Disaster timeline
Two decades of consequences
Each of these disasters carries the fingerprint of a warming world. Filter by type, place and year to trace how the pattern has intensified.
Showing 22 events.
Rio Grande do Sul Floods
The worst floods in the state’s history submerged Porto Alegre and displaced half a million.
Climate change made the extreme rainfall roughly twice as likely.
West Africa Floods
Exceptional rains across Nigeria, Niger and Chad displaced millions in a normally dry belt.
A wetter Sahel is an expected signature of a warming climate.
Amazon Mega-Drought
Rivers fell to record lows, stranding communities and killing river dolphins.
Warming and deforestation combined to deepen the drought.
Storm Daniel & Derna Floods
Two dams burst, sending a wall of water through Derna and erasing entire neighbourhoods.
Warming made the extreme rainfall up to 50× more likely.
Canadian Wildfire Season
A record ~18 million hectares burned, choking North American cities in smoke for months.
Hot, dry conditions were made at least twice as likely by climate change.
Greece Fires & Floods
The EU’s largest-ever wildfire was followed weeks later by record flooding from Storm Daniel.
Compound heat, fire and flood extremes in one season - a warming hallmark.
Antarctic Sea-Ice Crash
Winter sea ice fell millions of km² below any previously recorded level - a "5-sigma" anomaly.
A possible regime shift in a system once thought stable.
Pakistan Floods
A third of the country went underwater, affecting 33 million people.
Record monsoon rains were intensified by up to 50% by warming.
Horn of Africa Drought
Five failed rainy seasons pushed 20+ million people into acute hunger.
Climate change made the agricultural drought about 100× more likely.
South Asia Heatwave
A brutal spring heatwave shrivelled the wheat crop and overwhelmed power grids.
Climate change made the event roughly 30× more likely.
Pacific NW Heat Dome
Lytton, Canada hit 49.6°C - then burned to the ground the next day.
Virtually impossible without climate change, scientists concluded within days.
European Floods
Stationary storms dumped two months of rain in a day, sweeping away whole villages.
Warming made such extreme rainfall up to 9× more likely.
Black Summer Bushfires
Fires burned ~24 million hectares and killed or displaced ~3 billion animals.
Climate change raised the risk of such extreme fire weather by at least 30%.
Cape Town "Day Zero"
A major city came within weeks of shutting off municipal water to 4 million people.
Climate change made the three-year drought 3-6× more likely.
Camp Fire
California’s deadliest wildfire incinerated the town of Paradise in hours.
Record dryness and warmth primed the landscape to explode into flame.
Super Typhoon Haiyan
One of the strongest landfalling storms ever recorded devastated Tacloban with a massive surge.
Exceptionally warm ocean heat content fuelled its extreme intensity.
Hurricane Sandy
A record storm surge flooded New York City’s subway and streets.
Higher seas added roughly 20 cm to the surge, expanding the flooded area.
Thailand Floods
Monsoon floods inundated industrial zones, disrupting global electronics and auto supply chains.
Heavier monsoon downpours are consistent with a warmer, wetter atmosphere.
Syrian Drought
A record multi-year drought drove rural collapse and migration ahead of civil conflict.
Warming made the drought’s severity 2-3× more likely.
Russian Heatwave & Fires
Record heat sparked wildfires and destroyed a third of the wheat harvest, spiking global food prices.
A blocked jet stream - the kind of pattern warming may favour - trapped the heat dome.
Hurricane Katrina
Levee failures flooded 80% of New Orleans, exposing deep social vulnerability to disaster.
Warmer seas raise the ceiling on hurricane intensity and rainfall.
European Heatwave
A summer of unprecedented heat killed tens of thousands, mostly elderly, across France, Italy and Spain.
Made at least twice as likely by climate change; a foretaste of normal future summers.