World cities hit by swings in extreme weather as climate crisis intensifies, says report

Climate whiplash is already hitting major cities around the world, from Dallas to Shanghai, bringing deadly swings between extreme wet and dry weather as the climate crisis intensifies, a report has revealed.

- Damian Carrington

Dozens more cities, including Madrid, Riyadh and Lucknow, have suffered a climate "flip" in the last 20 years, switching from dry to wet extremes or vice versa. The report analysed the 100 most populous cities, plus 12 selected ones, and found that 95% of them showed a distinct trend towards wetter or drier weather.

The changing climate of cities can lead to worsened floods and droughts, destroy access to clean water, sanitation and food, and displace communities and spread disease. Locations where the water infrastructure is already poor, such as Khartoum and Karachi, suffer the most.

Cities across the world are affected but the data shows some regional trends, with drier weather hitting Europe, the already-parched Arabian peninsula and much of the US, while cities in south and south-east Asia are experiencing bigger downpours.

The analysis illustrates the climate chaos being brought to urban areas by human-caused global heating. Too little or too much water is the cause of 90% of climate disasters. More than 4.4bn people live in cities and the climate crisis was already known to be designed for a climate that no longer exists, and the establishment of much-needed infrastructure made even harder in low-income nations.

The researchers have worked in Nairobi, Kenya, one of the cities suffering climate whiplash. "People were struggling with no water, failed crops, dead livestock, with drought really impacting their livelihoods and lives for multiple years," Michaelides said. "Then the next thing that happens is too much rain, and everything's flooded, they lose more livestock, the city infrastructure gets overwhelmed, water gets contaminated, and then people get sick."