Compound weather and climate events in 2024

2024 saw multiple high-impact compound events. Record-breaking global temperatures combined with regional weather variability to create compound floods, spatially compounding droughts and heatwaves, and hazard sequences with often devastating impacts.

Key points

Spatially compounding marine heatwaves and droughts hit the global ocean and southern Africa, respectively, causing widespread impacts on ecosystems and human societies.
Wet soils preconditioned landscapes in the USA and Nepal, amplifying impacts caused by extreme rainfall events.
Sequences of hazards, such as droughts or heatwaves followed by heavy rainfall and the rapid succession of storms, led to large impacts in China, Australia and the UK.

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