A study led by international Attribution of world weather (WWA) concludes that climate change has intensified the 10 deadliest extreme weather events recorded worldwide in the past two decades, which claimed at least 576,042 lives. Scientists from this group analyzed three tropical cyclones, four heat waves, one drought and two floods recorded between 2004 and 2023. They concluded that human-caused climate change is mainly due 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 Center for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London. “And we’re only at 1.3 degrees of warming,” she adds, referring to increase in global average temperature already recorded using the pre-industrial era as a reference, i.e. 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 warming of more than 3 °C.

This report coincides with deadly floods in Spain. Although no study has yet been done to attribute this event to climate change, a multitude of scientific studies suggest that the imprint 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 every fraction of a degree of warming,” says WWA director and founder Friederike Otto, “the atmosphere can hold more moisture, leading 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, when the first of these attribution analyzes was published, referring to a deadly heat wave in Europe. Ten years later, 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, Otto explains, is to make the population understand that climate change is not something “abstract” but is related to their everyday lives. “Thanks to the stories 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 climate extremes .”

The WWA study, published on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the establishment of this expert group, is based on six existing award studies that have been revised and four new ones that have been prepared for the occasion, explains Kimotai. The researchers concluded that “many of the 576,042 deaths were avoidable and all countries need to redouble their efforts to adapt to extreme weather”. Among the recommendations made by these experts is the need to implement truly effective early warning systems, as well as prepare 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; 2010 heat wave in Russia (55,736); the 2010 drought in Somalia (258,000 deaths); the 2013 floods in India (6,054 dead); Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013 (7,354 dead); 2015 heat wave in France (3,275 deaths); heat waves across much of Europe in 2022 and 2023 (53,542, respectively 37,129 deaths); and Storm Daniel in Libyawhich lost the lives of 12,352 people. All of these events have been exacerbated by climate change, either through increased precipitation and wind in some cases, or increased temperatures and the development of drought in others.

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