In 2022, data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service showed that the past eight years had been the eighth hottest ever recorded – suggesting that we’re only headed one way as global warming continues to worsen. With extreme weather becoming more common, more intense and more long-lasting due to the climate crisis, heatwaves, wildfires, droughts and heavy rains are proving deadlier by the day.
Click through for the most terrifying record-smashing weather events from the past year driven by climate change...
East African countries including Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia experienced their fifth consecutive season of failed rains in 2022, pushing 22 million people to the brink of starvation according to the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP). The drought – effects of which continue to be felt – is the worst in 40 years, has killed tens of thousands of people and livestock, and has tipped the region into a near-famine. A study conducted by the World Weather Attribution initiative in 2023 said the brutal event was made 100 times more likely by human-caused climate change.
The heaviest rains Seoul had seen in 115 years fell in August 2022, with 5.6 inches (141.5mm) of downpour per hour. The deluge killed at least 11 people across the northern part of South Korea and exacerbated concerns about the capital’s vulnerability to the climate crisis, prompting Mayor Oh Se-hoon to announce an investment of 1.5 trillion won (£900m/$1.1bn) to improve the city’s flood defences over the next decade. Tragically, the plans came too late, as another catastrophic flood in July 2023 killed more than 40 people.
This aerial image, taken on 5 September 2022, shows homes in Pakistan’s Balochistan province consumed by floodwaters after a record monsoon season. The heaviest summer rains in a decade wiped out residential areas, roads and crops, causing never-before-seen destruction. More than 1,700 people lost their lives, while some 10 million were left without safe drinking water and around 20.6 million in need of humanitarian aid. With a third of the country underwater, Pakistan's Federal Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rehman called the flooding a "crisis of unimaginable proportions".
These devastating aerial photos show climate change in action
July 2022 saw temperatures in the UK exceed 40ºC (104ºF) for the first time ever. Highs of 40.3ºC (104.5ºF) were registered in England at Coningsby, Lincolnshire, on 19 July, while Scotland and Wales also sweltered through their hottest-ever days. In total, six places endured heat above 40ºC (104ºF), while the previous UK record of 38.7ºC (101.7ºF) was smashed in a further 28 locations. Wildfires also broke out in Wennington, Greater London (pictured), claiming 41 homes. Experts believe such heatwaves are becoming more frequent, more intense and long-lasting due to human-induced climate change.
The harsh summer of 2022, combined with persistent lack of rainfall, also helped lead Europe to its driest summer in five centuries. Drought ravaged agriculture in countries like France, Italy and Portugal, putting strain on crops and hydropower energy facilities. Though linking individual droughts to climate change can be difficult, analysis shows that this drought was made at least 20 times more likely by the climate crisis. Pictured here is the Sau Reservoir in Catalonia, Spain, where the church of a once-flooded village re-emerged due to low water levels.
Meteorologists started 2023 in a state of shock when Poland, Denmark, Czechia, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania and the Netherlands all experienced their warmest January days on record. In Poland and Czechia, the mercury hit 19ºC (66.2ºF) and 19.6ºC (67.3ºF) respectively, well above the countries’ average January numbers of 1 to 3ºC (33.8-37.4ºF). Here, swimmers in the Dutch town of Wassenaar participate in an annual New Year’s Dive which, in 2023, happened on the country’s warmest New Year’s Day (and January day) ever.
January 2023 also saw freak weather records broken in the Southern Hemisphere, when the Kimberley region of Western Australia experienced the worst flooding in state history. The Fitzroy River, usually a popular destination for outdoor recreation, swelled to 52 feet (15.8m), about 5.9 feet (1.8m) above its previous record. Hundreds of isolated people were airlifted to safety, while some majority Aboriginal communities said they did not receive sufficient support from the authorities. Called a “one-in-100-year” occurrence, Australia's climate change minister Chris Bowen stated there was "absolutely" correlation between global warming and the record flooding.
Cyclone Gabrielle made landfall in New Zealand as a powerful subtropical storm in mid-February 2023, after downgrading from a tropical cyclone. But the squall still went on to become the Southern Hemisphere’s costliest tropical cyclone ever, with damages estimated at around NZ$10 billion (£5.2bn/$6.6bn). It pummelled the country’s North Island, prompting a state of emergency to be declared for only the third time in New Zealand’s history. Subsequent flooding and landslides claimed 11 lives and left a trail of catastrophe, with climate scientists linking human-caused warming to the increased rainfall.
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There was little to celebrate on Brazil’s carnival weekend in February 2023, which was marred by an onslaught of record-breaking rainfall, deadly floods and violent landslides. Around 24 inches (60cm) of rain fell in just 24 hours, ultimately killing more than 50 people in Sao Paulo alone and causing landslides in parts of the Rio de Janeiro region. Though these were the heaviest rains ever seen in Brazil, the country has been blighted by fatal flooding for the past few years – in 2020, climate crisis-related disasters were blamed for the deaths of 150 people in three Brazilian states.
Following a month-long reign of terror, Tropical Cyclone Freddy was finally declared over on 14 March 2023, but not before claiming around 600 lives and changing hundreds of thousands more. It struck the coast of southern Africa in two waves, tearing through Malawi, Madagascar and Mozambique, and taking the record for the highest accumulated cyclone energy (a measure based on a storm’s wind strength over its lifetime) of any Southern Hemisphere storm. According to the World Meteorological Organization, it was as forceful as a full North Atlantic hurricane season. The WFP said Freddy was "a call to the world not to turn away from the climate crisis".
Twenty-one people were killed in Mississippi when a volatile wedge-shaped tornado ripped through the American south on 24 March 2023 – the state’s deadliest in more than a decade, according to the National Weather Service. The small delta town of Rolling Fork bore the brunt: homes were reduced to rubble, trees pulled apart and cars tossed into the air. The tornado stayed on the ground for 80 minutes and spanned around 170 miles (274 km). While the exact impact of global warming on tornadoes remains unknown, Victor Gensini, an extreme weather expert at Northern Illinois University, believes it’s unavoidable.
In May 2023, Laos and Vietnam were scorched by their hottest temperatures ever when a fierce heatwave swept across Southeast Asia. The extreme heat, which saw temperatures spike to record highs in the Thai capital, reached 44.2°C (111.6°F) in the district of Tuong Duong in northern Vietnam and 43.5°C (110.3°F) in Luang Prabang, while in Bangkok the mercury skyrocketed to 41°C (105.8°F). In this image, street vendor Vu Thi Phuong suffers in the relentless heat while serving coffee to her customers in Hanoi, Vietnam.
The lower 48 American states were stifled beneath an oppressive heat dome during the summer of 2023, with the zone from Arizona to Texas experiencing temperatures more ferocious than ever before. Three weeks of record-breaking heat brought highs of 51°C (125°F) to Corpus Christi, Texas, while Colorado’s Denver International Airport and Oklahoma’s Tulsa Airport also reported record-toppling figures. More than 170 million Americans were placed under heat alerts, with climate change predicted to make instances like this all the more severe and frequent.
The heat dome subsequently caused Phoenix, Arizona’s capital city, to go into meltdown. For a record-breaking 31 straight days temperatures exceeded 43°C (110°F), leaving 25 people dead from heat-related complications across Maricopa County. Thousands more were treated for second-degree contact burns as pavements sizzled at 71°C (160°F). Other US cities also entered the record books for streaks of extreme heat: El Paso, Texas endured temperatures above 37.7°C (100°F) for 44 consecutive days while Miami, Florida did the same for 46 days in a row.
In a break from the hellish heat and wildfires affecting other parts of Italy during July 2023, violent rain and hail instead crashed down on areas like Seregno in Lombardy (pictured), where streets were flooded. In Azzano Decimo, a comune in the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Europe’s largest ever hailstone was recorded as a result of the deluge – a 7.5-inch (19cm) whopper which narrowly missed out on the world record set by an eight-inch (20cm) stone in South Dakota in 2010. Larger hailstones are believed to stem from rising global temperatures, caused by climate change.
China recorded its highest-ever temperature on 16 July 2023, following the country’s hottest June since 2000 and Shanghai’s hottest May day in more than 100 years. The record-breaking hotspot was the remote Sanbao township in the Turpan depression of western Xinjiang, where blistering heat soared to 52.2°C (126°F), breaking the country’s previous record of 50.6°C (123°F) from 2017. Workers and students were told to stay home for their own safety and air raid shelters were opened to provide respite, while special vehicles were dispatched to mist water onto major roads.
It’s not just land temperatures that have caused concern this year. Extreme heat in the North Atlantic has prompted an even more urgent wake-up call among scientists, who had never seen a marine heatwave in this part of the Atlantic Ocean before. While linking this to the climate crisis is complex, oceans have clearly absorbed warmth from the atmosphere as the planet’s temperature has continued to rise. There are troubled waters elsewhere too, with some of the most intense marine heat increases on Earth developing in the North Sea, as well as unprecedented temperatures in the Florida Keys sparking a mass coral-bleaching event.
As back-to-back heatwaves steamrolled their way across much of the globe throughout the summer months of 2023, record after record was shattered – culminating in a history-making day that sent the world reeling. 6 July was officially declared the planet’s hottest day since instrumental records began, after four consecutive days saw Earth breach previous hottest daily average global temperature records, as well as being the hottest week ever registered. Attributed to the El Niño warming weather pattern and increased CO2 emissions, the world’s hottest day hit a global average temperature of 17.23°C (63.01°F).
If summer 2023’s record-beating temperatures weren’t already shocking enough, it also delivered the planet’s hottest month on record. This was initially June – which saw the Earth’s global surface temperature rise to its highest in the 174-year history of recorded temperatures – until July surpassed it with a 31-day rampage of intense heatwaves, wildfires and record low levels of Antarctic sea ice. Europe’s Cerberus heatwave, named after the three-headed hound of Hades in Greek mythology, was one of the month’s most serious weather events. According to the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group, such heatwaves would be "virtually impossible" without human-caused climate change.
Following China’s record-breaking heat, Storm Doksuri (a former super typhoon) unleashed a different kind of hell at the end of July into early August 2023, when it drowned Beijing in the worst rains the city had seen since records began. At least 20 people were killed, including a firefighter who was washed away by flood waters as he was attempting to save three people from a stricken school building. Scientists say that the extreme weather that China has been experiencing lately is being compounded by the climate crisis.
Following the hottest June, July and August ever documented on Earth, 2023 also recorded the world’s warmest September and October on record. After five consecutive months of record-breaking global temperatures, this year is almost guaranteed to go down in history as the hottest in 174 years of climate data being charted. Experts have attributed these never-before-seen temperatures to a combination of human-caused climate change and the effects of El Niño.
October 2023 saw Malawi battered by its hottest weekend on record when a dangerous heatwave sent temperatures soaring way above the seasonal average. The heat peaked in parts of the country at 43°C (109°F) – around 25°C (77°F) is considered normal for the time of year. The Malawian government told citizens to stay hydrated and keep out of the sun, avoiding caffeine and alcohol, while some schools in the country’s south were evacuated. With this extreme heatwave following the pattern of record-breaking global temperatures in 2023, scientists have cited climate change as the cause.
Hitting record lows this year, the water levels at the Brazilian port of Manaus first dropped to 13.59 metres (44.6ft) on Monday 16 October, before falling to as low as 12.7 metres (41.6ft) in the following weeks. The major river port sits at the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Amazon, and has been subjected to a historic drought that saw the water line sink to its lowest point since records began in 1902. Researchers say El Niño is mostly to blame for the drought, but that climate change has worsened the situation.
Now read on to discover how the climate emergency is breaking weather records in the US