Continuing the trend of the last few years, 2024 was the hottest year recorded in history and as had been predicted, it exceeded the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) limit above the pre-industrial average set by the 2015 Paris Agreement. This is according to data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, one of the leading environmental monitoring programmes in the world. The over warming resulted in numerous catastrophic events around the world, many of which caused death and destruction.
Among the worst episodes were the deaths of some 1,300 Muslims in June during the hajj to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Temperatures reached 51.8 degrees Celsius (125 Fahrenheit) at times during last year’s pilgrimage and nearly 500,000 people were treated for heat stress, heat stroke and exhaustion. As at the end of August, there were a total of 44,000 heat-related deaths reported in Europe. India recorded some 40,000 heat stroke cases and over 700 deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated about 700 heat-related deaths in the US, but since there were over 2,300 in 2023, according to federal records, scientists believe that last year’s figure will be much higher after there is full reporting. In Thailand there were over 60 deaths, while millions of children were affected.
Human beings were not the only fatalities. In August it was reported that globally millions of poultry and other livestock: pigs, calves, cows and sheep died while being transported from farms in trucks where the temperature measured upwards of 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit). In the US, as at the end of October last year, there were reports of over 100 deaths of pets – dogs and cats – from heat-related causes. During May, in Mexico, dozens of howler monkeys fell out of trees dead from extreme heat, while at least one zoo pumped air conditioning into the birds enclosure and fed its lions frozen meat lollipops to help them cope with the heat.
As early as January 2024, there had been predictions that some crops were going to be affected by the extreme heat expected during the year, as well as unprecedented wet weather that would come after the heat spells. The warning was that yields were going to contract and concomitantly, prices would increase. The crops listed as most likely to be affected were cotton, corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, cocoa, olives and potatoes. All of the data is not yet available, but food prices, even beyond the crops listed above, continued to skyrocket last year, following on from 2023 and the year before.
The parched earth was also host to a series of wildfires devastating several regions in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America, with the latter two continents being the worst affected. Between January and September, more than 400,000 fires were recorded across South America. In the Amazon, fires started earlier than usual owing to severe drought conditions from 2023. Brazil had the most wildfires (a 980% increase over 2023), followed by Venezuela, Bolivia, Guyana and Suriname. The Pantanal region, which lies mostly in Brazil but extends into Bolivia and Paraguay, the world’s largest tropical wetland area, also saw unprecedented wildfire activity. Colombia was the only country in the region that saw below average fires last year. As a result, the European Commission’s atmosphere monitoring service found an increase in carbon emissions from these areas that are prized for their forests and ecosystems that usually do the opposite – carbon capture.
Over 38,000 wildfires had torn through the US up to the end of September last year, some 9,000 fewer than the year before. However, the 7.8 million acres burned was 2 million above the annual average lost to this phenomenon. The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) reported in early September that 13.1 million acres had burned up to that time. This included July’s destruction of a third of the town of Jasper in Alberta which saw US$646.73 million in insured damages. However the CIFFC noted that though very destructive 2024 had not topped 2023’s burning season, the worst on record to date.
On the other side of the coin, the same climate change that fuelled the heat ushered in relentless rainfall, storms and flooding also leaving death and destruction in their wake. In April, the United Arab Emirates received two years’ worth of rain in a single day, turning parts of the desert-state into a lake. East, West and Central Africa saw around 2,000 deaths in historic flooding that also displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Water inundated Spain, Austria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Slovakia in Europe; Brazil, Peru and Bolivia in South America; Afghanistan, China, Nepal, India, and Pakistan in Asia; Canada and the US in North America.
The global economic toll from these and other events related to climate change has been and will continue to be astronomical. A report that was presented at the opening of the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan last November, estimated that over the last decade, climate related extreme weather events had cost the global economy more than US$2 trillion. This does not include the burgeoning rise in the cost of living.
With all of the above one might expect to see better human awareness and action to address this issue. That is unlikely. In fact, small gains that have been made can be expected to be lost after January 20. The outlook for 2025? As Arrow sang in 1982, “Hot, Hot, Hot”.
