Moscow, Dec 28 (FN Agency) Human-caused climate change has contributed to the deaths of at least 3,700 people in 2024, while the number of extremely hot days across the world reached 41, according to a joint report by World Weather Attribution (WWA) and Climate Central. High temperatures driven by human-caused climate change have resulted in heat waves, droughts, forest fires, storms and floods across the globe in 2024, the report, published on Friday, said. “Climate change contributed to the deaths of at least 3,700 people and the displacement of millions in 26 weather events we studied in 2024 … Globally, climate change added on average 41 additional days of dangerous heat in 2024 that threatened people’s health,” the press release to the report read. In reality, the number of people killed by extreme weather conditions this year could be “tens or hundreds of thousands,” as the report only deals with a limited number of “most impactful” weather events, according to the press release.
Most of the countries to experience the highest number of dangerous heat days were small island nations and developing states, the report said. Moreover, record-breaking global temperatures in 2024 resulted in record-breaking downpours, as 15 out of the 16 floods studied in the report were caused by climate change-amplified rainfall. At the same time, the Amazon rainforest and Pantanal Wetland were hit by severe droughts and wildfires, which caused huge biodiversity loss, according to the report. WWA and Climate Central called for a faster shift away from fossil fuels, more funding for developing countries, real-time reporting of heat deaths and improved early warning of extreme weather events to decrease the number of victims in the future. In October, WWA said that over 500,000 people had died globally from the deadliest natural disasters over the past 20 years, adding that this high death toll was triggered by climate change, among other things.