2024 Climate Report: Global Records Shattered

The American Meteorological Society's latest State of the Climate report confirms 2024 was a year of unprecedented global records. This definitive analysis, based solely on observed data from 590 experts, details alarming trends. Key indicators like temperature, humidity, and ocean heat reached new highs, while glaciers and Arctic ice hit new lows. The report directly links these changes to more extreme weather events worldwide.

Why This Matters

• If key climate indicators like temperature and humidity keep rising, then extreme storms, floods, and droughts will become more frequent and severe.

• These physical climate risks directly threaten business operations, disrupting supply chains, damaging infrastructure, and impacting workforce safety.

• Investors and regulators are increasingly demanding climate resilience, making this data essential for assessing corporate risk and ensuring long-term financial stability.

• Emerging opportunities exist in climate adaptation technologies and green infrastructure, representing new markets for innovative companies.

Details

The entire climate system is undergoing consistent and unambiguous change. All 39 charts track essential variables across Earth's environment, and nearly every one reveals a strong and persistent shift away from 20th-century norms. This convergence of evidence from independent datasets removes any doubt about the scale, speed, and scope of global changes—but its greatest value to the business and finance community lies in its ability to translate planetary trends into balance sheet risks.

Each chart doesn't just show a climate trend; it represents a quantifiable physical risk with corporate financial implications. For instance, rising specific humidity over oceans (Chart u) supplies more energy for hurricanes, directly threatening shipping logistics, port operations, and coastal infrastructure. Similarly, declining glacier mass (Chart k) endangers long-term water security, creating operational vulnerabilities for agriculture, food production, and manufacturing sectors that depend on stable freshwater supply. The report also shows concerning trends in soil moisture (Chart ai) and groundwater storage (Chart aj), indicating heightened agricultural risks that could affect food prices and commodity markets.

This is why the business and finance community must care: this report provides the foundational science that defines what constitutes material risk. Physical climate impacts are no longer theoretical—they can halt production, destroy physical assets, disrupt supply chains, and dramatically increase insurance premiums. Investors and regulators should use this data to push for transparent climate-risk disclosures and resilience planning. Companies that understand and act on these trends aren't just preparing for the future—they are proactively securing investment, maintaining operational continuity, and building long-term resilience in a rapidly changing world.

Next Steps: Translate Climate Data into Action

• Conduct a Materiality Assessment: Analyze the report to identify the climate variables—such as extreme heat, flooding, or water stress—that pose the greatest physical risk to your key assets, operations, and supply chains. This prioritizes action based on what matters most to your business.

• Quantify Financial Risk and Update Disclosures: Model the potential costs of these identified risks, including operational disruption, asset damage, and increased resource prices. formally integrate these findings into your climate risk disclosures (e.g., TCFD, IFRS S2) to meet investor and regulatory expectations with data-backed transparency.

• Develop and Fund a Resilience Plan: Create a strategic plan that allocates capital toward adaptive measures—such as infrastructure hardening, supply chain diversification, and water efficiency projects—to protect your business from the impacts detailed in the report and ensure long-term operational continuity.

• Establish Continuous Monitoring: Implement systems to track these climate indicators regularly, ensuring your risk assessments remain current as new data emerges. This allows for dynamic adaptation to evolving climate patterns.

Citation: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 106, 8; 10.1175/2025BAMSStateoftheClimate_Intro.1