This article was written by Seth Borenstein, Suman Naishadham, Sibi Arasu, and Fabiano Maisonnave, and was published in the Globe & Mail on May 9, 2024.

If pace of warming continues, 2024 could be a record year for disasters, scientist warns

In sweltering Brazil, flooding killed dozens of people and paralyzed a city of about four million people. Voters and politicians in India, amid national elections, are fainting in heat that hit as high as 46.3 degrees Celsius.

A brutal Asian heat wave has closed schools in the Philippines, killed people in Thailand and set records there and in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Maldives and Myanmar. Record temperatures – especially at night when it just won’t cool down – have hit many parts of Africa. Flooding devastated Houston, and the United States as a whole just had its second highest number of tornadoes for the month of April.

In a world growing increasingly accustomed to wild weather swings, the past few days and weeks have seemingly taken those environmental extremes to a new level. Some climate scientists say they are hard pressed to remember when so much of the world has had its weather on overdrive at the same time.

“Given that we’ve seen an unprecedented jump in global warmth over the last 11 months, it is not surprising to see worsening climate extremes so early in the year,” said University of Michigan environment dean Jonathan Overpeck. “If this record pace of warming continues, 2024 will likely be a record year of climate disasters and human suffering.”

When the world is warmer, it is likely to have more extreme weather and climate events, including record heat and rainfall, scientists say. And climate change is also changing weather patterns, leading to rainy and hot systems stalling over areas and the jet stream meandering, said Álvaro Silva, a climate scientist at the World Meteorological Organization.

Adding to the stronger effects of human-caused climate change is a now-weakening El Nino – a natural warming of parts of the central Pacific that changes weather worldwide – that came on the heels of a three-year La Nina, its cool counterpart, Mr. Silva said.

Scientists also pointed to 13 straight months of record hot oceans as a potential factor in the weather extremes.

This all comes as the world just finished its 11th record-setting hot month in a row, the European climate service Copernicus reported Wednesday.

The average global temperature of 15 C in April beat the old record from 2016 by 0.14 degrees. Copernicus’s data set goes back to 1950, while other climate monitoring agencies go back to 1850 but have yet to report April calculations.

Last month was 1.58 degrees warmer than the preindustrial late 19th century. The world in 2015 adopted a goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial times, but it mostly applies to being that warm for a decade or more, not a month.

While several factors play a role in this recent spate of extremes, “climate change is the most important one,” Mr. Silva said.

The trouble is that the world has adapted to and constructed cities designed for 20th-century temperatures and rainfall, but climate change brings more heat and downpours, said Andrew Dessler, a Texas A&M University climate scientist. “They’re getting slightly more extreme, but they’re passing our ability to handle them,” Dr. Dessler said.

In just the first five days of May, 70 countries or territories broke heat records, said climatologist Maximiliano Herrera, who tracks temperature records across the world.

Nandyala and Kadapa in India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh set an all-time high at 46.3 C, Mr. Herrera said.

This week in Southeast Asia, “it was the hottest May night ever,” Mr. Herrera posted on X (formerly Twitter).

In late April, parts of northern Thailand hit 44 degrees, while Chauk township in Myanmar’s hottest region hit a record 48.2 degrees.

The deadly heat wave felt across West Africa last month was linked to human-caused climate change, according to scientists at the World Weather Attribution group.

In Mexico’s Ciudad Altamirano, the temperature neared 46 C with record heat all over Latin America, Mr. Herrera said. Bolivia had its hottest May night on record and Brazil its hottest day in May.