Dramatic recent weather events that suggest things may be getting worse

Not the records you want to break

The past decade has been the hottest ever recorded, with 2024 the warmest year yet, according to a recent report by the World Meteorological Organization – suggesting that we’re only headed one way as global warming continues to worsen. With extreme weather becoming more common, intense, and long-lasting than ever due to the climate crisis, heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, and heavy rains are proving deadlier by the day.

Read on for the most terrifying record-smashing weather events from the past few years, driven by climate change...

Ongoing historic drought in the Horn of Africa

East African countries including Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia experienced their fourth 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 – was the worst in 40 years, killed tens of thousands of people and livestock, and tipped the region into devastating food insecurity.

The region also experienced severe flooding in 2023, displacing four million people. A study by the World Weather Attribution initiative in 2023 said the drought was made 100 times more likely by human-caused climate change. 

Record rains in Seoul, South Korea

The heaviest rains Seoul had seen in 115 years fell in August 2022, with 5.6 inches 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 ($1.1bn) to improve the city’s flood defenses over the next decade.

Tragically, the plans came too late, as another catastrophic flood in July 2023 killed more than 40 people.

Worst flooding in Pakistan for at least a decade

This aerial image, taken on September 5, 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."

The UK’s highest-recorded temperature

July 2022 saw temperatures in the UK exceed 104ºF for the first time ever. Highs of 104.5ºF were registered in England at Coningsby, Lincolnshire, on July 19, while Scotland and Wales also sweltered through their hottest-ever days. In total, six places endured heat above 104ºF, while the previous UK record of 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, intense and long-lasting due to human-induced climate change.

Europe’s driest summer in 500 years

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 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. There are also drought fears for Europe this summer, with new data revealing that May 2025 was the second-warmest May globally. 

Pictured here is the Sau Reservoir in Catalonia, Spain, where the church of a once-flooded village re-emerged in 2022 due to low water levels. 

Warmest January ever in at least eight European countries

Meteorologists started 2023 in 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 66.2ºF and 67.3ºF respectively, well above the countries’ average January numbers of 33.8-37.4ºF.

Then in January 2025, the planet experienced its warmest ever January, surprising scientists who expected La Niña to bring cooler temperatures. 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. 

Western Australia’s worst ever floods

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, about 5.9 feet 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.

The Southern Hemisphere’s costliest tropical cyclone ever

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 ($6.6bn).

It pummeled 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.

The most accumulated cyclone energy

Following a month-long reign of terror, Tropical Cyclone Freddy was finally declared over on March 14, 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 (WMO), 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."

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Mississippi’s deadliest tornado in over a decade

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. 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.

Most extreme heat dome ever in the southern US

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 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.

Record streak of extremely high temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona

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, 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.

Other US cities also entered the record books for streaks of extreme heat: El Paso, Texas endured temperatures above 37.7°C for 44 consecutive days while Miami, Florida did the same for 46 days in a row. Phoenix also broke a new record in 2024, when it experienced more than 100 consecutive days of 100°F heat. 

Europe’s largest recorded hailstone

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 in the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Europe’s largest ever hailstone was recorded as a result of the deluge – a 7.5-inch whopper which narrowly missed out on the world record set by an eight-inch stone in South Dakota in 2010. Larger hailstones are believed to stem from rising global temperatures, caused by climate change.

China’s hottest ever day

China recorded its highest-ever temperature on July 16, 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, where blistering heat soared to 52.2°C, breaking the country’s previous record of 50.6°C 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.

First-of-its-kind marine heatwave in the North Atlantic

It’s not just land temperatures that caused concern in 2023. Extreme heat in the North Atlantic 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 were 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.

Beijing’s heaviest rainfall in 140 years

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 the extreme weather China has experienced in recent years has been compounded by the climate crisis.

Deadliest US wildfire in 100 years engulfs Hawaii

More than 100 people on the island of Maui lost their lives in August 2023 when devastating blazes tore through the historic town and beach resorts of Lahaina. Buffeted by strong winds and accelerated by the tinder-dry grasses of drought-stricken Maui, the wildfires spread rapidly, damaging over 2,200 buildings in Lahaina alone and turning its iconic seafront (pictured) to ash.

The US Fire Administrator later declared the Lahaina Fire America’s deadliest in over a century. As human-caused climate change triggers hotter and drier conditions across the world, wildfires are given even more fuel to thrive.

Record-breaking hurricane in Florida’s Big Bend region

As the Earth’s atmosphere continues to warm and heat our oceans, the rapid intensification of hurricanes, tropical cyclones and storms is becoming ever more likely. This was the case with Hurricane Idalia in August 2023, which briefly touched Category 4 status over the Gulf of Mexico before making landfall as a Category 3 hurricane.

It was the strongest storm to hit Florida’s Big Bend region in more than 125 years. This image shows a mother and daughter wading through waist-deep flood waters in Tarpon Springs after Idalia caused storm surges to overwhelm their home.

Deadliest and costliest ‘medicane’ ever recorded

After slamming into Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria in early September 2023, Storm Daniel crossed the warm waters of the Mediterranean and grew into a ‘medicane’ – a phenomenon similar to hurricanes and typhoons. Daniel then brought torrential rainfall down on Libya, with the city of Derna (pictured) bearing the brunt.

Two dams burst, flooding streets and washing away whole neighborhoods with 'tsunami-like waves'. An estimated 4,000 people were killed, making Storm Daniel the deadliest and costliest medicane ever recorded. Scientists from the World Weather Attribution initiative say planet-warming pollution made the violent rains up to 50 times more likely and 50% worse.

Earth’s hottest September and October on record

September and October 2023 were confirmed to be the warmest September and October months on record globally, following what – at the time – had also been the hottest June, July and August ever documented on Earth. Experts attributed the unprecedented temperatures to a combination of human-caused climate change and the effects of the El Niño weather pattern.

In this photo, people sunbathe on a beach in Biarritz, France on October 7, 2023.

Malawi’s hottest ever weekend

October 2023 also 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 109°F – around 77°F is considered normal for the time of year.

The Malawian government told citizens to stay hydrated and keep out of the sun, while some schools in the country’s south were evacuated. With the extreme heatwave following the pattern of record-breaking global temperatures in 2023, scientists cited climate change as the cause.

Historic drought in the Amazon

Hitting record lows in 2023, the water levels at the Brazilian port of Manaus first dropped to 44.6 feet on Monday October 16, before falling to as low as 41.6 feet in the following weeks. The major river port sits at the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Amazon, where the water line sank to its lowest point since records began in 1902.

Researchers confirmed in 2024 that although El Niño definitely contributed to what became the Amazon's worst drought on record, human-caused climate change was the main driver.

The strongest Pacific storm to ever hit Mexico

Like Florida’s Hurricane Idalia, the East Pacific’s Hurricane Otis was a rapid intensifier. It hit Acapulco, Mexico in late October 2023, soaring to wind speeds of a formidable 165 miles per hour as its Category 5 might pummeled the beach city. The strongest Pacific storm to ever strike Mexico, Otis claimed at least 52 lives and caused around $12m worth of destruction, also making it the country’s costliest tropical cyclone on record.

This photo was taken about a week after the hurricane first made landfall, leaving boats stranded on the sand and buildings in ruins.

Southern Brazil’s worst floods in more than 80 years

Brazil 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 states. The southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul was hit with several deadly deluges throughout 2023, only to experience even worse rains in late April and early May 2024. This time, around 1,476,000 people were affected and at least 107 killed in Rio Grande do Sul’s harshest flooding since 1941 – water levels in some cities reached their highest since records began nearly 150 years ago.

The following months saw further flooding drench the state – this 70-year-old woman was pictured in June in Porto Alegre with two flood-rescued dogs.

Earth’s warmest year

Last year was the planet's hottest year since records began, according to the WMO, breaking the record set in 2023 by just over 32.181°F. The world saw "exceptional land and sea surface temperatures and ocean heat," with Africa, Europe, North America, Oceania and South America (tied with 2023) experiencing their warmest year on record.

Earth was also recorded as warming by more than 34.7°F for the first time, with the long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement in "grave danger." 

Record-shattering heatwave in Delhi, India

The Indian capital region of Delhi endured its highest-ever temperature on May 29, 2024, with thermometer readings in the suburb of Mungeshpur measuring 127.2°F. The all-time high came during a dangerous heatwave that gripped northern and western India from May through June, causing school students to faint in classrooms and drinking water taps to run dry.

In this photo, New Delhi residents can be seen filling plastic barrels in the street with water delivered by a municipal tanker, in light of water rationing across the city. The heatwaves ultimately gave way to record rains and flash flooding, with scientists linking the events to climate change.

Mexico’s hottest day ever

Throughout May and June 2024, Mexico roasted beneath an intense heat dome that caused dozens of deaths and record-high temperatures in 10 cities, including the nation’s capital. While heat domes are a natural phenomenon, climate scientists have stated that the climate crisis and the human burning of fossil fuels likely increased the severity of the Mexican event.

The country’s hottest day ever was recorded in June in the Sonoran Desert, with the mercury hitting 125°F. In the southeastern state of Tabasco, the heat was so oppressive that even howler monkeys were dropping out of trees, killed by heatstroke.

Southeast Asia’s hottest ever heatwave

Hundreds of heat records were broken across Southeast Asia in 2024 when a fierce heatwave swept across the region. Vietnam experienced its hottest April day in history, with temperatures of 111.2°F, while all-time highs were also recorded in Laos (109.7°F) and Myanmar (118.7°F). Thailand also saw extreme temperature spikes, with a high of 111.5°F in the region of Lampang, and temperatures exceeding 109.4°F in 16 provinces. 

According to a 2024 report by the WMO, climate change is causing Asia to warm faster than the global average, with the trend almost doubling since the 1961-1990 period. Pictured here, a restaurant owner in Bangkok tries to stay cool during the heatwave.

Earliest major Atlantic hurricane in 58 years

Hurricane Beryl was the first Atlantic hurricane of the season in 2024, forming at the end of June and continuing its reign of terror for several days in July as it devastated Caribbean islands such as Jamaica (pictured), Barbados and Grenada. What made Beryl so deadly and destructive was the speed at which it reached Category 5 status – according to the LA Times, no storm in the Atlantic has ever achieved such strength as early as Beryl did.

After taking a number of lives, capsizing fishing boats, toppling power lines, scattering debris and stripping homes of their roofs, the hurricane eventually weakened to Category 3.

The world’s hottest day and month on record

July 22, 2024, became the hottest day in recorded history when the global average surface air temperature peaked at 62.87°F. Becoming the 14th consecutive month to set a global heat record, July 2024 was also the planet’s hottest month, with extreme heat scorching countries like Greece, Russia, China and Canada.

Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, called this human-caused climate change in action. Pictured here is a scene from Rome, Italy on July 23, with people struggling to cool off during an ongoing heatwave.

Hottest summer on record

Summer smashed global heat records for the second year running in 2024, with the months of June, July and August confirmed by Copernicus to be the hottest such period ever recorded. El Niño’s enduring impact on the Earth’s temperature coupled with destructive man-made air pollution and increased global warming led to a spell of deadly heatwaves, storms and wildfires that made even the Southern Hemisphere’s winter unbearable in places – Australia saw its hottest August day ever.

In June, 1,300 people on the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia (pictured) tragically died due to extreme heat later attributed to climate change.

Record wildfires sweep the world

Severe wildfires have unfortunately become par for the course as hotter, drier and windier weather continues to be symptomatic of the climate crisis. Throughout 2024, several countries and regions around the world endured some of their worst wildfires on record. At least 131 lives were lost in central Chile in February, while blazes in Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands burned through vegetation and animal habitats in the area’s worst June fires in history.

Jasper National Park in Canada’s Rocky Mountains experienced its worst wildfires in over a century in July, and Portugal’s worst series of forest fires in recent years raged in September (pictured).

UK's warmest spring on record

The UK experienced its hottest and sunniest spring on record in 2025, with record temperatures across all four UK nations. The Met Office logged more than 650 days of sunshine, which was 43% above the seasonal average. Rainfall was also dramatically low, with an average of 128mm of rain falling in the country across March, April and May – the lowest total since 1974. 

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