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Climate chronicles

Precipitation extremes in 2024

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 6, pages 243–245 (2025)Cite this article

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2024 was one of the wettest years on record, witnessing record-breaking extreme precipitation events across the globe, several of which were compound events. Extreme rainfalls were unprecedented in arid regions and parts of the Global South, with severe monsoon rains and rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones causing severe casualties and economic losses.

Key points

  • Climate change continues to intensify extreme rainfall, including the rainfall event in Valencia, Spain, which was made 13% more intense by warming.

  • Compound events were commonplace, with extreme rainfall following droughts or successive storm events, leading to flooding and cascading impacts such as landslides.

  • Like 2023, September was marked by blocking events, with clear impacts from a weakening El Niño and warmer ocean and atmospheric temperatures from anthropogenic warming.

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Fig. 1: Extreme rainfall in 2024.

Data availability

Precipitation data were obtained from the Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) dataset, provided by NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, accessed 30 January 2025, ftp://arthurhou.pps.eosdis.nasa.gov/gpmdata/.

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Acknowledgements

H.J.F. was supported by the Co-Centre for Climate + Biodiversity + Water funded by UKRI (NE/Y006496/1) and NSFGEO-NERC: HUrricane Risk Amplification and Changing North Atlantic Natural disasters (Huracan) funded by NERC (NE/W009587/1). H.J.F. and A.G. were supported by IMPETUS4CHANGE funded by HORIZON-CL5-2022-D1-02 (Grant agreement ID: 101081555) and the UKRI Horizon Europe Guarantee (10047737).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

    Amy C. Green, Hayley J. Fowler, Stephen Blenkinsop & Paul A. Davies

  2. Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

    Amy C. Green, Hayley J. Fowler & Stephen Blenkinsop

  3. UK Meteorological Office, Exeter, UK

    Paul A. Davies

Authors
  1. Amy C. Green
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  2. Hayley J. Fowler
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  3. Stephen Blenkinsop
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  4. Paul A. Davies
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Correspondence to Amy C. Green.

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Green, A.C., Fowler, H.J., Blenkinsop, S. et al. Precipitation extremes in 2024. Nat Rev Earth Environ 6, 243–245 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-025-00666-x

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