More information on how extreme, abnormal, or excessive weather will affect you, your family, and your business this year and beyond

Heat-Related

Increasing heat and longer heatwaves, heat domes, and considerably more days with temperatures of 100 degrees or higher annually. (More 100 degrees + days during the growing season means more crop failures and lower yields.)

In the US alone, we predict between 2,000 and 3,000 people will die directly because of extreme heat-related causes. Worldwide, we predict several hundred thousand people will die from extreme heat-related causes. Expect these death totals to rise dramatically yearly in perfect lockstep with increasing global temperatures.

The intervals between changing weather patterns will become shorter, and the differences in types of weather changes will become more pronounced. For example, droughts will take less time to intensify into rainstorms, and snow will quickly transform into rain and ice. Calm days will quickly give way to intense wind gusts. Much of this will happen because the atmosphere is heating up like a pressure cooker. The contents inside that pressure cooker (our atmosphere) are churning and moving faster and faster as the global temperature rises.

Despite typical El Niño and La Niña temperature variations, we forecast that, like 2024, 2025 will become the warmest year on record. It will break the temperature record again (despite the change from La Niña to El Niño) because we continue to release ever more carbon, methane, and nitrous oxide greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from our ever-increasing use of fossil fuels. Not only are we releasing ever more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but we are also doing so at increasingly faster rates. Add to that nightmare the additional triggering of climate change feedbacks and crossing more climate tipping points, and you have the perfect recipe for endless global heating increases.

Globally, climate change caused an average of 41 additional days of dangerous heat in 2024, posing a significant threat to people’s health. We expect that number to rise significantly in 2025. 

 

Humidity-Related 

Due to heat-related evaporation worldwide, the amount of water in the atmosphere is expected to increase significantly. With every one-degree Celsius increase in temperature, atmospheric water vapor increases by 7%. This increase in water vapor results in a substantial rise in global humidity.

When heat, temperature, and humidity factors are combined into a measurement, it is called a wet-bulb temperature. Even heat-adapted individuals cannot engage in normal outdoor activities beyond a wet-bulb temperature of 32 °C (90 °F), equivalent to a heat index of 55 °C (131 °F). A reading of 35 °C (95 °F) – equivalent to a heat index of 71 °C (160 °F) – is considered the theoretical human survivability limit for up to six hours of exposure. In 2024, areas of the Iranian desert reached a temperature of 73 °C, equivalent to 163°F. 

Higher temperatures lead to an increase in heat-related deaths. High humidity is particularly deadly for the very old and young when it accompanies high temperatures.

High humidity and temperatures combined will significantly depress outdoor labor productivity and safety.

Eventually, rising humidity and temperatures will cause millions of people in the tropics to migrate, as living and working conditions will become unbearable and unsustainable. Rising global humidity, driven by climate change, will become one of humanity's most significant challenges to productivity and survival.

 

Wind-Related

Increasing heat will lead to increased wind and higher wind speeds almost everywhere. Our atmosphere will increasingly "boil and churn" as it continues to warm each year, much like water boiling and churning under a pressure cooker as the heat increases. This "pressure cooker" wind-increasing effect occurs because the top layer of our atmosphere acts like a pressure cooker lid, keeping most of the warming heat from climate change inside our lower atmosphere. 

Flyers will experience significantly increased air turbulence and extreme air turbulence, as reported by airlines and airline passengers. More flights are expected to be delayed or canceled due to high winds and extreme weather conditions. More airplanes will also experience more emergency landings or crashes due to climate-related extreme weather. 

Increasing winds worldwide will eventually become one of climate change's most damaging and consistent consequences. (For example, the western coast of the United States will experience significantly increased wind events of 70-100 miles per hour. Worldwide, tornadoes and Derechos will occur in places they have not previously occurred, and they will become more frequent in areas where they have occurred previously.) Increased winds will create downed trees and power lines, block roads, and destroy crops.

More intense or frequent hurricanes, Derechos, cyclones, tornadoes, and extreme wind events are expected to occur. Worldwide, we can expect to see an increase in Category 5 and 6 hurricanes and cyclones. The new category six hurricanes and typhoons will occur due to the extra global warming-caused heating in our atmosphere and oceans. (The category six hurricane level begins with maximum sustained winds of 182 MPH. (Just two category six hurricanes have been recorded: Patricia and Wilma. Current construction standards will not survive a category six hurricane, much less more frequent category five hurricanes.)

 

Rain-Related

Due to heat-related evaporation worldwide, there will be a significant increase in water vapor in the atmosphere. With every one-degree Celsius increase in temperature, there is a 7% increase in atmospheric water vapor.

There will be a lot more rain bombs. (Rain bombs are where a week, month, or season's worth of rain falls in a few hours or days.)

You will see rain bombs approaching 30 inches of rain in one or two days, becoming more common. You will also see rain bombs occur in locations that have never experienced them before, due to changes in the jet stream and atmosphere.

Rain bombs and other climate-related flooding will cause city and home sewers to back up. Raw human and industrial sewage will be more frequently dumped into homes, streets, businesses, rivers, lakes, bays, and coastal waters.

Due to rain bombs and flooding, there will be significantly more water treatment plant purification problems and disruptions.

Increased water vapor also means even more snow bombs.

There will be more atmospheric rivers in existing and new locations, where rainstorms after rainstorms pummel an area with little time between each new storm.

Due to warmer temperatures, earlier spring rains are anticipated, resulting in smaller mountain snowpacks and significantly faster spring snowmelt. This faster runoff will cause more record-breaking flash flooding downstream and reduce the amount of water available from the annual snowpack for crops and other uses.

 

Drought-Related

There will be more droughts. (We are currently experiencing global warming-aggravated mega-droughts that have lasted one or more decades in the US Southwest, West Africa, and Australia.)

There will be more desertification: more land will be in drought and unusable.

Droughts will wreck coastal fisheries, especially salmon (which spawn in drought-ravaged rivers). The government departments managing the fisheries will issue shorter fishing seasons more frequently, delay fishing seasons, or even cancel specific fishing seasons for a year or more.

As climate change intensifies heat and leads to more prolonged droughts affecting larger areas, traditional legal water rights for nations, states, regions, and individuals will be increasingly challenged in the courts, renegotiated, and altered. This global water rights reallocation process and changes to preexisting legal water rights will be required and encouraged to address today's harsh climate change realities and our improved understanding of climate change and hydrology (the study of water, including water conservation). There will be increased government enforcement of new rights being taken away from existing water right holders.

 

 

(Please note: When you look at the steeply rising carbon (CO2) graph (above) and the carbon, methane, and nitrous oxide greenhouse gas graphs (further down the page), which are also rising steeply, two truths scream out:

1. Climate change will continue to worsen even faster because more greenhouse gases are going into the atmosphere each year, and

2. Nothing the world's governments (or environmental groups) have done since they were informed about the growing climate catastrophe over 60 years ago has been effective in any meaningful way for reducing the rising greenhouse gases that cause climate change.

The decades of rising carbon, methane, and nitrous oxide numbers do not lie. Our global efforts to reduce climate change by reducing the cause of climate change (fossil fuel emissions and greenhouse gases) have been a total, complete, and utter failure! Until we come out of this climate change denial and face these painful facts, we will never be able to reduce or avoid the escalating climate change consequences described on this page.)

 

 

Cold-Related

Despite it often being called global warming, climate change, computer modeling predicts many unseasonable and intense cold spells because the jet stream has started to wobble and become more unstable. This extreme instability brings much colder air from the far north down into areas, and at times, where it would not usually occur.

There will be more sudden cold or freezing spells at times, and in places, this should not occur! Because more of these cold and freezing spells will occur in locations where they are not typically found, there will be many frozen and burst pipes and water systems due to the water freezing inside them. Because of the jet stream and other atmospheric disturbances caused by climate change, you will also see cold or freezing spells in places where they have never experienced such weather phenomena.

As the freezing winter weather rapidly gives way to warm and rainy conditions, there will be an increase in damaging and dangerous ice storms. These storms will disrupt personal and business transportation. This increase in ice storms will be particularly harsh on the airline industry, which will have to cancel many more flights due to heavily iced runways and issues with airplane de-icing.

There will be more frequent hailstorms with larger hailstones. Increased heat and warm weather during winter will also cause more rain, freezing rain, and ice storms. These winter ice and freezing rain storms will take down power lines, and the increasing number of downed power lines will further disrupt transportation, manufacturing, and life.

Just as we are already experiencing rain bombs, where weeks or months' worth of rain fall in a day or two, in 2025, the world will recognize that we are also now experiencing snow bombs. Highly disruptive snow bombs occur when about 4 to 8 feet of snow falls in an area over several days. As rain bombs increase in severity, frequency, and scale in covered areas, snow bombs will likely follow suit. This rain-to-snow bomb parallel is because snow bombs are just frozen water particles.  As global heating increases, more water vapor will be in the air, which, in some places, will cause frozen water particles to form snow.

 

Wildfires and Wildfire Smoke-Related

Larger fires will spread faster due to predicted higher-velocity winds, increased heat, and droughts. As the temperature rises, the number of wildfires worldwide is expected to increase, with greater severity, frequency, and area affected. These wildfires will also cause increasing temporary and permanent evacuations and relocations.

Due to increased droughts and heat, wildfires are expected to occur more frequently in forests worldwide, particularly in the northern United States, Canada, northern Europe, Scandinavia, and Russia. Due to recurring and prolonged droughts, wildfires are also expected to increase in the Amazon tropical forest area.

With wildfires comes wildfire smoke. Wildfire smoke contains dangerous PM 2.5 particles and other highly toxic materials from the homes and other buildings being burned. PM 2.5 and other poisonous particles released during wildfires have a significant health effect on affected populations. It is estimated that in California alone, from 2018 to 2022, approximately 50,000 people died from the PM 2.5 and other toxic effects of wildfire smoke. 

Southern California is a prime example of what is likely to happen in many parts of the world regarding wildfires and smoke. Southern California will experience alternating periods of climate change-driven higher annual rainfall, one year or one season, followed by periods of extended and increasing drought the next year or season. When excessive annual or seasonal rainfall and subsequent drought phenomena are combined with increased global warming, local area winds will also intensify. In the case of Southern California, these intensifying winds are known as the periodic Santa Ana winds.

Due to accelerating climate change, Southern California will continue to experience excessive rainfall in one year or season, followed by severe droughts the next year or season. More specifically, this is dangerous because additional plant growth will occur during the increased rainfall period, and this growth will dry out during the extended drought periods. This will provide ever-increasing dry wildfire fuel, resulting in ever larger, more intense, and more frequent wildfires and emergency wildfire evacuations in Southern California (especially during periods of the Santa Anna winds). Accelerating climate change will make rebuilding in medium- to high-risk wildfire areas of southern California (or anywhere in the world) increasingly unwise and all but impossible to ensure at a reasonable cost.

Increasing wildfires worldwide also release massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, becoming a triple disaster because increased atmospheric carbon levels from soot and smoke contribute to rising average global temperatures and exacerbate breathing and other health problems, especially for the young and the elderly.

 

Season-Related

Normal seasonal weather patterns will become less stable and predictable. Significant unseasonable changes like rain and warm weather during winter, followed quickly by severe cold spells, then back to warm or rain, then cold again in winter and summer. These rapid changes in warm-to-cold and wet-to-dry weather are because the jet stream has started to wobble and become more unstable.

There will be significantly more crop failures and yield losses due to climate change-driven abnormal seasonal variations, such as essential weather conditions appearing at the wrong time of the season for crop survival, e.g., rain bombs during spring planting, high wind Derechos at harvest time, etc. Seasons that do not begin or end when they usually do will be especially dangerous for crops and gardens.

We will also experience more incidents of freezing rain, ice storms, and damaging large hail in non-winter seasons, which can lower food production or destroy entire crops.

Accelerating climate change consequences, which cause extreme weather, will also severely impact most aspects of our lives and businesses in the following areas. (You will be able to see full descriptions of each of the areas described below on this page about 1/2 way down. 

expanding property and mortgage insurance cancellations or massive rate increases for homes, businesses, and farms,

rapidly increasing electric bills and rates,

increased health costs, personal costs, and business costs,

extreme weather-related travel delays and cancellations, and increased airline flight turbulence,

increasing heat, humidity, wind, and rain bombs,

more wildfires and wildfire smoke events,

increasing drought,

extreme cold spells and snow bombs,

reduced food production, less food availability, increased food prices and food distribution costs,

increase world starvation,

worsening environmental conditions,

regional infrastructure destruction,

increased political turmoil and

miscellaneous other factors.

You can find full and detailed descriptions of each of the areas described above on this page, approximately halfway down. 

 

How can you better protect yourself & your family from extreme, abnormal, or excessive weather event damage and losses?

The most important thing you can depend upon is that government officials will avoid telling you is that, because of climate change, settled climate science predicts extreme weather events will become more severe, more frequent, and cover larger and larger areas.

Worse yet, these extreme weather events are predicted to increase dramatically beyond their current levels between 2025 and 2031. And after 2031, these extreme and record-breaking weather events are expected to increase in severity, frequency, and scale exponentially.

Please review the following links related to extreme weather, selecting those that interest you most and are most applicable to your current situation:

1. What are the most important facts everyone should know about extreme weather events and climate change?

2. What are the most dangerous things most people still do not understand about the climate change crisis?

3. What are the Other Primary and Secondary Consequences of Climate Change?

4. Sign up for Our Free Climate Change and Global Warming Blog so you can stay up-to-date on the latest climate research on climate change, disasters, and catastrophes.

5. Click here to learn about who really has caused the climate change nightmare and who is responsible for climate change damages and losses.

6. Click here to learn how you can get financial restitution for the climate change damages and losses you have experienced but did not cause.

7. Learn how to protect yourself and your family from extreme weather and climate change. See our: 

Climate Change Disaster Preparation, Adaptation, Recovery, and Migration Guidebook.

8. The 20 Worst Climate Change and Global Warming Consequences

Click one of the links above to learn more and start your extreme weather protection plan!