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Extreme weather includes unexpected, unusual, severe weather, or unseasonal weather; weather at the extremes of the historical distribution—the range that has been seen in the past. Extreme events are based on a location's recorded weather history. The main types of extreme weather include , , , and heavy precipitation or storm events, such as . Extreme weather can have various effects, from natural hazards such as and to social costs on human health and the economy. Severe weather is a particular type of extreme weather which poses risks to life and property.
Weather patterns in a given region vary with time, and so extreme weather can be attributed, at least in part, to the natural climate variability that exists on Earth. For example, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or the North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) are climate phenomena that impact weather patterns worldwide. Generally speaking, one event in extreme weather cannot be attributed to any one single cause. However, certain system wide changes to global weather systems can lead to increased frequency or intensity of extreme weather events.
Climate change might make some extreme weather events more frequent and more intense.Seneviratne, S.I., X. Zhang, M. Adnan, W. Badi, C. Dereczynski, A. Di Luca, S. Ghosh, I. Iskandar, J. Kossin, S. Lewis, F. Otto, I. Pinto, M. Satoh, S.M. Vicente-Serrano, M. Wehner, and B. Zhou, 2021: Chapter 11: Weather and Climate Extreme Events in a Changing Climate. In Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Masson-Delmotte,. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 1513–1766, doi:10.1017/9781009157896.013. This applies in particular to heat waves and cold waves. The extreme event attribution sector looks at possible explanations behind extreme events. indicate that rising temperatures might make extreme weather events worse worldwide.
Extreme weather has serious impacts on human society and on . There is loss of human lives, damage to infrastructure and ecosystem destruction. Some human activities can exacerbate the effects, for example poor urban planning, wetland destruction, and building homes along .
In comparison, the term severe weather is any aspect of the weather that poses risks to life, property or requires the intervention of authorities. Severe weather is thus a particular type of extreme weather.
Because heat waves are not visible as other forms of severe weather, like hurricanes, tornadoes, and thunderstorms, they are one of the less known forms of extreme weather. Severely hot weather can damage populations and crops due to potential dehydration or hyperthermia, heat cramps, heat expansion, and heat stroke. Dried soils are more susceptible to erosion, decreasing lands available for agriculture. Outbreaks of wildfires can increase in frequency as dry vegetation has an increased likelihood of igniting. The evaporation of bodies of water can be devastating to marine populations, decreasing the size of the habitats available as well as the amount of nutrition present within the waters. Livestock and other animal populations may decline as well.
During excessive heat, plants shut their leaf pores (stomata), a protective mechanism to conserve water but also curtails plants' absorption capabilities. This leaves more pollution and ozone in the air, which leads to higher mortality in the population. It has been estimated that extra pollution during the hot summer of 2006 in the UK, cost 460 lives. The European heat waves from summer 2003 are estimated to have caused 30,000 excess deaths, due to heat stress and air pollution. Over 200 U.S cities have registered new record high temperatures. The worst heat wave in the US occurred in 1936 and killed more than 5000 people directly. The worst heat wave in Australia occurred in 1938–39 and killed 438. The second worst was in 1896.
Power outages can also occur within areas experiencing heat waves due to the increased demand for electricity (i.e. air conditioning use). The urban heat island effect can increase temperatures, particularly overnight.
A cold wave can cause death and injury to livestock and wildlife. Exposure to cold mandates greater Food energy intake for all animals, including humans, and if a cold wave is accompanied by heavy and persistent snow, grazing animals may be unable to reach necessary food and water, and die of hypothermia or starvation. Cold waves often necessitate the purchase of fodder for livestock at a considerable cost to farmers. Human populations can be inflicted with frostbite when exposed for extended periods of time to cold and may result in the loss of limbs or damage to internal organs.
Extreme winter cold often causes poorly insulated water pipes to freeze. Even some poorly protected indoor plumbing may rupture as frozen water expands within them, causing property damage. Fires, paradoxically, become more hazardous during extreme cold. Water mains may break and water supplies may become unreliable, making firefighting more difficult.
Cold waves that bring unexpected freezes and frosts during the growing season in mid-latitude zones can kill plants during the early and most vulnerable stages of growth. This results in crop failure as plants are killed before they can be economically. Such cold waves have caused . Cold waves can also cause soil particles to harden and freeze, making it harder for plants and vegetation to grow within these areas. One extreme was the so-called Year Without a Summer of 1816, one of several years during the 1810s in which numerous crops failed during freakish summer cold snaps after volcanic eruptions reduced incoming sunlight.
In some cases more frequent extremely cold winter weather – i.e. across parts of Asia and North America including the February 2021 North American cold wave – can be a result of climate change such as due to changes in the Arctic. However, conclusions that link climate change to cold waves are considered to still be controversial. The JRC PESETA IV project concluded in 2020 that overall climate change will result in a decline in the intensity and frequency of extreme cold spells, with milder winters reducing fatalities from extreme cold, even if individual cold extreme weather may sometimes be caused by changes due to climate change and possibly even become more frequent in some regions. According to a 2023 study, "weak extreme cold events (ECEs) significantly decrease in frequency, projection area and total area over the north hemisphere with global warming. However, the frequency, projection area and total area of strong ECEs show no significant trend, whereas they are increasing in Siberia and Canada."
Early research in extreme weather focused on statements about predicting certain events. Contemporary research focuses more on the attribution of causes to trends in events. In particular the field is focusing on climate change alongside other causal factors for these events.
A 2016 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, recommended investing in improved shared practices across the field working on attribution research, improving the connection between research outcomes and weather forecasting.
As more research is done in this area, scientists have begun to investigate the connection between climate change and extreme weather events and what future impacts may arise. Much of this work is done through climate modeling. Climate models provide important predictions about the future characteristics of the atmosphere, oceans, and Earth using data collected in the modern day. However, while climate models are vital for studying more complex processes such as climate change or ocean acidification, they are still only approximations. Moreover, weather events are complex and cannot be tied to a singular cause—there are often many atmospheric variables such as temperature, pressure, or moisture to note on top of any influences from climate change or natural variability.
The atmosphere is a complex and dynamic system, influenced by several factors such as the natural tilt and orbit of the Earth, the absorption or reflection of solar radiation, the movement of air masses, and the water cycle. Due to this, weather patterns can experience some variation, and so extreme weather can be attributed, at least in part, to the natural climate variability that exists on Earth.
Climatic phenomena such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or the North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) impact weather patterns in specific regions of the world, influencing temperature and precipitation. The record-breaking extreme weather events that have been catalogued throughout the past two hundred years most likely arise when climate patterns like ENSO or NAO work "in the same direction as human‐induced warming."
There were around 6,681 climate-related events reported during 2000-2019, compared to 3,656 climate-related events reported during 1980–1999. (2025). 9789210054478, United Nations. ISBN 9789210054478 In this report, a 'climate-related event' refers to floods, storms, droughts, landslides, extreme temperatures (like heat waves or freezes), and wildfires; it excludes geophysical events such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, or mass movements. While there is evidence that a changing global climate, such as an increase in temperature, has impacted the frequency of extreme weather events, the most significant effects are likely to arise in the future. This is where climate models are useful, for they can provide simulations of how the atmosphere may behave over time and what steps need to be taken in the present day to mitigate any negative changes.
The increasing probability of record week-long heat extremes occurrence depends on warming rate, rather than global warming level.
Some researchers attribute increases in extreme weather occurrences to more reliable reporting systems. A difference in what qualifies as 'extreme weather' in varying climate systems could also be argued. Over or under reporting of casualties or losses can lead to inaccuracy in the impact of extreme weather. However, the UN reports show that, although some countries have experienced greater effects, there have been increases in extreme weather events on all continents. Current evidence and climate models show that an increasing global temperature will intensify extreme weather events around the globe, thereby amplifying human loss, damages and economic costs, and ecosystem destruction.
More urban areas can also contribute to the rise of extreme or unusual weather events. Tall structures can alter the way that wind moves throughout an urban area, pushing warmer air upwards and inducing convection, creating thunderstorms. With these thunderstorms comes increased precipitation, which, because of the large amounts of impervious surfaces in cities, can have devastating impacts. Impervious surfaces also absorb energy from the sun and warm the atmosphere, causing drastic increases in temperatures in urban areas. This, along with pollution and heat released from cars and other anthropogenic sources, contributes to urban heat islands.
The World Economic Forum Global Risks Perception Survey 2023-2024 (GRPS) found that 66 percent of respondents selected extreme weather as top risk. The survey was conducted after the 2023 heat waves. According to the GRPS results, the perception of necessary short and long-term risk management varies. Younger respondents prioritize environmental risks, including extreme weather, in the short-term. Respondents working in the private sector prioritize environmental risks as long-term.
The most dramatic and rapid declines in deaths from extreme weather events have taken place in south Asia. Where a tropical cyclone in 1991 in Bangladesh killed 135,000 people, and a 1970 cyclone killed 300,000, the similarly-sized Cyclone Amphan, which struck India and Bangladesh in 2020, killed just 120 people in total.
On July 23, 2020, Munich Re announced that the 2,900 total global deaths from natural disasters for the first half of 2020 were a record-low, and "much lower than the average figures for both the last 30 years and the last 10 years."
A 2021 study found that 9.4% of global deaths between 2000 and 2019 – ~5 million annually – can be attributed to extreme temperature with cold-related ones making up the larger share and decreasing and heat-related ones making up ~0.91% and increasing.
A 2023 study published in The Lancet Planetary Health estimates that extreme cold events contributed to over 200,000 excess deaths and extreme heat events contributed to over 20,000 excess deaths in European urban areas between 2000 and 2019.
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