Climate change added six weeks of dangerous heat to 2024 – and more in Middle East

Extreme weather reached dangerous new levels this year, scientists warn

The Thompson Fire, a wildfire in northern California, destroyed homes and scorched 15 square kilometres of land during July heatwaves. AP Photo

Climate change created an extra six weeks of dangerous heat for the average person in 2024, and fuelled more prolonged heatwaves in most of the Middle East, scientists revealed on Friday.

People typically endured 41 more days of extreme heat than they could expect in a world without global warming, according to calculations by researchers at World Weather Attribution and Climate Central. In the Middle East, the number of “risky heat days” rose to 70 in Saudi Arabia, 67 in Egypt and 50 in the UAE. Risky heat days are those that hit unusually high temperatures by the standards of recent decades.

On one sweltering day – Sunday, July 21 – more than five billion people were enduring conditions that were once only half as likely. Climate scientists called heatwaves a “silent killer” that catch people by surprise because of unseasonal conditions, a lack of early warning systems and a less dramatic “trail of destruction” than storms or wildfires.

They said 2024 was the first year in which temperatures were 1.5°C higher than in pre-industrial times, a key benchmark in the fight against climate change. One year does not mean the world has failed to limit global warming to 1.5°C because the target refers to a long-term average, but the report called it a “warning that we are getting dangerously close”.

“Virtually every heatwave has been made hotter and more likely because of climate change,” said the report, When Risks Become Reality: Extreme Weather In 2024. “This signal is so clear and so widespread that in many parts of the world we no longer need individual attribution studies to say this with confidence.”

The El Nino effect, which naturally warms the Pacific Ocean and influences meteorological conditions around the world, was another factor behind 2024's extreme events. But researchers said climate change played a bigger role and “increasingly overrides other natural phenomena affecting the weather”.

During 2024, Saudi Arabia said more than 2,500 Hajj pilgrims suffered heat exhaustion in 51.8°C temperatures, while the Paris Olympics and football's Africa Cup of Nations took place in sweltering heat. In April, doctors in Mali reported a surge in excess deaths as temperatures climbed to nearly 50°C. Hot seas and warmer air were also blamed for fuelling more destructive storms, including Hurricane Helene and Typhoon Gaemi, and downpours in the UAE and in North America.

Spectators watched the Paris Olympics in sweltering heat during the summer. AP

Vulnerable nations in the Caribbean and the Pacific topped the table of “risky heat days”, with a typical person in Nauru facing 173 days of extreme conditions, almost half the year. Most Middle East countries were above the 41-day global average, as Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Qatar saw eight to 10 extra weeks of unusual heat.

Days classified as “risky” were those that people would consider hot based on their local experience, defined as temperatures that would have been in the warmest 10 per cent from 1991 to 2020. In cooler Europe, three to four weeks of unusual heat were typical – in countries such as Britain, Germany and France.

Scientists said early warning systems were one of the cheapest and most effective ways to cut heat deaths. Although most extreme weather is well forecast, warnings should be targeted, given days ahead of dangerous conditions, and give clear instructions on what people need to do, they said.

“People don’t have to die in heatwaves. But if we can’t communicate convincingly: ‘but actually a lot of people are dying’, it’s much harder to raise this awareness,” said Friederike Otto, an Imperial College London scientist who jointly runs World Weather Attribution. “Heatwaves are by far the deadliest extreme event, and they are the extreme events where climate change is a real game changer.”