Climate change and its dramatic consequences

The last 11 years were the warmest ever. In the record-setting year of 2024, the mean temperature was around 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Climate change is real and is influencing weather-related natural disasters around the world. The risk situation is changing in various ways, depending on the region and the natural hazard in question, for example tropical cyclones, thunderstorms, floods and wildfires. 

The current scientific consensus is that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions since the beginning of industrialisation are almost entirely responsible for rising temperatures in the atmosphere and oceans. Global warming has various consequences:

• Sea ice and glaciers are melting. The sea level is rising at an accelerating pace at a current rate of 4.7 mm per year on average, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). This trend increases risks in connection with storm surges, as it means that even weaker tidal waves could spill over levees that haven’t been modified.
• Higher temperatures result in greater evaporation. Air that is 1°C warmer can absorb about 7% more moisture. This in turn means there is more energy in the atmosphere, which is released in the form of more intense weather extremes.
• As weather extremes become more frequent and/or intense, losses will increase unless specific mitigation measures are implemented. Construction engineering measures are one possibility, as are changes in land use.
• There is compelling scientific evidence for the influence of climate change on severe thunderstorms accompanied by hail in Europe, on wildfires in California, and on heatwaves, droughts and heavy rainfall.
• In recent years, tropical storms (called hurricanes, typhoons or cyclones, depending on the region where they occur) have been accompanied by increasingly extreme precipitation. There are also indications that, while the total number has remained largely unchanged, the proportion of especially severe storms is on the rise.