During 2025, extreme weather events continued to occur at ‘concerning levels’, driven by elevated global temperatures, World Weather Attribution has said in its annual review of the year’s climactic events.
Overall, despite slightly lower global average temperatures during 2025, compared to the previous year – driven in part by a cooler El Niño phase – last year was still one of the hottest on record, leading to ‘intensified’ heatwaves, worsening drought conditions, and an increase in extreme rainfall and winds.
‘Escalating risks’
World Weather Attribution (WWA) examined 22 of the year’s most impactful extreme weather events, including heatwaves, floods, storms, droughts, and wildfires that claimed lives, destroyed communities, and decimated agriculture – as it noted, ‘together, these events paint a stark picture of the escalating risks we face in a warming world’.
In terms of extreme heat events, it noted that current heating levels are leading to an average of 11 additional hot days per year, with studies indicating that periods of extreme heat in the Amazon or parts of west Africa, such as Burkina Faso and Mali, are now almost ten times more likely than they were in 2015.
Climate adaptation
Other events such as Hurricane Melissa highlight the importance of climate adaptation measures, however even these can fall short when faced with particularly intense weather events.
‘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,’ WWA noted. ‘This underscores that adaptation alone is not enough; rapid emission reductions remain essential to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.’
Elsewhere, the report also examined how extreme weather consistently impacts marginalised communities the most – in South Sudan, for example, women faced higher exposure to extreme heat due to their concentration in outdoor and informal work, while in other regions, extreme heat has disrupted education through school closures, reinforcing existing gender inequalities. Read more here.
