Annual Report 2024

The climate and health programme at the Climate Centre centres on identifying and raising general awareness of the impacts of climate change on public health.

In 2024, due to growing demand for our inputs, we welcomed two new members of the health team: Sojung Yoon, a family doctor and environmental health specialist, and Chris Boyer, who specializes in the strengthening of health systems and has extensive experience of work on extreme heat in the Pacific.

Under the weather: Stories from communities on the front lines of climate and health adaptation was launched at COP 29, detailing health impacts in a changing climate in Burkina Faso, Malawi and Somalia. It is a joint publication of the IFRC, the three National Societies, the Norwegian Red Cross and the Climate Centre, and was introduced at a special event at the Baku COP.

We also supported National Society capacity building through materials tailored for Burkina Faso and Somalia, providing practical advice on “how people can protect themselves and their communities from the health impacts of climate change”.  

We continued to provide technical services to Médecins Sans Frontières in Nigeria, developing a tool for monitoring risks related to climate and the environment in the areas where MSF operates; the original tool was piloted in northern Nigeria and will be expanded to two more countries in 2025.

Supporting the operationalization of health factors for Anticipatory Action is a key priority of the Climate Centre and the year saw several new early action protocols (EAPs) for health that the Climate Centre’s advisers either supported or helped confirm.

We also assisted with analysis for epidemiological models of vector-borne disease through a project funded by the Wellcome Trust that assesses the probability of outbreaks using observed and forecast hydrometeorological indicators; this for possible use in future EAPs.

Last year marked the finalization of the Connecting Climate Minds project, which created a community of practice around mental health and climate and generated global and regional research agendas. This work highlighted the paucity of evidence and documentation on the mental-health consequences of extreme events in the Global South and presented a pathway to enhancing actionable knowledge in this domain.

Our involvement strengthened the Climate Centre’s relationship with the Movement’s new MHPSS Hub (mental health and psychosocial support), a CCM project member.

The Climate Centre also led the development of innovative communications on policy, to explore the relationship between climate and mental health as well as climate-related health risks more broadly.

With funding from the Norwegian Red Cross, our staff and interns collected data directly from communities on highly vulnerable populations, including people with albinism, to document poorly studied impacts of heat to enable improved policy response and practice. The Sahel region experienced an extreme heatwave in the summer of 2024 and this work was an operational highlight of the year for the Climate Centre.

Additional highlights include the development of heatwave thresholds for three cities in Nepal – Biratnagar, Siddhartnagar and Dhangadhi – for the development of effective local action plans on heat; an update of the assessment on climate-related health issues there and in Myanmar to enable improved policy and practice; maps on climate risk to enhance a health and social safety net programme in Pakistan; and a combined heat-air quality trigger for Thailand, shortly to be made operational.

The Climate Centre supports locally led adaptation (LLA) as an approach that empowers communities on the front line of climate impacts to reach their own solutions through equitable climate finance.

In 2024, with the IFRC secretariat we worked with 30 National Societies to integrate climate with their humanitarian programmes and operations.

Eleven of these also received funding to scale up LLA, empowering communities and other local stakeholders to lead on solutions that reduce climate and weather-related risks across Sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas, the Middle East, Europe and Asia Pacific.

At the global level, we worked with experts to develop new tools to operationalize LLA, most importantly launching the step-by-step Climate Action Journey, embarked on by at least 40 National Societies, developing training materials to support our partners, and writing a policy brief with the IFRC that highlights the need for LLA in a rapidly changing world to enable a more enabling policy environment.

At the regional level, we organized training sessions in Europe and Africa attended by National Societies and IFRC specialists. Here we explained the journey’s phases: firstly, the integration of changing climate risks into humanitarian work, and secondly the scaling up of locally led adaptation – key steps in operationalizing this new and more effective adaptation approach.

In the project countries, we worked with three National Societies who piloted the new LLA work from 2022, Malawi, Nigeria and Pakistan, followed later by many others such as the Red Cross in Antigua and Barbuda, The Gambia, and Ghana.

National Societies strengthened local- and national-level partnerships for climate action, assessed climate risk, and produced storymaps (Malawi, Nigeria, Pakistan) that identify the challenges faced by vulnerable communities and the actions needed to enhance resilience.

We joined National Societies in screening projects, strategies and operations to identify entry points for integrating climate risk while strengthening community-led climate action plans.

Work at the community level started in 2024 with the roll-out of the Enhanced Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment – a key tool for assessing community risks for which we identified modifications relevant to LLA. 

At the most local level, community priorities were identified in the pilot countries through this modified EVCA such as drought-tolerant and early-maturing crops, agroforestry and the use of manure, sustainable irrigation, strengthened risk-management, early action protocols and more.

In 2024 the Climate Action Journey established National Societies as strong climate actors that can deliver adaptation with and for government and key stakeholders, including financial mechanisms and operational methodologies, all with communities in the driving seat. 

Prisca Chisala, Director of Programmes of the Malawi Red Cross, wrote in a blog: “The Climate Action Journey is a living process, able to be adapted whenever new experiences and lessons arise. Experience and thoughts by National Societies are critical to shape this journey into a tool that will be most helpful to the mission and work of the Red Cross Red Crescent.

“The National Society has to be at the centre of the journey, defining the direction it’s taking. The multi-year Climate Action Journey strategy defined the direction that we want.” 

We believe that the first two years of this LLA initiative brought systemic change in our network and complements its humanitarian response to climate-related disasters. By supporting longer-term adaptation led by communities, we are strengthening our work across the entire disaster management continuum before, during and after climate-related disasters.

To date, only a limited number of humanitarian and development actors have developed practical tools to operationalize LLA, but we hope to expand collaboration within and outside the Red Cross Red Crescent to advance the vital agenda together.

The urbanization programme at the Climate Centre works with city governments, vulnerable communities and other key actors to develop pathways to enhancing resilience to the impacts of climate change in all cities where, as Aditya Bahadur puts it, “the battle against climate change will be won or lost”.

With the IFRC secretariat, the Climate Centre organized the third annual Heat Action Day on 2 June with over 200 organizations, including many National Societies, ICLEI and World Weather Attribution, raising awareness through seminars, urban art, workshops and social media.

We developed the Urban Heat Resource Directory, compiling best-practice tools, research, and guidance on heat resilience in urban areas. 

We published a paper highlighting how floods and heatwaves can overlap, compounding risks for rapidly urbanizing areas, exploring current trends and impacts and presenting practical solutions that integrate flood and heat adaptation to protect lives and livelihoods.

Under the multi-year Coastal Cities Resilience and Extreme Heat Project (CoCHAP), we helped the National Societies of Bangladesh, Honduras, Indonesia and Tanzania understand the climate-related risks facing their coastal cities, including extreme heat, and compiled effective solutions from around the world to inspire local action. 

We helped the Nepal Red Cross develop heat action plans in three cities, including cooling centres, standard operating procedures for their own operation, drinking-water fountains, and other SOPs for home visits to vulnerable communities.

We organized an important dialogue on coastal cities with the Global Disaster Preparedness Center and ICLEI in Sao Paulo in June, bringing 12 National Societies together with municipalities to identify how we can collaboratively address climate risks.

As part of the PARATUS consortium, we developed a guide for stress-testing systems for compound risks, offering a collaborative approach to identifying where and how impacts may place excessive stress on an urban system.

Under the CASCADE programme, which uses “local insights to tackle urban health and climate change issues in Africa”, the Climate Centre jointly led research and supported learning action labs, thematic dialogues and learning in Accra, Harare, Johannesburg and Kampala. 

With at least 40 National Societies, we helped organize and participated in another IFRC urban collaboration platform in Seoul in July, facilitating sessions centred on our experience in urban climate action and addressing extreme heat in cities.

The urban team will continue to support the scaling up of adaptation for heat, especially in the most vulnerable regions of the world where action lags far behind the growing risks.

As a core member of the World Weather Attribution partnership, our team supports scientific research and communications with the goal of assessing and publicizing the degree of causality between extreme weather and human-induced climate change.

WWA findings show – to a wide global audience through the media – that climate change is already having a significant impact on our weather and that the changes are not the same everywhere; rather in some places climate change is playing a major role while in others its signal has yet to emerge. These are important nuances that should inform mitigation and adaptation policy and planning.

WWA published a record 31 studies in 2024, double the previous high in 2023. These studies aim to determine the degree to which human-induced climate change exacerbates extreme events.

Media coverage hit 50,000 mentions, up from 40,000 in 2023, and its media mailing list grew by 75 per cent to nearly 1,000 subscribers. WWA was cited at COP 29, including by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. At the launch in March of its State of the Global Climate 2023, WMO Secretary General Celeste Saulo called for more attribution science to address extreme weather.

The Climate Centre continues to lead on analyses of vulnerability and exposure, ensuring that findings support adaptation and recovery, and on monitoring news for events that meet the threshold for studies. (Statements of likelihood here refer to the formal extreme-event definitions that each study includes.)

In January, we studied the Amazon drought, finding it 30 times more likely and reclassified it from severe to exceptional. Storm Bettina’s rainfall was twice as likely and 5 per cent heavier, while extreme cold events such as the Fennoscandia cold spell are becoming less likely.

February’s analysis of Chile’s wildfires found no clear climate change signal in the hot, dry and windy conditions that fuelled them, though these will probably intensify with further warming.

In March, WWA found that heavy rainfall from the Mindanao floods was 50 per cent heavier due to climate change, while a humid heatwave in West Africa, when temperatures felt 4°C higher, was ten times more likely.

April’s studies found the Southern Africa drought was primarily driven by El Niño, with limited climate influence. The Sahel heatwave, however, was 1.5°C hotter and would not have been possible without climate change. The UAE and Oman floods were up to 40 per cent heavier due to climate change.

In May, we found that low rainfall in Panama was primarily caused by El Niño, while Asian heatwaves intensified significantly, with temperatures 1°C hotter in the Philippines, 1.7°C hotter in West Asia, and 0.85°C hotter in South Asia.

The UK and Ireland’s winter storm season was ten times more likely and 20 per cent wetter. The Horn of Africa flooding was twice as likely and 5 per cent more intense due to climate change.

Our Heat Action Day report on 2 June showed that climate change added 26 days of extreme heat globally in the year to May 2024.

In that month we found the Rio Grande do Sul floods were twice as likely and up to 9 per cent more intense; and the Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran floods had increased by 25 per cent over 40 years (data limitations prevented full attribution, but climate change is the likely cause).

The North and Central American heatwave was 35 times more likely and 1.4°C hotter. July’s analysis of the Iberian heatwave found that it was more than 3.0°C hotter and would not have been possible without climate change.

August’s Pantanal wildfires were 40 per cent more intense and up to five times more likely. Kerala’s landslide-triggering rainfall was 10 per cent heavier. Typhoon Gaemi’s wind speeds were 7 per cent stronger, rainfall was 14 per cent heavier, and intense typhoons in the north-west Pacific have increased by 30 per cent.

In September, we found that Italy’s drought was 1.5 times more likely and also intensified by climate change.

October’s studies found Central Europe’s storm rainfall twice as likely and 7 per cent heavier. Hurricane Helene was 2.5 times more likely, with winds 11 per cent stronger, rainfall 10 per cent heavier and sea surface temperatures up to 500 times more likely.

Hurricane Milton saw 20 to 30 per cent heavier rainfall and winds 10 per cent stronger. Nepal’s floods were 10 per cent heavier and 70 per cent more likely. West Africa’s extreme rainfall increased by up to 20 per cent.

We also celebrated the tenth anniversary of WWA by looking back at the ten deadliest extreme-weather events and confirmed climate change intensified all ten of the deadliest extreme weather events of the last 20 years.

In November, rainfall in the Valencia floods were 12 per cent heavier and twice as likely, a study later cited at COP 29 found.

December’s study of the Philippine typhoon season found climate change nearly doubled the likelihood of storms, increasing the probability of at least three major typhoons in a year by 25 per cent.

The WWA annual report showed climate change added an average of 41 days of dangerous heat in 2024. 

Climate Centre communications centres on its news service that’s promoted on our social media platforms and which records – in a highly accessible format – the humanitarian impacts of climate change and the efforts of the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement to address them, across the full spectrum of disaster from preparedness through response to recovery and adaptation.

It also provides a one-stop shop for National Society disaster managers on the centre’s technical publications, major reports from the WMO and others, ENSO updates, IPCC global assessment waypoints, and more.

Individual news stories are consistently among the most visited pages of our website; they represent the overwhelming bulk of our social media output.

Professor Liz Stephens (photo) last year took over as our lead voice on scientific questions from the media, sharing the role of chief spokesperson with Aditya Bahadur, who joined us as our new director in May, undertaking media response with Liz and focusing on climate policy and adaptation, all in close collaboration with IFRC secretariat communications.

We generally broadened the media-facing group to include several specialists on attribution, urban issues and purely regional questions: our Director of Programmes, Julie Arrighi (cities), for example, and our Head of Urban and Attribution, Roop Singh.

Aditya’s specific media engagement included Helsingin Sanomat, the largest subscription newspaper in Finland and the Nordic countries, NRC (Handelsblad), a Dutch newspaper of record, and CBC News.

Liz conducted interviews in either her Reading University or Climate Centre capacities with Sky News, (UK) Channel 5 News, The Washington Post, (UK) The Conversation, El Sentinel, Yahoo News, Newsweek, The Guardian, FT.com, the BBC World Service, AFP and others.

News output in 2024 came to 109 web stories and there were nearly 50 publications, not including journal articles Climate Centre people jointly authored; several of our stories were cross-promoted by IFRC secretariat comms as well as vice versa.

National Societies around the world marked Heat Action Day 2024 with a huge array of communications, centred on public-facing urban art and video (the lead video for this report) as a platform for raising awareness of the dangers of the “silent killer” of climate change. We also commissioned two artists, Andrew Rae and Ruskin Kyle, to create images on the impact of heatwaves on large population centres.

Multimedia output we contributed to included an excellent photogallery by Castor Rotich on the roll-out in Naivasha, Kenya of the full seven-stage Climate Action Journey.

The event also inspired one of several bylined blogs we published in 2024, by Prisca Chisala, Malawi Red Cross Society Director of Programmes and climate champion, who described the journey as “a living process, able to be adapted whenever new experiences and lessons arise”.

Other Climate Centre 2024 bloggers included Anka Stankovic on climate resilience in Europe; Juliane Schillinger on the Berlin Climate and Security Conference; Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer on storymaps and traditional knowledge; Devin O’Donnell on mental health and climate change; and Cornelia Scholz on anticipatory action in Timor-Leste.

The area of work generating – by a considerable margin – the greatest amount of direct media engagement remained World Weather Attribution, of which the Climate Centre is a core member. WWA published a record 31 studies in 2024 – about double the previous high in 2023; the team’s media monitoring tracked at least 50,000 “mentions” of WWA – some 25 per cent more than 2023; and the WWA media mailing list grew by 75 per cent to nearly 1,000 subscribers.

Finance

The Climate Centre – an independent foundation under Dutch law – remains grateful to its hosts the Netherlands Red Cross, which also assists with human resources and legal affairs.

We were supported last year by the European Commission, the ICRC and the IFRC secretariat or their delegations, and these National Societies, in each case with the financial support of their public or governments (alphabetically):

American Red Cross
British Red Cross
Danish Red Cross
Finnish Red Cross
French Red Cross
Georgian Red Cross
German Red Cross
Luxembourg Red Cross
Netherlands Red Cross
Norwegian Red Cross
Swedish Red Cross

Other contributors were (alphabetically):* AtkinsRealis UK International, Bezos Earth Fund, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CGIAR, (UN) Complex Risk Analytics Fund, DAI, Deltares, European Research Executive Agency, Institute of Development Studies, Inter-American Development Bank, International Development Research Centre, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, International Union for Conservation of Nature, (UK) Met Office, MSF Switzerland, Norwegian Refugee Council, Norwegian Research Centre, Oxford Policy Management, Practical Action, Quadrature Climate Foundation, SouthSouthNorth, UNEP, UNOCHA, Wellcome Trust, WFP, WHO, and the World Bank.

We are also grateful for contributions from these universities: Akademie der Ruhr-Universität, Bristol, Cape Town, Reading, Toronto, Tufts, and VU (Amsterdam).

A full financial statement will be available in our hard-copy report later this year, along with an infographic summary to be added here.

As always, we thank our donors for their generous support.

*Includes agencies best known by their acronyms.