Essay by Eric Worrall
Just like every year going back for the last three decades…
Unequal evidence and impacts, limits to adaptation: Extreme Weather in 2025
29 December, 2025
Introduction
Every December we are asked the same question: was it a bad year for extreme weather? And each year, the answer becomes more unequivocal: yes. Fossil fuel emissions continue to rise, driving global temperatures upward and fueling increasingly destructive climate extremes across every continent.
Although 2025 was slightly cooler than 2024 globally, it was still far hotter than almost any other year on record (Copernicus 2025) and the impacts of this hotness were unmistakable. This report reviews some of the worst extreme weather events of 2025 the WWA team has studied, documenting the severe consequences of a warming climate and revealing, once again, how unprepared we remain. Across the 22 extreme events we analysed in depth, heatwaves, floods, storms, droughts and wildfires claimed lives, destroyed communities; and wiped out crops. Together, these events paint a stark picture of the escalating risks we face in a warming world.
At the close of 2025, this report underscores that even in a year that had weak La Nina conditions (NASA, 2025), that lead to lower sea surface temperatures, global temperatures remained very high and significant harm from human-induced climate change is very real. It is not a future threat, but a present day reality.
Key messages
Source: https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/unequal-evidence-and-impacts-limits-to-adaptation-extreme-weather-in-2025/
- In 2025, extreme weather events continued to occur at concerning levels. Although the natural modes of climate variability, such as El Nino were in a cooler phase, human-driven greenhouse gas emissions meant global temperatures were exceptionally high. These elevated temperatures intensified prolonged heatwaves, worsened drought conditions and fire weather, and increased the extreme rainfall and winds associated with severe storms and floods that resulted in thousands of fatalities and displaced millions of people. The events of 2025 demonstrate the growing risks already present at approximately 1.3°C of anthropogenic warming and reinforce the urgent necessity of accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels.
- Since 2015, when the Paris Agreement was signed, global warming has increased by 0.3°C. This seemingly small rise has already made extreme heat significantly more frequent, adding 11 extra hot days per year on average, and is projected to dramatically escalate with further warming. If policies are fully implemented, the Paris Agreement has helped lower projected warming from 4°C to 2.6°C – a substantial decrease that would nonetheless create a dangerously hot world. Revisiting some of the recent heatwaves studied in previous years such as extreme heat in the Amazon or Burkina Faso and Mali, we found these events to have become almost ten times more likely since 2015, highlighting that every fraction of a degree matters.
- The impacts of 2025’s extreme events are driven by local, context-specific vulnerabilities but in many cases we find the same patterns across the world. Our study in South Sudan highlighted that women are disproportionately affected by extreme heat due to their concentration in informal, heat-exposed work such as agriculture and street vending, along with having limited resources and low literacy rates. Globally women carry an unequal burden, e.g. due to their underrepresentation in leadership and unpaid caring responsibilities often increasing their exposure to dangerously high temperatures and associated long-term health risks. Extreme heat further disrupts education, leading to school closures that reinforce gender inequalities.
- This year highlighted again, in stark terms, how unfairly the consequences of human-induced climate change are distributed, consistently hitting those who are already marginalised within their societies the hardest. But the inequity goes deeper: the scientific evidence base itself is uneven. Many of our studies in 2025 focused on heavy rainfall events in the Global South, and time and again we found that gaps in observational data and the reliance on climate models developed primarily for the Global North prevented us from drawing confident conclusions. This unequal foundation in climate science mirrors the broader injustices of the climate crisis.
- The events of 2025 make it clear that while we urgently need to transition away from fossil fuels, we also must invest in adaptation measures. Many deaths and other impacts could be prevented with timely action. But events like Hurricane Melissa highlight the limits of preparedness and adaptation: when an intense storm strikes small islands such as Jamaica and other Caribbean nations, even relatively high levels of preparedness cannot prevent extreme losses and damage. This underscores that adaptation alone is not enough; rapid emission reductions remain essential to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
The full report is available by clicking the link above.
I went through the main report, most of the listed problems were problems of poverty or governance. Places like Sudan, Phillipines, Spain, Greece, Pakistan, Cuba and Jamaica featured heavily in the report. A handful of wealthy countries like South Korea and Mississippi River Valley in the USA were mentioned, but guess what? Wealthy countries were not impacted to the same extent as say women standing in the sun without air-conditioning in poverty stricken disaster zones like Sudan.
The solution is obvious. Bring fossil fuel goodness to poverty stricken disaster zones, so they can weather whatever the future throws at them. Because even if fossil fuel was contributing to worse weather, a claim which fails every reasonable test, weathering a heatwave in affordable air conditioned comfort reduces what could be a disaster to a minor inconvenience.
Some populations…
Like…
Climate Scientists
Liberal Media
Democrats
Climastrologists
EnviroNutzies
Plenty of disused coal mines they can be placed in, their climate problems quickly and easily solved.
They all belong on Eric Idle’s Little List (courtesy WS Gilbert & Sullivan).
The Mikado – The List (Eric Idle).avi
“You may put them on the list,
and none of them be missed.”
I love that song!
Here in Oz we’re going full EVs with subsidies (and penalties for ICE cars) which will require special training and certification to work on them-
Mechanic shortage driving Queensland businesses to look overseas for qualified workers
Not to worry we’ll adapt to their new climate limits-
Australia Facing “Unprecedented” Electrician Shortage Threatening Energy Transition – Build-it
You just pass the Laws and Regulations and the magic happens.
There is one population that’s having difficulty adapting to Climate Change Policies…
Birds…every day birds are challenged by interactions with wind turbines. If Wind Turbines were as plentiful as cats, the entire avian population would vanish in fewer than10 years.
Hello. It is just barely warmer than the end of The Little Ice Age, a period characterized by famine, war, and plague.
So of course that was a Golden Age?
Our wonderful news media has become a propaganda mill and successfully so.
Indeed a significant portion of the population has been convinced that warmer
weather is a crisis.
You don’t think it’s a propaganda mill? Covering Climate Now
They loved riding their sleighs out onto frozen rivers. Something we can do without.
Are these idiots actually claiming even a full century is enough to measure human adaptation? Then they are idiots.
Or are they claiming that humans could not have survived the Roman Warming when at least some areas were warmer than today, judging by where olive orchards were thriving on mountains? Then they are idiots.
Either way, anyone with a brain already knew they were idiots.
Yes.
So show us your observed empirical evidence that the events you are caterwauling about now have never occurred to the same degrees of severity at any time previously anywhere in the world, either in preserved manmade records or in the geological fingerprints.
If sh1t weather events were happening before SUVs were everywhere, that tells us that SUVs aren’t the cause.
(I think this is a null hypothesis?)
The Roman Warming sure worked fine for those Romans, my ancestors. 🙂
All this rhetoric about global warming and climate change is just so much nonsense. The temperature in Yellowknife, NWT is -29° C. It is of little consequence if there is global warming of a few degrees because in many regions of the earth like Canada where I live, there will always be long cold and snowy winters.
The most severe, implausible predictions of temperature change are the equivalent of moving from northern Iowa to southern Iowa. Meanwhile, retirees voluntarily experience 5x that amount of climate change by moving from New England to Texas or Florida.
I just returned to Denver from almost three weeks in Hawaii. In that short time in Hawaii, all of the cracked skin at the end of my finger tips healed. My sinuses felt refreshed and I could go outside and play with grandchildren in comfort in shorts and teeshirt.
If we could intentionally bring on global warming, we would.
Quite right. You never hear of retirees moving from a warm place to a cold place. I could tolerate the cold in my younger days but now not so much.
That’s it then. Global warming must be wrong if it’s cold in one place at one time.
Pack up!
Twonk.
Yes, pack up the twonk.
Where to send you?
You missed the point of the comment. Amazing!
I recall doing reading comprehension exercises in 9th grade.
Well fortunately for TFN it’s no longer necessary to be smarter than a fifth grader. Society has been dumbed down sufficiently.
That same argument stands WRT Solar (Renewables in general) managing to produce 100% of demand…during a low demand period…for an hour…at noon…on Tuesday… August 32nd. Also another silly claim when at 6pm on the same day (6 hours later) it was providing 2%.
That’s it then Solar (renewables) work because they provided 100% of demand for an hour at noon on a single day.
Just more “official narrative”–always a lie.
With satellites and five billion mobile phones on this vast and varied planet, every event, large or small, is captured and breathlessly shared on social media and exaggerated for profit by corporate media. NONE of these events, even if severe, is unprecedented or unusual from a planetary perspective. WWA simply applies voodoo models that are of no more value than palm reading or tarot cards.
Many people used to laugh at the old British newsreaders who delivered the stories in dull, unemotional tones, and this only for a few minutes each day. I’m an American, but I find myself longing for raw news without analysis and speculation, sifted and packed into a 30-minute time-slot.
Instead, people are naming every cold front and describing ordinary seasonal weather with dramatic tones, word choices, and hyperbole.
“every event, large or small, is captured and breathlessly shared on social media”
bingo!
Every day, somewhere on this huge planet, there is a major flood, a major fire, a major or minor earthquake, a severe drought, big wars and small wars, etc. and it’s been that way since forever. We didn’t used to hear about all of it- now we do, to the horror of people who can’t think straight.
Here in Blighty this year we saw an exceptional sunny summer.
it was perfect in so many ways, everyone except our farmers and gardeners who struggled and financially impacted by lack of moisture, was delighted.
The perfect seasonal sunshine helped lift our spirits while listening to the sage, (sorry I mean sad) words of people like Ed Miliband and Rachel Reeves . Our most splendid PM Starmer PBUH was as expected a key attendee at this years COP jamboree.
He never missed an opportunity to be offshore on expenses whenever possible.
His energy minister Ed, felt the need to be at COP too, in fact he went there and back twice he felt it so captivating and essential!?.
Other than our government’s fixation with Net Zero no one this side of the pond would be interested in Climate Change.
We are only wondering how long the establishment can keep up the charade?
They are correct! Climatards are totally incapable of adapting to climate, therefore an aggressive culling of them is required, then we real humans can move on with our lives happily and prosperously.
But if climate isn’t changing then what’s to adapt to?
Climate changes, constantly. Humans are not causing it to change and cannot stop it from changing. All humans and animals can do is ADAPT to what climate does, and those humans who refuse to accept reality have to be removed from any governmental or educational capacities, all the ignorant and destructive regulations, laws and strictures they have incurred upon the human race stricken down.
That’s an opinion, not a fact.
Your continual denial of reality illustrates you are nothing more than an enemy of humanity, and you should be dealt with as such.
Present your evidence to the contrary.
When has the Climate ever been stagnant prior to the time of proposed human influence?
We must be causing some change through deforestation etc, but CO2 emissions, not so much.
Really? The whole deforestation lie has been repeatedly debunked. Cut down trees and trees, and many, many other plants, grow back. New growth sucks up CO2 like a fat kid eating cake, old growth is equivalent to an anorexic at a Chinese buffet. This ain’t rocket surgery, planet was doing all this quite successfully before humans were even aware of it for millennia.
Cut down trees and trees and feed than into DRAX and CO2 is still released
But they are certainly NOT global. !
Localized changes through deforestation are evident in Kilimanjaro. As the Tree line was lowered through deforestation, evapotranspiration changed reducing annual snowfall at the top allowing for the glaciers to experience sublimation. However Kilimanjaro isn’t Global only Local.
The climate ALWAYS changes. When has it ever NOT changed?
Claim: Some Populations are Approaching the Limits
to Climate Adaptionof their tolerance for climate alarmist propaganda and idiocy. I know I am.Happy New Year to All.
“I went through the main report…”
I respect greatly your willingness to wade through verbal sewage like this. Even if it’s only to confirm that it’s the usual string of non-sequiturs. Naturally they make no attempt to discuss any possible large confounding factors like the effects of something truly huge like Hunga-Tonga.
We cannot loathe these AGW cultists enough.
They don’t deserve our scorn, only our pity. They dreamed of saving the world, but if mentioned in history at all, it will only be as fools.
They deserve our laughter.
As I read this I thought I had missed winter and it was April 1 not January 1. There is almost no truth to be found in this screed.
Wow, the full orthodox creed. Probably to be memorized by many school children in woke regions and low quality university students in the liberal arts.
As for “hotness”- I reserve that word for certain women. 🙂
Big deal. I get SO tired of hearing this. We’ve been keeping detailed weather records for less than 200 years, so it is ridiculous to claim that ANY weather record proves anything. We have an EXTREMELY limited data set.
You’re saying that 200 years isn’t a long enough period to establish whether or not a trend is statistically significant?
That’s much of modern science in the bin, then.
200 years ago was pretty much the depths of the Little Ice Age.
Thank goodness for the warming !!!
The warming from 1899-1940 was faster than the warming from 1983 -2024, despite the latter 8.5 time the CO2 emissions.
CO2 is not the cause of the highly beneficial warming out of the coldest period in 10,000 years.
Interestingly that 1899-1940 0.89°C plus the 1980-2024 0.70°C equates to 1.59°C in global temperature rise.so the magic 1.5°C has been breached … And … temperatures are going down this year even with 430+ppm CO2/and the magic 1.5°C breach.
Perhaps “in the bin” is where a lot of modern Climate Science belongs. Mr Mann can hold the lid open while Dr Karl shovels his conspiracy psycobabble into it.
From the article: “Although 2025 was slightly cooler than 2024 globally, it was still far hotter than almost any other year on record”
Not true. See the UAH chart on this page’s sidebar which shows today’s temperatures are cooler than 2024, 2016, and 1998, the three temperature high points of the cyclical warming period that began around 1980.
Temperatures have been cooling for the last two years but Climate Alarmists pretend it is still warming. More CO2 in the air and temperatures are cooling. Climate Alarmists don’t want to recognize reality. Poof! There goes their worldview!
They’re talking about annual temperatures. The clue is in the terms used: “2024” and “2025”.
According to UAH, the warmest years on record are 2024, 2023, 2016 and 2020, then 1998 – in that order.
Unless there was an unreported meteor strike or a massive volcanic eruption in December, then 2025 will certainly replace 2023 as the second-warmest year on record in UAH and 1998, which saw an enormous El Nino event, will fall outside the top-five warmest years in that record.
Note that ALL of those years mentioned were associated with the spike of an El Nino event.
Great to see you finally getting a vague understanding.
2023 El Nino had the same magnitude effect on the atmosphere as 1998, but over a much more extended period.
There is still a lot of extra water vapour in the stratosphere, and there has been a large drop in tropical albedo due to a large drop in low cloud cover..
Absolutely nothing to do with CO2.
“On record”
Since 1979. There is more to the temperature record than that.
Although I understand why you want to ignore the entire written temperature record, that being because the entire temperature record refutes your claims of unprecedented warming.
You never seem to tire of repeating this transparent nonsense. Fair play for enthusiasm.
You just quoted UAH yourself. Two years ago, as of December 2023, before this so-called “cooling”, the warming rate in UAH from its start date (Dec 1978) was +0.14C per decade. As of November 2025 it now stands at +0.16C per decade.
That’s a very strange “cooling”, right?
You have fallen victim to the ‘short-term trend fallacy‘, so beloved of WUWT.
The fact, as is clear from the UAH trends, is that the warming is continuing apace, and is possibly accelerating.
Yeah, we’ll see about that.
I’m pretty sure every cooling phase began just like this. The trend was up and then it was not.
Your trends calculations rely totally on non-human-caused El Nino events
There is no other warming.
You have just proven that all the warming is totally natural.. Well done. 🙂
What World Weather Attribution thinks or says is meaningless to me. When they start showing concern for the far greater number of people harmed or killed by cold they can get back to me.
It should be meaningless to anyone.
WWA is just guessing. This is not science, it is pure, biased speculation and nothing more.
The WWA is lying to the Public.
Clearly, the ‘Wauler populations have reached the Outer Limits of Stupid.
“increasingly destructive climate extremes across every continent”. The data shows that extreme weather events are not increasing. The latest IPCC report stated that there was no observed increase in extreme weather events. The data also shows a dramatic decrease in deaths from extreme weather events.
Note: They are extreme weather events, not climate extremes, but feel free to call them climate extremes if you want to. It doesn’t change the data. I can supply data links if requested, but they have been posted so many times in so many places that I doubt they are needed here. The authors at worldweatherattribution.org should have checked the data before getting published. I don’t wonder why they didn’t.
What’s your evidence for this, please?
From my understanding of it, AR6 plainly stated that, for instance, heatwaves have become more frequent and intense across most land regions since the 1950s and it ascribed the probability for this statement as “virtually certain“.
Do you happen to know if the IPCC paid “WeaselWords R’Us”, the producer of that “VIRTUALLLY CERTAIN” phrasing ?
I believe the term “Virtually Certain” actually applies to the “Virtual World” aka Model Space.
Why only go back to the 1950’s
Is it that they KNOW the 1930s, 40s had warmer weather. !
1950 or a bit after, was around the time the “New Ice Age” scare was all the thing in the “scientists say” media reports
I haven’t read the full report, but in the part published here I didn’t see any mention of the global population actually declining because of a warming planet, nor of life expectancies and agricultural/food production doing the same. And why is global GDP increasing while infant mortality and poverty levels decreasing? So what we’re getting here is the standard sky-is-falling climate-associated narrative that almost all of the Earth’s nations have learned to ignore while they continue to strive for economic improvement and rising living standards.
So we’re saying Spain isn’t a wealthy country?
The world’s 14th largest economy and the fourth-largest in the Eurozone by GDP.
“The full report is available by clicking the link above.”
No thanks, the sample was more than enough.
A fine example of fake skepticism in its truest form.
“I’m not going to read an article at source when I can just take someone else’s abridged and selective version of it that suits my world view – because I am a ‘skeptic‘!”
(You guys really should look up the meaning of that word some time.)
You wouldn’t have any experience with a multimeter by any chance would you?
Temperature went down slightly from about 1943 to 1980 while CO2 went up 15%. All of the “cool” periods in the last 8000 years have bad news for humans it seems….the Black Plague…..famines…..Empires falling…cold periods just seem to be bad for humans….as well as cold areas – not much civilization in Antarctica.
I would say :
Just like every year going back for the last
three decadestwo hundred millennia…Tim Flummery must be up Queensland way by the looks-
Monsoonal deluge continues to batter northern Queensland
28C fine and sunny in Adelaide where our average rainfall is 500mm a year compared to that.
Come to sunny Queensland. Raining one day pissing down the next!
whatever happened to Timbo?
I reckon he looked up a horoscope that warned him to stay away from water, so there’s now very few places he can hang out.
The IPCC seems to disagree.
This poisonous nonsense from the WWA is refuted by a single data set. The EMDAT data clearly shows that deaths from extreme weather have dramatically fallen over the last century and today are at record low levels. A graph showing the data expressed as a proportion of the population would show an even more dramatic fall (obviously, over the time period of the data populations have greatly increased).