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world weather attribution
Nearly 200 Killed in One Day in Pakistan Flooding Fueled by Climate Crisis
"The death toll may rise as we are still looking for dozens of missing people," said a spokesperson for an emergency agency in northwestern Pakistan.
Aug 15, 2025
Five people on a helicopter rescue team were among nearly 200 people killed by extreme rainfall and flooding in Pakistan in a single day on Friday—the country's latest emergency caused by increasingly severe monsoon seasons, which scientists say are being fueled by the human-caused climate crisis.
The vast majority of deaths were recorded in mountainous areas in the northwestern region, with at least 171 people killed on Friday in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
As the Associated Press reported, "cloudbursts," or sudden and intense downpours over small areas, have become increasingly common in India and northern Pakistan in recent years and have caused landslides and flooding.
Pakistan has faced more extreme heatwaves and abnormal torrential downpours during its monsoon season, which typically occurs from June-September. Glaciers like those in the Gilgit-Balistan region, which hold 75% of Pakistan's stored water supply, have also been melting faster due to higher temperatures—another cause of flash floods. Several landslides have been reported along the Karakoram Highway in that region, which is heavily used by tourists and for trade.
International scientists at the World Weather Attribution said last week that rainfall in Pakistan from June 24-July 23 was 10-15% higher than it would have been without planetary heating linked to fossil fuel emissions, which have steadily risen since the 1950s with wealthy countries including the United States being the biggest contributors.
The death toll from the current ongoing extreme weather, which is expected to continue in the coming days, will likely rise significantly, said officials on Friday.
Authorities suspended an annual Hindu pilgrimage to a Sufi shrine in the northwestern Buner district, which began July 25 and was supposed to continue until early September.
About 78 people have been killed in Buner, mostly by floodwaters that swept them away and houses that collapsed.
Officials were helping nearly 4,000 pilgrims evacuate the area on Friday, building makeshift bridges to help people cross waterways and using dozens of excavators to move boulders, uprooted trees, and other debris.
"The death toll may rise as we are still looking for dozens of missing people," provincial emergency service spokesperson Mohammad Suhail told the AP.
A merchant in the Buner district told the New York Times that he had lost thousands of dollars in goods.
"Everything I had, groceries, edible items, is destroyed," Syed Mehmood Bacah said. "I could not save anything."
The disaster comes three years after Pakistan's worst monsoon season on record, in which flooding killed more than 1,700 people and caused an estimated $40 billion in damages.
Pakistan has become the world's fifth-most vulnerable country to climate disasters despite contributing only about 1% of the world's fossil fuel emissions.
The National Disaster Management Authority said the total number of rain-related deaths has now reached at least 556 since June 26, with more than 700 people injured.
Northern India has also been affected by flash flooding this week, with at least 44 people killed and more than 100 others injured in the Indian-controlled part of Jammu and Kashmir.
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Weather Conditions That Caused the LA Fires Made 35% More Likely By the Climate Crisis
"Without a faster transition away from planet-heating fossil fuels, California will continue to get hotter, drier, and more flammable," said one of the report's co-authors.
Jan 29, 2025
Human-induced planetary warming made the weather conditions that caused the Los Angeles fires 35% more probable, according to a report published on Tuesday by the research organization World Weather Attribution.
The report from WWA, which performs attribution studies that examine how the climate emergency impacts extreme weather events, further fleshes out the public understanding of wildfires that broke out in and around the Los Angeles region in early January. Those fires collectively burned tens of thousands of acres of land, killed 28 people, and destroyed more then 16,000 structures, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Damage estimates indicate that the wildfires, which have placed strain on the California insurance industry, are one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.
Southern California is no stranger to wildfire and can experience large fires year-round, according to the report's 32 researchers, who hailed from the United States and Europe.
In summer, fires in the region are promoted by low fuel moisture—the measure of the amount of water in a fuel, such as vegetation. In winter, the strong Santa Ana winds can drive fast-burning fires, but their ability to fuel fires in mid-winter is usually nullified by the onset of the region's rainy season, which begins in October-November, the report explains.
According to the researchers, summer 2024 was one of the warmest on record for the Los Angeles region. "As the cool, wet season approached, the typical onset of the rainy season did not arrive. However, the Santa Ana winds arrived, coinciding with very dry fuels," they wrote. There was also more fuel for the recent Los Angeles fires to burn because above-average precipitation during the winters of 2022-23 and 2023-24 had encouraged vegetation growth.
The report's researcher relied on the Fire Weather Index (FWI)—"a composite fire-risk index that accounts for longer-term drying conditions as well as wind and humidity driven conditions that can drive wildfire spread on a given day"—and found that "extreme" FWI conditions that drove the L.A. fires are expected to occur on average once every 17 years now that the globe is 1.3°C warmer relative to the preindustrial period.
That is an increased likelihood of 35% and an increased intensity of about 6% compared to a 1.3°C cooler climate.
To establish the role that the climate emergency has played in this trend, the researchers also combined this observation-based estimate with climate models, eight out of eleven of which showed an increase in extreme FWI conditions in January.
The researchers note that "while we have high confidence in the qualitative change, that the likelihood and intensity of the FWI has increased due to the human-induced climate emergency, the precise numbers have a wide range of uncertainty due to the model performance."
"Without a faster transition away from planet-heating fossil fuels, California will continue to get hotter, drier and more flammable," Clair Barnes, a co-author of the report and researcher at Imperial College London, told to CBC News.
The researchers also looked at changes to the timing of the dry season and found that the length of the dry season has increased by about 23 days since the global climate was 1.3°C cooler. This means that because of the burning of fossil fuels, the dry season and the Santa Ana Winds are increasingly overlapping—a recipe for more fire.
The group also found that the drought conditions leading up to the fires are now more likely to occur. Similarly dry seasons are 2.4 times more likely to happen compared to preindustrial times.
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26 Climate-Fueled Extreme Weather Events Killed at Least 3,700 People in 2024: Report
"This exceptional year of extreme weather shows how dangerous life has already become... and highlights the urgency of moving away from planet-heating fossil fuels as quickly as possible."
Dec 27, 2024
Just over two dozen climate-fueled extreme weather events killed at least 3,700 people worldwide and displaced millions in 2024, according to a report published Friday as the hottest year on record drew to a close.
The new analysis from World Weather Attribution (WWA) and Climate Central states that extreme weather "reached dangerous new heights in 2024" as "record-breaking temperatures fueled unrelenting heatwaves, drought, wildfire, storms, and floods that killed thousands of people and forced millions from their homes."
"This exceptional year of extreme weather shows how dangerous life has already become with 1.3°C of human-induced warming, and highlights the urgency of moving away from planet-heating fossil fuels as quickly as possible," said the two organizations, which examined 26 destructive weather events that occurred in 2024—a fraction of the hundreds that took place globally this year.
Those 26 events—from Hurricane Helene in the United States to the typhoon that hammered the Philippines, China, and Taiwan— caused close to 4,000 deaths, according to WWA and Climate Central.
"It's likely the total number of people killed in extreme weather events intensified by climate change this year is in the tens, or hundreds of thousands," the analysis states.
"Extremes will continue to worsen with every fraction of a degree of fossil fuel warming."
Around the world, the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency added, on average, 41 additional days of dangerous heat this year, Climate Central found.
"The countries that experienced the highest number of dangerous heat days are overwhelmingly small island and developing states, who are highly vulnerable and considered to be on the frontlines of climate change," the analysis says.
WWA and Climate Central said their findings should spur global action to shift away from fossil fuel, the burning of which is "the primary reason extreme weather is becoming more severe," they said.
"Extremes will continue to worsen with every fraction of a degree of fossil fuel warming," WWA and Climate Central added. "A rapid move to renewable energy will help make the world a safer, healthier, wealthier, and more stable place."
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