Climate change is increasing the risks of extreme heat, floods and bushfires, meaning more people are having to consider moving home. But different people come to different decisions.
In California, El Niño helped fuel a wet 2023 and early 2024.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
We crave certainty in our weather forecasts. But that’s only possible for big weather events such as cyclones and major storms. Everything else is probability.
The North Queensland floods remind us of the need to build community resilience to disasters – during the event, in the immediate aftermath and beyond.
Extreme downpours filled downtown Montpelier, Vt., with water in July 2023.
John Tully for The Washington Post via Getty Images
The US saw a record number of billion-dollar disasters in 2023, even when accounting for inflation. The number of long-running heat waves like the Southwest experienced is also rising.
Once the immediate crisis in North Queensland has subsided, authorities will need to grapple with how to deal with the ‘new normal’ of extreme weather events. The big question is: are they prepared?
Activists from different African countries seen on 10 December 2023 at COP28.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Shannon Gibson, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
The agreement still leaves many unanswered questions, as well as concerns from vulnerable countries about who will qualify, who pays and who is in charge.
Agricultural communities in parts of Madagascar face shifting precipitation patterns and increasingly severe cyclones.
Katherine Browne
Any plan to dam or extract water from some of Australia’s last wild rivers must carefully consider the consequences. Prawn, mud crab and barramundi fisheries could suffer in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
Storm Babet batters a lighthouse in north east England.
Owen Humphreys / PA
Alaska has at least 120 glacier-dammed lakes, and almost all have drained at least once since 1985, a new study shows. Small ones have been producing larger floods in recent years.