Climate change caused many extreme weather events of the past year to be more likely or to manifest more strongly, according to a report by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative published on Tuesday.
Global warming is already taking millions of people to the limits of their ability to adapt, the WWA says in its annual report for 2025.
"Each year, the risks of climate change become less hypothetical and more brutal reality," Friederike Otto, professor in Climate Science at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London and co-founder of World Weather Attribution, says.
The team counted 157 extreme weather events in 2025: 49 floods, 49 heat waves, 38 storms, 11 wildfires, seven droughts and three cold spells.
Events are included on the list only once they have passed a certain threshold, for example, by causing more than 100 fatalities, by affecting more than 1 million people, or if a national or regional disaster is declared.
The WWA team examined 22 of the 157 events in depth, finding that 17 of these had become more likely or had been more severe due to climate change. For just five – all of them extreme rainfall – the results were inconclusive.
Among the other events were a seven-day heat wave in February in South Sudan with temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius. According to the analysis, temperatures would have reached a maximum of 36 degrees without climate change.
