Climate change and El Niño behind extreme precipitation leading to major floods in southern Brazil in 2024
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Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
In April–May 2024, unprecedented floods in Rio Grande do Sul displaced around 600,000 people and caused more than 180 deaths. This study unpacks the role of anthropogenic climate change and the preceding El Niño conditions on the extreme rainfall using a probabilistic event attribution. This event was rare even in the 2024 climate, with a return period exceeding 100 years. With global warming of 1.2 °C, such an event has become approximately 2 (0.06–4200) times as likely, or equivalently 12% (−13 to +43%) more intense. The recent El Niño event also approximately doubled (0.7–37 times) the likelihood of such an event relative to a neutral year. In any disaster, the vulnerability and exposure context play a crucial role in turning the meteorological hazard into impacts, underscoring the need for equitable adaptation measures to break the cycle of risk and inequality in the context of a warming climate.
Date Issued
2026-01-10
Date Acceptance
2025-12-16
Citation
npj Natural Hazards, 2026, 3
ISSN
2948-2100
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Journal / Book Title
npj Natural Hazards
Volume
3
Copyright Statement
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN 4