Human-caused climate change gave us an extra 41 days of dangerous heat this year

2024 is set to break the previous year’s record for the hottest year, and according to new research, much of that heat was a result of human-caused climate change.

In a report released Friday from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) and Climate Central, scientists say that humans experienced 41 extra days of dangerous heat due to climate change this year.

The researchers say that in addition to contributing to heatwaves, fires, heavy rainfall, and floods, climate change intensified a number of weather events, and likely caused more deaths to occur. “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.

The group studied 29 weather events and found evidence that climate change strengthened 26 of them. Those storms killed at least 3,700 people and displaced millions.

“The finding is devastating but utterly unsurprising: Climate change did play a role, and often a major role in most of the events we studied, making heat, droughts, tropical cyclones and heavy rainfall more likely and more intense across the world, destroying lives and livelihoods of millions and often uncounted numbers of people,” Dr. Friederike Otto, climate scientist and leader of the study, said in a briefing on the new research.

Otto explained that these extreme weather events are likely to continue unless action to prevent climate change is taken. “As long as the world keeps burning fossil fuels, this will only get worse,” the researcher warned, calling modern times “a dangerous new era” when it comes to the realities of extreme weather.

Some of the most notable events the group examined in the latest research were the floods in Sudan, Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad, which killed 2,000, Hurricane Helene, which took 230 lives, and Hurricane Milton which killed 35 and led to at least $50 billion in damages.

The WWA and Climate Central said in the report that the latest findings should spur global action on fossil fuels, which it says are “the primary reason extreme weather is becoming more severe.”

“A rapid move to renewable energy will help make the world a safer, healthier, wealthier, and more stable place,” it added.

A study earlier this year from the WWA found that temperatures triggering heat stroke were 35 times more likely, and temperatures were 2.5 degrees hotter due to human-caused climate change.