks following heavy rainfall in Kitengela municipality of Kajiado County, near Nairobi, Kenya, 1 May 2024. Photo: Thomas Mukoya / REUTERS

May 1, 2024

Kenya flood toll rises to 181 as houses and roads are destroyed – More than 190,000 people forced from their homes – “We have lost nearly all our family members. This is the darkest moment for us.”

NAIROBI, 1 May 2024 (Reuters) – Floods and landslides across Kenya have killed 181 people since March, with hundreds of thousands forced to leave their homes, the government and Red Cross said on Wednesday, as dozens more were killed in neighbouring Tanzania and Burundi. Torrential rain and floods have destroyed homes, roads, bridges, and other […]

Map showing worldwide natural disasters in 2023. Worldwide, natural disasters in 2023 resulted in losses of around US$250 billion (previous year US$250 billion). Loss statistics were characterised by the large number of severe regional storms. Such high thunderstorm losses have never been recorded before in the USA or in Europe: assets worth around US$66 billion were destroyed in North America, of which US$50 billion was insured, while in Europe the figure was US$10 billion (€9.1 billion), of which US$8 billion (€7.3 billion) was insured. A large body of scientific research indicates that climate change favours severe weather with heavy hailstorms. Similarly, loss statistics from thunderstorms in North America and other regions are trending upward. Graphic: Munich Re

May 1, 2024

Munich Re: Record thunderstorm losses in 2023 – “The warming of the earth that has been accelerating for some years is intensifying the extreme weather in many regions, leading to increasing loss potentials”

9 January 2024 (Munich Re) – Worldwide, natural disasters in 2023 resulted in losses of around US$ 250bn (previous year US$ 250bn), with insured losses of US$ 95bn (previous year US$ 125bn). Overall losses tally with the five-year average, while insured losses were slightly below the average figure of US$ 105bn. Unlike in previous years, […]

Annual global mean surface temperature anomalies relative to 1850–1900. Global mean near-surface temperature in 2023 was 1.45 ± 0.12 °C above the 1850–1900 average. The analysis is based on a synthesis of six global temperature datasets. 2023 was the warmest year in the 174-year instrumental record in each of the six datasets. The past nine years – from 2015 to 2023 – were the nine warmest years on record. The two previous warmest years were 2016, with an anomaly of 1.29 ± 0.12 °C, and 2020, with an anomaly of 1.27 ± 0.13 °C. Globally, every month from June to December was record warm for the respective month. September 2023 was particularly noteworthy, surpassing the previous global record for September by a wide margin (0.46 °C–0.54 °C) in all datasets. The second-highest margin by which a September record was broken in the past 60 years (the period covered by all datasets) was substantially smaller, at 0.03 °C–0.17 °C in 1983. July is typically the warmest month of the year globally, and thus July 2023 became the warmest month on record. The long-term increase in global temperature is due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The shift from La Niña, which lasted from mid-2020 to early 2023, to fully developed El Niño conditions by September 2023 likely explains some of the rise in temperature from 2022 to 2023. However, some areas of unusual warming, such as the North-East Atlantic do not correspond to typical patterns of warming or cooling associated with El Niño. Other factors, which are still being investigated, may also have contributed to the exceptional warming from 2022 to 2023, which is unlikely to be due to internal variability alone. Graphic: WMO

April 28, 2024

WMO: Climate change indicators reached record levels in 2023 – “Sirens are blaring across all major indicators. Some records aren’t just chart-topping, they’re chart-busting. And changes are speeding-up.”

19 March 2024 (WMO) – A new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) shows that records were once again broken, and in some cases smashed, for greenhouse gas levels, surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, sea level rise, Antarctic sea ice cover and glacier retreat. Heatwaves, floods, droughts, wildfires, and rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones […]

Map showing notable economic loss events due to natural and climate disasters in 2023. Global economic losses in 2023 were higher than the 21st century average. Economic losses from global natural disasters in 2023 are estimated at $380 billion, above long-term and short-term averages, after adjusting historical losses to today’s values using the U.S. Consumer Price Index. All continents recorded remarkable natural disaster events in 2023 and multiple countries faced the most significant disasters in their modern histories. The global map shows event and peril patterns that contributed to the overall economic losses in 2023. The largest loss driver was earthquake, yet this was largely caused by a handful of events, notably the earthquake sequence in Turkey and Syria. Severe convective storms came second, with the largest individual losses concentrated in the United States and Europe. Graphic: Aon

February 19, 2024

Aon: Number of billion-dollar disasters in 2023 highest on record – Severe convective storms were the most damaging peril for insurers

LONDON, 23 January 2024 (Aon) – Aon plc, a leading global professional services firm, today published its 2024 Climate and Catastrophe Insight report, which identifies global natural disaster and climate trends to help make better decisions to manage volatility and enhance global resilience. The report reveals that the 398 global natural disaster events caused a $380 billion (2022: $355 billion) […]

Prentice Sinclair Smith a friend of home owner Dion Peronneau says she was awoken by the sound of cracking around 4 a.m. early morning Monday, as mudflow forced its way into her home in the Baldwin Hills area of Los Angeles, Tuesday, 6 February 2024. One of the wettest storms in Southern California history unleashed more than 300 mudslides in the Los Angeles area after dumping more than half of the city’s seasonal rainfall in just two days, and officials warned Tuesday that the threat hadn’t passed yet. Photo: Damian Dovarganes / AP Photo

February 8, 2024

Record rainfall, triple-digit winds, hundreds of mudslides. Here’s California’s storm by the numbers

LOS ANGELES, 6 February 2024 (AP) – The slow-moving atmospheric river still battering California on Tuesday unleashed record rainfall, triple-digit winds and hundreds of mudslides. Here is the historic storm by the numbers: Downtown Los Angeles In just three days, downtown Los Angeles got soaked by more than 8 inches (20.3 cm) of rain — more than half […]

Maps showing Central and South-East Africa cholera attack rate per 100,000 people (suspected and confirmed cases per month) between September and December 2023, as of 15 December 2023. Graphic: WHO

January 27, 2024

Cholera cases soar globally amid shortage of vaccines – “The unprecedented rate of cases and deaths is terrifying, and utterly overwhelming the health systems of these countries”

By Weronika Strzyżyńska 12 January 2024 (The Guardian) – Cholera cases soared last year, according to preliminary data from the World Health Organization, which recorded 4,000 cholera deaths and 667,000 cases globally. The numbers surpassed that of 2022, and the WHO has classified the global resurgence of cholera as a grade 3 emergency, its highest internal health […]

Map showing areas surrounding New Orleans underwater by 2050 if current trends in sea level rise continue. Graphic: Climate Central

January 1, 2024

Interactive map shows United States areas under the sea in 2050 due to climate change

By John O’sullivan 1 January 2024 (Irish Star) – Several parts of The United States could be underwater by the year 2050, according to a frightening map produced by Climate Central. The map shows what could happen if the sea levels, driven by climate change, continue to rise at rates of 2 mm and 4 mm […]

Aerial view of the Donnie Creek wildfire in northeastern British Columbia in May 2023. The massive blaze ripped across more than 1.44 million acres of land throughout the late spring and summer, making it the largest wildfire on record for the Canadian province. Photo: BC Wildfire Service

December 30, 2023

Ten “you must be kidding” weather and climate facts of 2023

By Bob Henson and Jeff Masters 26 December 2023 (Yale Climate Connections) – The drumbeat of record weather and climate phenomena — hottest, wettest, fieriest, fiercest, and so on — can sometimes fade into the background, like the repetitive backdrop to a mournful dirge. Then there are those sharp moments, like a cymbal crash, when […]

A map of the world plotted with some of the most significant climate events that occurred during November 2023. Graphic: NOAA/NCEI

December 29, 2023

NOAA reports 2023 hottest year on record, so far – “We will look back at 2023 and think of it as: remember that year that wasn’t so bad?”

By Lauren Sommer 28 December 2023 (NPR) – As 2023 draws to a close, it’s going out on top. “It’s looking virtually certain at this point that 2023 will be the hottest year on record,” says Zeke Hausfather, climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a non-profit that analyzes climate trends. Though temperature records from December have […]

Screenshot of the Human Climate Horizons platform, showing projected sea level rise (cm) in the 2040-2059 time horizon under the intermediate carbon emissions scenario (SSP2-4.5). Australis, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and and the Pacific islands of Oceania are shown. The global average sea level rise is projected to be more than 18 cm. Graphic: UNDP

December 25, 2023

Climate change’s impact on coastal flooding to increase by five times over this century – “The effects of rising sea levels will put at risk decades of human development progress in densely populated coastal zones which are home to one in seven people in the world”

28 November 2023 (UNDP) – According to new data on the Human Climate Horizons platform, a collaboration between the Climate Impact Lab and UNDP, increased coastal flooding this century will put over 70 million people in the path of expanding floodplains. Latin America and the Caribbean, East Asia and the Pacific, and Small Island Developing […]