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extreme weather
US Faced 27 Billion-Dollar Disasters in 2024, the Hottest Year on Record
"Between record-breaking temperatures and wildfires currently threatening our centers and workforce in California, it has never been more important to understand our changing planet."
"Once again, the temperature record has been shattered—2024 was the hottest year since recordkeeping began in 1880," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a statement. "Between record-breaking temperatures and wildfires currently threatening our centers and workforce in California, it has never been more important to understand our changing planet."
Other experts, at NASA and beyond, also responded to the findings by emphasizing that the climate emergency was created by humanity extracting and burning fossil fuels—and continuing to do so, despite scientists' warnings and initiatives including the 2015 Paris agreement, which was intended to limit global temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
"To put that in perspective, temperatures during the warm periods on Earth three million years ago—when sea levels were dozens of feet higher than today—were only around 3°C warmer than preindustrial levels," explained Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "We are halfway to Pliocene-level warmth in just 150 years."
"Not every year is going to break records, but the long-term trend is clear," said Schmidt, acknowledging natural fluctuations such as El Niño and La Niña. "We're already seeing the impact in extreme rainfall, heatwaves, and increased flood risk, which are going to keep getting worse as long as emissions continue."
NASA noted that independent analyses from Berkeley Earth, Europe's Copernicus Climate Change Service, the United Kingdom's Met Office, and the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) also concluded that "global surface temperatures for 2024 were the highest since modern record-keeping began," though some of the figures differ slightly due their to various methodologies and models.
For example, NOAA, which also released its 2024 conclusions on Friday, found that the global surface temperature was 2.32°F (1.29°C) above the 20th-century average and exceeded the 1850-1900 average by 2.63°F (1.46°C). The agency also found that the annual average for the contiguous United States was 55.5°F—3.5°F above average and the warmest in the 130-year record.
NOAA also put out findings on extreme weather events that are becoming more common and devastating due to fossil fuel-driven global heating. The agency identified 27 disasters across the country—a drought, a flooding event, a wildfire, two winter storms, five tropical cyclones, and 17 severe storms—with losses topping $1 billion each. They collectively cost $182.7 billion and killed at least 568 people.
Over a third of those deaths—219—were tied to Hurricane Helene, last year's costliest event at $78.7 billion. The Category 4 storm made landfall in Florida's Big Bend region and left a trail of destruction up to North Carolina and Tennessee. NOAA said that it "was the deadliest Atlantic hurricane since Maria (2017) and the deadliest to strike the U.S. mainland since Katrina (2005)."
The United States has faced 403 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters over the past 45 years, and 2024 had the second-highest count, after 28 events in 2023. The annual average for 1980-2024 is just nine, compared with 23 for the past five years.
(Image: NOAA)
"Last year's record-breaking heat and billion-dollar disasters are an alarming harbinger of what's to come if the nation fails to invest in a climate-resilient economy and do its part to sharply cut global heat-trapping emissions," said Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist at the Union of Concerned Scientists' (UCS) Climate and Energy Program, in a statement. "It's time for decision-makers at all levels of government and across the economy to acknowledge the staggering financial costs and human toll of burning fossil fuels and commit to building a stronger, safer economy powered by clean energy."
Cleetus also called out the fossil fuel companies that "seem intent on burning down the planet to protect their profits" and the "policymakers in their thrall." Her UCS colleague Astrid Caldas, a senior climate scientist for community resilience, similarly stressed the urgent need to act while blasting Big Oil and its allies in politics.
"As a scientist exhausted from sounding the alarm hottest year after hottest year, I'm no longer just concerned about the climate crisis and its impacts on vulnerable communities but incensed at world leaders for their grossly inadequate climate action to date," Caldas declared. "NOAA and NASA confirmed that the last 11 years have been the 11 hottest on record. Will it take another 11 years for policymakers to heed the irrefutable science and address the devastation being experienced in the United States and around the world largely due to fossil-fuel driven global warming?"
As Californians faced what experts fear will be the costliest fire disaster in U.S. history, Caldas said that "deadly and costly climate impacts, including accelerating sea-level rise and record-breaking heatwaves, droughts, storms, and wildfires, are mounting, and yet politicians stand by while heat-trapping emissions continue to rise globally. The science is indisputable: Transformative and comprehensive global climate action, including a speedy and just transition away from fossil fuels and increased investments in climate resilience, is paramount to protect people now and foster prosperity for generations to come."
"The villains of this escalating tragedy are also clear, with wealthy nations, the duplicitous fossil fuel industry, and spineless policymakers topping the list of those bearing primary responsibility for past and current global warming emissions and climate inaction," she added. "The biggest injustice is that the most vulnerable communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis have much to lose despite contributing the least to this problem."
As Apocalyptic Fires Torch LA, Climate Campaigners Say 'Big Oil Did This'
"Oil and gas CEOs know they're responsible for these disasters," the group added. "But still, they choose to fight investments in renewable energy, spread propaganda, and bribe politicians into supporting $757 BILLION in fossil fuel subsidies."
With appalling speed, the Los Angeles fires have so far scorched tens of thousands of acres, destroyed thousands of homes, and killed at least five people—a death toll that's expected to rise.
"It's like Armageddon,"
said one resident, a sentiment echoed by a CNN reporter in Los Angeles.
"Everyone keeps saying 'apocalyptic,'" saidCNN's Leigh Waldman. "But that doesn't begin to cover it."
The Palisades fire, the largest of five blazes currently ravaging Los Angeles County, has already been deemed the most destructive in LA history.
Early estimates indicate the total economic damage of the Los Angeles fires could exceed $50 billion.
With a Thursday social media post featuring footage of the raging fires and damage in Los Angeles, Warren Gunnels, staff director for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), wrote: "They say the Green New Deal is expensive. Compared to what?"
Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement Wednesday that "these fires have taken lives and destroyed homes, livelihoods, and landscapes."
"We are holding those affected by this disaster close in our hearts and appreciate the first responders who are bravely working to contain the fires. It is essential that federal and state authorities continue to provide these communities with all the resources and support they need to recover and heal," said Jealous. "Barely a week into the new year, and fire season is here. This is not normal."
"Time and again, we are witnessing fossil fuel-driven climate change heighten extreme weather, making wildfires increasingly common and increasingly destructive," he continued. "We cannot be passive. We cannot elevate misinformation about what is needed to confront the worsening crisis. Leaders must take the action necessary to fund and support the home-hardening efforts that make our communities resilient."
People watch smoke and flames from the Palisades Fire on January 7, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo: Tiffany Rose/Getty Images)
The Los Angeles fires come as states and localities across the United States are suing oil and gas companies for climate damages as extreme weather becomes increasingly frequent and destructive on a warming planet.
According to the Center for Climate Integrity, more than one in four Americans currently live in a community taking legal action against Big Oil, "underscoring the rapidly growing wave of calls to hold the oil and gas industry accountable for its decades-long climate deception and the harms it has caused."
Aaron Regunberg, an attorney who is helping build a legal case against the fossil fuel industry, wrote Wednesday that the Los Angeles crisis "didn't just happen."
"A recent study found that nearly all of the observed increase in wildfire-burned area in California over the past half-century is attributable to anthropogenic climate change," Regunberg, senior policy counsel with Public Citizen's Climate Program, wrote on social media. "This devastation is the direct result of Big Oil's conduct."
Jamie Henn, director of Fossil Free Media, offered a similar assessment, writing that "the fires in Los Angeles aren't just a tragedy, they're a crime."
"This is exactly the sort of disaster that Exxon's own scientists predicted more than 50 years ago, but they spent billions to keep us hooked on fossil fuels," Henn added. "It's time to make polluters pay."
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