2024 saw contrasting extremes across Europe, with heatwaves, drought, wildfires, floods

By the Climate Centre

There was a striking east-west contrast in climate conditions last year, with extremely dry and often record heat in the east of Europe and less warm but wet conditions in the west, according to the European State of the Climate 2024 report, released yesterday.

Europe experienced the most widespread flooding since 2013, affecting more than 400,000 people, according to the report by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and the WMO.

Florence Rabier, Director-General at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (that implements CS3) said yesterday the “2024 report reveals that almost one third of the river network exceeded the high flood threshold, and heat stress continues to increase in Europe, highlighting the importance of building greater resilience.”

At the end of October, for example, Spain saw extreme precipitation and floods leading to devastating impacts and fatalities in the province of Valencia and neighbouring regions (photo).

In September, Storm Boris affected hundreds of thousands of people in Germany, Poland, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Italy.

‘Adaptation is a must’

The year 2024 was Europe’s warmest ever, with records broken in almost half of the continent, and the number of days with some level of at least strong heat stress the second highest on record.

In September, wildfires in Portugal burned destroyed 110,000 hectares in a week – accounting for around a quarter of the total area burnt in Europe for the year.

WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said: “Adaptation is a must. WMO and its partners are therefore intensifying efforts to strengthen early warning systems and climate services to help decision-makers and society at large to be more resilient. We are making progress but need to go further and need to go faster, and we need to go together.”

Just over half of European cities do now have dedicated climate adaptation plans, up from 26 per cent in 2018, the report adds, while the proportion of electricity generated by renewables in Europe reached a record high in 2024 at 45 per cent.

Spanish Red Cross provided photographers provided a graphic impression of the scale and lethality of the flash floods caused by the autumn 2024 depresion aislada en niveles altos, widely publicized as the DANA. (Photo: CRE)