The Human Cost of Global Warming in 2024
The dissonance is jarring.
Inside a stadium in the authoritarian petrostate of Azerbaijan, diplomatic deliberations to slow down climate change are snagged over money.
Outside, the burning of fossil fuels has exacted incalculable human losses. Millions of people are suffering. Nature is losing.
Here’s a partial accounting of this past year’s calamities month by month, and how some of the planet’s most vulnerable are trying to cope in creative ways.
January
What is shaping up to be the hottest year on record began with the warmest January on record.
February
A monthslong drought gripped Southern Africa. The rains failed to arrive in February, when the maize, which is the staple grain, needed it most. Crops died. Cattle died. About 27 million people, many already on the edge of hunger, lacked sufficient food. It was driven by a natural weather cycle known as El Nino, which arrived on top of rising temperatures.
March
Air and ocean were record-hot — as they had been for the past several months. In March, the average global sea surface temperature reached a monthly high of 21.07 degrees Celsius, or nearly 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
It sparked a mass bleaching event in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, home to 400 types of corals that nurture thousands of species of fish. It was the fourth and largest such bleaching event on record.
April
The world experienced the warmest April on record, the 11th in a string of months that broke temperature records. A heat wave spread across parts of South and Southeast Asia, with temperatures soaring past 100 degrees Fahrenheit for days at a time. For millions of children, it was too hot to learn. Schools closed in Bangladesh, India and the Philippines.
May
Dangerous heat blanketed parts of India, posing some of the greatest threats to outdoor workers. A novel insurance program, created by a union representing informal laborers, such as fruit vendors and trash pickers, paid out small amounts of money to women who missed days of work because of the extreme heat.
June
The worst wildfires in two decades in the Pantanal wetlands of Brazil incinerated more than 1 million hectares. The culprits: deforestation and drought, exacerbated by climate change. Among the victims: rare species of jaguars and parrots who make their home in the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland.
July
Hurricane Beryl pummeled Caribbean nations including Grenada, Jamaica, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It also became the first hurricane to trigger an innovative financial solution in Grenada that could bring relief to other storm-prone countries: a pause in debt payments.
August
Europe had its hottest August on record, capping its hottest summer on record. High temperatures aggravated drought and fire risk. A wildfire raced downhill toward Athens, Greece. A nature reserve in the north of Rome blazed. Olives withered on their branches in southern Italy.
Europe is heating up faster than any other continent.
September
The rich and poor world were inundated. In Chad and Nigeria, a region where conflicts have repeatedly driven people from home, floods displaced hundreds of thousands of people and washed away crops.
On the other side of the world, Hurricane Helene swung like a wrecking ball through much of the southern United States. Nearly 230 people died, making it the deadliest hurricane to hit the continental United States since Katrina in 2005.
October
In Valencia, Spain, there was an extraordinary deluge. In one town, a year’s worth of rain fell in the span of eight hours. Valencia recorded 202 deaths. Anger boiled over at provincial government officials for a failure to send evacuation alerts in a timely manner.
November
New York City issued a rare drought warning as the northeastern United States reeled from an exceptionally dry fall season. Brushfires broke out across the region, as fall leaves turned to tinder.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
© 2024 The New York Times Company
