Weather Watch - 2025

In 2023, countries used weasel wording to "contribute" to "transitioning away from fossil fuels" at the COP28 climate change summit in Dubai, a statement that sounded like a goal but acted like a mirage in a desert of inaction.

Carbon emission increased between COP28 and COP29! 

2024 became the first calendar year to pass the 1.5C threshold, as well as being the world's hottest year on record.

The 1.5C threshold refers to the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This target was established in the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change that was signed by 196 countries at COP 21 in 2015. 

To understand Climate Change better I tracked major Weather events that made headlines in 2024. I'll keep updating this page as such events unfold this year.

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February

* Climate Change to Wipe Away $1.5 Trillion in U.S. Home Values - WSJ

* 2025 began with the warmest January on record. The global average temperature in Jan was 1.75°C higher than pre-industrial times.

January 

* Hyderabad is likely to experience an unusual weather pattern, with summer-like heat, winter chill, and unseasonal rainfall occurring in quick succession over the next week. Weather experts say this phenomenon, which has not been observed in the past five years, indicates significant changes in local climate patterns. Fluctuating weather is causing a surge in cases of flu, fever, allergies, and infections in the city, according to doctors. While such ailments were once prevalent during the monsoon, doctors note that constant temperature changes have made them common year-round.  - ToI

* "The only conclusion you can come to if you look at Los Angeles carefully is that there shouldn’t be a city there. It is built in a desert and all its water is piped in from as far away as the Colorado river, which is now dwindling. There were massive fires in this area in the 1990s. Mike Davis writes about it in a book called ‘Ecology of Fear’. After those fires, hundreds of thousands of people moved out. And I think you’re going to see that again because people are not going to be able to insure their houses anymore. And while the actual fires are not necessarily linked to climate change, the background noise is all linked to climate change. A couple of years ago there was massive rain in this area in California. Everyone said, oh great. And I thought to myself, no, it’s not great because you’re going to get an upsurge of vegetation. And that’s what happened. Then this huge drought started, the vegetation dried, providing fuel for the fire.

The real background of the problem is what I call ‘terraforming’ in my book, and capitalism is an integral part of this. The real estate industry has been running wild over there for years, building stuff in places where there shouldn’t be any kind of habitation. One of the most disturbing things that I’ve read is that in Altadena, just above Pasadena, real estate firms are going to survivors with offers to buy land. They’ll get it at fire sale prices and create more developments in exactly those areas....

Climate denialism comes from people who believe that someone else will bear the burden." - Amitav Ghosh

* IMD’s Annual Climate Summary-2024 shows that extreme weather events caused over 3,200 deaths in India in 2024. Lightning and thunderstorms claimed most lives (1,374) followed by floods and heavy rains (1,287). The country experienced above normal temperatures in all four seasons last year. Many Met stations set new records since 1901 in terms of both temperature and rainfall.

* New data from US govt’s Climate Prediction Center shows 2024 had the highest recorded ‘extreme’ rainfall events although the year’s overall rainfall was 27th lowest in the past 46 years.