Data links human-driven warming to surge in extreme weather events

Carbon Brief has mapped over 900 studies covering 1,000 extreme weather events, finding that 85 percent were likely influenced by human activity. This evidentiary shift began after 2004, when scientists first tied the 2003 European heatwave—which claimed 70,000 lives—directly to human-driven warming. More recently, NASA's GRACE satellite data from 2025 indicated that the intensity of droughts and floods has spiked, with figures from 2024 doubling the average recorded between 2003 and 2020.

The Himalayan rock collapse

Evidence of this trend is visible in the Himalayas, where rising temperatures destabilized permafrost, leading to a catastrophic rock collapse and flooding in Nepal and Tibet last August. The disaster, which killed over 1,300 people, is estimated to cost $5 billion in recovery. Walter Immerzeel of Utrecht University explains that as permafrost thaws, water penetrates bedrock cracks; subsequent refreezing expands those fissures, weakening mountain slopes. While the 2015 Nepal earthquake contributed to the instability, researchers identified a strong link between the disaster and record-breaking regional heat. Although NASA scientists note that a longer dataset is required to confirm these intensity shifts as a permanent trend, the current data suggests that extreme weather is accelerating faster than global temperatures alone would predict.