#extreme weather

#extreme weather

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

Flooding has become the world's foremost climate hazard', according to experts. So what do we do about it? Devastating floods ravaged multiple regions of the world in 2025, from Southeast Asia to North America and the Middle East. We asked climate experts what is causing the devastation and what governments should be doing to prevent the situation from becoming even worse in the coming year.

To identify the 20 five-billion-dollar weather disasters since 2020, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Centers for Environmental Information report, Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (2024). The 20 events are listed in order of the estimated cost of the damages, adjusted for inflation. Two of the events are winter storms, three are wildfires, four are droughts, five are severe storms, and six are tropical cyclones.

The cost of home insurance in the United States rose by ~89% between 2014 and 2025, as rapidly climbing home prices, more frequent extreme weather events and inflation impacted insurers and homeowners. ICE analysts share key insights from their recent 10-year study into the forces propelling rising insurance costs across the nation. Over the past decade, home insurance costs have risen rapidly in many parts of the United States.

A polar vortex happens when air in the Arctic is destabilized, often by intruding warming air currents, and moves extreme cold air southward. The type of polar vortex this current system could become is known as a "sudden stratospheric warming" event - if it indeed comes to pass, this would be the earliest instance of it happening during a winter season on record.

At least two people have been killed and 21 remain unaccounted for following a landslide in Indonesia, according to officials, as rescuers continue to search for the missing. Several days of heavy rainfall in the region led to landslides that hit dozens of houses in three villages in the Cilacap district, Central Java province, on Thursday evening, officials said in a statement released on Friday.

It's been ten years since Laurent Fabius, then the foreign minister of France, gavelled the United Nations 21st conference of the parties on climate change (COP21), bringing the 2015 Paris climate agreement into existence. It is an imperfect pact, not least because the initial commitments it enshrined were woefully inadequate. But it set an important goal: to avert planetary-scale ecological, economic and social disruptions by reining in greenhouse-gas emissions and limiting global warming to 2 °C - and, ideally, 1.5 °C - above preindustrial levels.

Industries and individuals around the world burned record amounts of oil, gas and coal last year, releasing more greenhouse gases than ever before, a group of leading scientists said in a new report, warning that humanity is hurtling toward "climate chaos." The surge in global use of fossil fuels in 2024 contributed to extreme weather and devastating disasters including heat waves, storms, floods and wildfires.

Rescuers have guided more than 350 people to safety after they were stranded by blizzard-like conditions on the Tibetan side of Mount Everest, Chinese state media reported on Sunday. In total, more than 500 people were caught by surprise when unusually heavy snow and rainfall lashed them on the way in the Tingri region of Tibet, one of the main routes to ascend the world's tallest mountain.

Hurricane Erin rapidly strengthened to a Category 5 storm, with maximum sustained winds of 160 mph, increasing by 60 mph in just nine hours.

During extreme weather, the challenges faced by teams assisting homeless people in New York City's subway system are heightened, requiring additional oversight and compassion for vulnerable individuals.

The blaze in southern France's Aude region has killed one person and injured nine, marking the country's largest wildfire this season, consuming over 15,000 hectares.

More than 21% of all properties downstream are at risk of flooding over the next three decades, which accounts for 18,596 properties in Dayton.

With heat like this, you run out of original things to say and reach for deeply trodden comparisons: it's an oven, it's a furnace, it's a sauna.