In Pictures

Gallery|In Pictures

Photos: A year of facing nature’s fury

A cascade of extreme weather exacerbated by climate change devastated communities across the globe this year.

Wind whips embers from a burning tree during a wildfire near Hemet, California, on September. 6, 2022. [File: Ringo H W Chiu/AP Photo]
Published On 30 Dec 2022

A cascade of extreme weather exacerbated by climate change has devastated communities around the globe this year, including through sweltering heat and drought, wilted crops, forest fires and big rivers shrinking to a trickle.

In Pakistan, record monsoon rains inundated more than a third of the country, killing more than 1,500 people. In India and China, prolonged heat waves and droughts dried up rivers, disrupted power grids and threatened food security for billions of people. Widespread flooding and mudslides brought on by torrential rains also killed hundreds of people in South Africa, Brazil and Nigeria.

In Europe, heat waves set record temperatures in Britain and other parts of the continent, leading to severe droughts, low river flows that slowed shipping, and wildfires in many parts of the continent. Much of East Africa is still in the grips of a multi-year drought – the worst in more than 40 years, according to the United Nations – leaving millions of people vulnerable to food shortages and starvation.

An analysis by an international team of climate scientists in October found that human-caused climate change made drought across the northern hemisphere at least 20 times more likely, and warned that such extreme dry periods would become increasingly common with global heating.

The planet currently remains off track from a goal set by the Paris climate accord in 2015 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

This year might provide a glimpse of our near future, as these extreme climate events become more frequent.

Victims of the unprecedented flooding from monsoon rains use makeshift barge to carry hay for cattle, in Jaffarabad, a district of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province
Victims of the unprecedented flooding from monsoon rains use a makeshift barge to carry hay for cattle in Jaffarabad, a district of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province, on September 5. The UN refugee agency recently rushed more desperately needed aid to flood-stricken Pakistan as the nation's prime minister travelled to the south, where the rising waters of Lake Manchar have posed a new threat. [File: Fareed Khan/AP Photo]
Advertisement
a man walks along the waterfront, now littered with debris
A man walks along the waterfront littered with debris, including shrimp boats, in the mobile home park where he and his wife have a trailer on San Carlos Island, Fort Myers Beach, Florida, on October 5, a week after the passage of Hurricane Ian. [File: Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo]
people sitting on a section of a parched river bed
People are shown sitting on a section of a parched riverbed along the Yangtze River in Wuhan, in China's central Hubei province, on September 2. [China Out/AFP]
CalFire firefighters turn away from the fire to watch for any stray embers during the Fairview fire in California
Firefighters turn away from the fire to watch for any stray embers during an operation to contain the Fairview Fire near Hemet, California, on September 8. [File: Patrick T Fallon/AFP]
A polar bear snorts after swimming behind a pod of beluga whales
A polar bear snorts after swimming behind a pod of beluga whales passing near the shoreline of Hudson Bay near Churchill on August 9. [File: Olivier Morin/AFP]
abandoned boat on a desert at the site of former Lake Poopo,
An abandoned boat on a desert at the site of the former Lake Poopo, near Punaca Tinta Maria, Bolivia, is seen from the air on October 15. Lake Poopo, once Bolivia's second-biggest body of water, has largely disappeared, taking with it a centuries-old culture reliant entirely on its bounty. [File: Martin Silva/AFP]
Advertisement
A Somali woman stands near the carcass of her dead livestock
An internally displaced Somali woman stands near the carcass of her dead livestock following severe droughts near Dollow, Gedo Region, Somalia, on May 26. [File: Feisal Omar/Reuters]
A fire engine drives during a wildfire in El Pont de Vilomara
A fire engine is driven during a wildfire in El Pont de Vilomara, north of Barcelona, Spain, on July 18. [File: Albert Gea/Reuters]
A woman sits on the debris of her destroyed house
A woman sits on the debris of her destroyed house in the aftermath of Cyclone Batsirai, in the town of Mananjary, Madagascar, on February 7. [File: Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters]
Peole walk through floodwaters
Peole walk through floodwaters after heavy rainfall in Hadeja, Nigeria, on September 19. Nigeria is battling its worst floods in 10 years. [File: AP Photo]
man walks beside ice formed by the spray of Lake Erie waves which covered a restaurant during a winter storm
A man walks beside ice formed by the spray of Lake Erie waves, which covered a restaurant after a winter storm in Hamburg, New York, on December 26. [Lindsey DeDario/Reuters]
A woman tries to walk on the rubble left by heavy rains in Petropolis, Brazil, on February 16. Petropolis was devastated by the rains that left more than 50 dead, thousands homeless and an unknown number missing. [File: Antonio Lacerda/EPA-EFE]
A shepherd watches his buffalos
A shepherd watches his buffalos cool off in the scarce waters of the Diyala River, which has turned into pools of sewage water due to desertification and pollution, east of Baghdad, Iraq, on June 29. [File: Ahmed Jalil/EPA-EFE]