Saturday Newsletter: Wetter, Warmer, Wilder - The Story Behind Europe’s 2024 Climate Extremes

Global Warming generally makes the Earth wetter not drier - But oceans may be generating fewer clouds than expected. It may be more complicated than originally thought.

Jun 28, 2025

This Annual Report has been out for a while, but I just recently became aware of it, so I am presenting the Summary of the Report in this article. It also gives me the opportunity to explain that Global Warming generally results in a wetter Earth. The reason for that is that warmer oceans create more evaporation and thus clouds. This is all explained in the IPCC Reports.

But a New Study Reveals an Unexpected Decline in Ocean Evaporation Amid Rising Sea Temperatures. This is explained in the linked article. Learn about the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship.

So, Europe being wet in 2024 is, in general, good news, but the flooding was not good news.

Wetter comes with a catch. If wetter is due to more evaporation over warmer oceans and due to onshore winds, more precipitation over land, it also results in more evaporation over land. It is an acceleration of the hydrologic cycle. We also see shifts in the location of the hydrologic cycle with expanding areas of both drought and perhaps more water than they want..

That is one reason why I often focus on Global Warming, as that is a process that we can more easily forecast. The Warming induces Climate Change, but our ability to predict the changes to the climate is pretty much ineffective, although there is money to be made by those claiming to be able to do it. It is the age-old problem of more variables than equations (you can not solve and get a single answer), but this fact seems to have little impact on those who claim to be able to predict the climate.

Where money and influence can be gained, there are many interested in satisfying the desire of people who wish to know the future. In general, this is positive. Unfortunately, most involved in this type of work do not really know what they are talking about. I grew up in Atlantic City, so I learned about shysters at an early age.

For sure, we have to respond to Climate Change even if our ability to predict it is less than many who do the predicting acknowledge or even understand themselves.

The remainder of this article is a presentation of the Summary of the Copernicus and World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Report on the 2024 climate of Europe, and at the end, I added some additional trend information from my NOAA sources. The full European Climate in 2024 Report can be accessed HERE

This really summarizes the report.

Flooding and wildfires. Flooding was the main problem

The map is a little hard to see. There may be more maps in the full report.

Generally, the heat was where the high level of precipitation was not.

Good mapping of disappearing glaciers.

Part of the trend in the Arctic, but this provides good information for the European part of the Arctic and the North Atlantic. A lot of variability in a strong warming trend, but you can see areas that were cooler in 2024.

Attempts to be more resilient increased. I am not impressed.

A little hard to read. One wonders if cities are where the effort needs to be. Many of the people impacted live in cities, but our food comes mostly from outside of cities, and the logistics network is outside of cities.

Again, I think they could make their graphics a bit easier to read. With my magnifying glass, I can read the numbers. I am sure the full report provides all of the numbers shown here, plus much more.

Useful Resources Include:

Climate at a Glance, which can be accessed HERE

NCEI Monthly Report, which can be accessed HERE

U.S. Ranking Maps can be accessed HERE.

Used one of these resources to plot the trend of European temperature and precipitation

It just keeps on getting warmer

Here you can see the downward trend in European precipitation, which reversed in 2024 as per this report by Copernicus and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

We certainly have to watch this.

I hope you found this article interesting and useful.

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