Extreme weather and climate impacts bite Latin America and Caribbean

Key messages

Temperatures

Temperature trends for the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and South America subregions. Datasets: Berkeley Earth, ERA5, GISTEMP, HadCRUT5, JRA 3Q and NOAAGlobalTemp v6. The black vertical lines indicate the ranges of the six estimates.

The mean temperature in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2024 was +0.90 °C above the 1991–2020 average. Depending on the dataset used, it was the warmest year on record in Central America and the Caribbean, and the warmest or second warmest in Mexico and South America.

Drought and floods

Rainfall patterns were influenced by El Niño conditions in the first half of the year.

For instance, there was widespread drought across Amazonia and the Pantanal, where rainfall was 30% to 40% below normal. Later in 2024, the Negro River in Manaus reached a record low and the Paraguay River in Asunción reached its lowest level in 60 years.

Wildfires in the Amazon and Pantanal regions, central Chile, Mexico and Belize were fuelled by drought and extreme heatwaves, breaking records in many countries. In Chile, wildfires resulted in over 130 deaths, making these fires the country’s worst disaster since the 2010 earthquake.

Floods triggered by heavy rainfall in Rio Grande do Sul became Brazil’s worst climate related disaster, causing economic losses to the agricultural sector of about 8.5 billion Brazilian reais. While timely warnings and evacuations helped mitigate the impacts of the flooding, there were more than 180 fatalities highlighting the need to improve the understanding of disaster risks among authorities and the public.

Glaciers

In South America, glaciers are crucial water sources for millions of people, so their accelerated retreat is a cause for concern.

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela lost its final glacier, Humboldt, joining Slovenia as the first two countries to lose all their glaciers in modern times.

The Conejeras Glacier, nestled within in the Sierra Nevada, Colombia, and the Martial South Glacier, in the Cordon Martial, Ushuaia, Argentina, were declared extinct in 2024.

Data for 2024 from 5 500 glaciers across the Andes show that the mountains have lost 25% of their ice coverage since the end of the nineteenth century and that their tropical glaciers are melting 10 times faster than the cumulative global average.

Sea-level and tropical cyclones

Ocean warming and the melting of glaciers, ice caps and ice sheets is accelerating sea level rise, increasing the vulnerability of coastal communities and low-lying island nations in the Caribbean to hazards such as tropical cyclones.

This was evidenced by Hurricane Beryl, which was the strongest hurricane on record to make landfall on Grenada and its dependencies and caused devastation across the Caribbean.

Climate-related impacts and risks

Climate related impacts in the LAC region are associated with hazardous extreme events and a complex scenario of increased exposure and vulnerability. The El Niño event in the first half of 2024 contributed to these impacts.

As in previous years, this complex scenario was further complicated by high and rising food prices, increasing poverty, high income inequality, and increasing levels of hunger, political instability and health and food insecurity.

The increasing frequency and intensity of droughts, floods and heatwaves, and the increasing intensity of hurricanes, demonstrate the growing risks for agriculture and food security in the region. The losses of crops and livestock and the interruption of supply chains have significantly affected the availability of food, income and the stability of rural livelihoods.

Given this panorama, it is crucial to implement agricultural resilience strategies, anticipate actions, strengthen food systems and prioritize mitigation actions in the face of climate change, according to the report, which gives a country-by-country breakdown of the impacts.

Humboldt glacier in May 2024.

NASA Observatory

Renewable Energy

Renewable energy generation in LAC reached nearly 69% of the region’s energy mix in 2024, with renewable energies such as solar and wind experiencing a remarkable 30% increase in capacity and generation compared to 2023.

To advance the expansion and optimization of renewable energy use across LAC, WMO is supporting its Members by enhancing the capacity of NMHSs to develop science-based operational products and services in collaboration with academia, the private sector and energy stakeholders.

In 2024, an artificial intelligence (AI)based short-term wind speed forecasting product for wind power plants was codeveloped in collaboration with the National Meteorological Institute of Costa Rica (IMN) and the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE).

In Chile, an evaporation rate estimation model for large water bodies with floating solar panels was codeveloped in collaboration with the Meteorological Directorate of Chile (DMC), the Ministry of Energy and Diego Portales University.

Both countries were also supported in their efforts to develop high-resolution national atlases for wind (Costa Rica) and solar energy (Chile), utilizing reanalysis, observational and climate projection data to support long-term energy planning.

Additionally, an operational, modular climate service toolkit for energy is being developed for Colombia, Chile and Ecuador under the Enhancing Adaptive Capacity of Andean Communities through Climate Services (ENANDES+).