From destruction to deadly heat, Associated Press photographers capture climate change in 2024

After heat records were smashed and a torrent of extreme weather events rocked countless countries in 2023, some climate scientists believed that the waning of the El Nino weather pattern could mean 2024 would be slightly cooler.

It didn’t happen that way.

This year is expected to break 2023’s global average temperature record and the effects of the warming — more powerful hurricanes, floods, wildfires and suffocating heat — have upended lives and livelihoods.

All year, Associated Press photographers around the globe have captured moments, from the brutality unleashed during extreme weather events to human resilience in the face of hardship, that tell the story of a changing Earth.

As seas rise, salty ocean water of the Pacific encroaches on Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, hurting agriculture and the farmers and sellers who rely on it. Life for those on the Mekong now – paddling across markets and working and sleeping from houseboats – is quickly being altered. In Tahiti, the arrival of the Paris Olympics this year meant giant structures were built on one of their most precious reefs. The reefs sustain the life of sea creatures and in turn, the people of the island.

In many parts of the world, there were impacts when agriculture intersected with climate change. In Spain and other European countries, farmers were upset over increasing energy and fertilizer costs, cheaper farm imports entering the European Union and pesticide regulations, arguing all these changes could force them out of business. In Kenya, access to water continued to be a struggle for many, while fishers off the Indian coast of Mumbai had to contend with a rapidly warming Arabian Sea. There were bright spots, however, such as the increasing use of natural farming techniques that are more resistant to climate shocks.

More than 2 billion people around the world don’t have access to safely managed drinking water, according to the United Nations, a grim reality experienced in so many places. In Brazil, some residents collected water as it came down a mountain, while in India others filled up jugs from a street drain. Drinking from such sources can lead to many waterborne illnesses.

For the Ojibwe tribe in the United States, spearfishing is an important tradition, one they maintained this year in the face of climate change. At the same time, in other parts of the world the impact of climate change was so severe that simply surviving was the best hope. Such was the case in Kenya, where floods took lives and forced many to evacuate, and in an Indian village where flooding is so constant that residents are constantly displaced.

When heavy rains led to massive flooding in Uruguay and Brazil, residents were forced from their homes. In both of these places, most people likely returned and were able to rebuild their lives. In other places, there was no going back. Such was the case for Quinault Indian Nation in the U.S., in the process of being relocated inland as coastal erosion threaten their homes. The Gardi Sugdub island off the coast of Panama faced a similar fate — hundreds of families are relocating to the mainland as sea levels rise.

From Mexico to Pakistan and beyond, high temperatures hit people hard. Unable to find relief, some sweated profusely while others ended up hospitalized. Many would die, such as in Saudi Arabia, where heat related illnesses killed more than 1,300 during the annual hajj pilgrimage. The heat didn't just impact people, but also oceans and animals, putting at risk some of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world, such as Ecuador's Galapagos Islands.

Rising temperatures and prolonged droughts create conditions for more and longer burning wildfires. One of the places that is consistently hard hit is the U.S. state of California. This year was no exception. Wildfires burned more than 1 million acres, chewed through hundreds of homes and led thousands of people to evacuate. As happens in every fire, countless animals also perished or were forced from their habitats.

For all the destruction that climate change caused in 2024, mother nature showed off its beauty. That was on display at Churchill, Manitoba, a northern Canadian town that revels in its unofficial title as polar bear capital of the world. Like every year, tourists enjoyed stunning views of the Hudson Bay, watched beluga whales swim and, of course, came into contact with polar bears.

Water is central for humans and animals, but it can also take lives and leave a path of destruction. It did both in 2024. The scenes were shocking: students in India using rope to cross a flooded street, a little girl in Cuba floating in a container and Nigerians wading through floodwaters after a dam collapsed in the wake of heavy rains.

Throughout the year, there was way too much water in some places and not enough in others, increasingly common as climate change alters natural weather patterns. In the Sahara Desert in Morocco, heavy rain left sand dunes with pools of water. By contrast, the Amazon region in South America, normally lush as a largely tropical area, experienced severe drought.

Around the world, numerous storms unleashed powerful winds and dumped large amounts of water. The result: buildings and homes that looked like they had been hit with a wrecking ball, clothes and other household goods caked in mud and scattered on the ground, and residents walking through floodwaters.

As the end of 2024 approached, the arrival of winter in the Northern Hemisphere meant relief from the heat in the form of cold temperatures and idyllic scenes like snow-frosted trees. But there were also reminders that global warming had already altered Earth so much that climate-driven disasters, such as raging wildfires even during winter months, are never far off. While impossible to predict when and where disaster may strike, one thing is all but certain in 2025: the storms, floods, heat waves, droughts and wildfires will continue.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

A person walks along a road as the Franklin Fire approaches in Malibu, Calif., Dec. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer)

People enjoy a hot water pool near Mount Bental in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Frozen trees surround a chapel on a cold day, in Oberreifenberg near Frankfurt, Germany, Dec. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

A resident wades through a flooded street following typhoon Toraji in Ilagan City, Philippines, Nov. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Noel Celis)

Members of a military emergency unit use a canoe to search the area for bodies washed away by floods in the outskirts of Valencia, Spain, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

People recover belongings from their house, which was destroyed by Hurricane Rafael, in Alquizar, Cuba, Nov. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Tania embraces her brother-in-law Baruc after rescuing some of their belongings amid flooding from their house in Paiporta, Spain, Nov. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

People walk through a part of the Amazon River that shows signs of drought in Santa Sofia, Colombia, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)

A girl carries a chicken on her head while going down a hill that shows the low level of the Amazon River, in Leticia, Colombia, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)

Berta Sanyi stands chest deep in water as she collects clams in a mangrove forest where only women are permitted to enter in Jayapura, Papua province, Indonesia, Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati)

Pools of water caused by heavy rainfall between sand dunes are visible in the desert town of Merzouga, Morocco, Oct. 2, 2024. (AP Photo)

Jesus Hernandez guides his granddaughter Angelina in a container through a flooded street in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, in Batabano, Cuba, Sept. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

A resident is evacuated from her flooded house in Jesenik, Czech Republic, Sept. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

A man gazes out from an abandoned house in Melamchi, Nepal, Sept. 15, 2024, damaged by floods in 2021. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)

People walk through floodwaters following a dam collapse in Maiduguri, Nigeria, Sept 10, 2024. (AP Photos/ Joshua Olatunji)

Students hold on to a rope as they cross a street flooded after heavy rains, on their way home in Ajmer, India, Sept. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Deepak Sharma)

A polar bear nurses her cub, Aug. 7, 2024, near Churchill, Manitoba. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

A family stands near the Hudson Bay, Aug. 3, 2024, in Churchill, Manitoba. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

A beluga whale swims through the Churchill River, Aug. 5, 2024, near Churchill, Manitoba. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

Flames consume a structure on Bessie Lane as the Thompson Fire burns in Oroville, Calif., July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

Grant Douglas pauses while evacuating as the Park Fire jumps Highway 36 near Paynes Creek in Tehama County, Calif., July 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

An animal runs through grass while fleeing flames as the Park Fire tears through the Cohasset community in Butte County, Calif., July 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Bigeye trevally fish swim against the current at Wolf Island, Ecuador in the Galapagos, June 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Alie Skowronski)

A patient suffering from heatstroke receives treatment at a hospital in Karachi, Pakistan, June 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)

Pilgrims use umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun as they gather outside Nimrah Mosque to offer noon prayers in Arafat, during the annual Hajj, near the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, June 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

Margarita Salazar, 82, wipes the sweat off with a tissue inside her home amid high heat in Veracruz, Mexico, June 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

Children line up to enter school on Gardi Sugdub Island, part of the San Blas archipelago off Panama's Caribbean coast, May 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Buildings cover Gardi Sugdub Island, Panama, May 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

A dog eyes a blueback, or Quinault sockeye salmon, before Jade Rodriguez brings the fish to Quinault Pride Seafood to sell in Taholah, Wash., May 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Volunteers gather in order to help residents evacuate from an area flooded in Porto Alegre, Brazil, May 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

Amilcar Veron sits in a makeshift tent on the roof of his house with the belongings he saved from floods in Durazno, Uruguay, May 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Matilde Campodonico)

Children play inside a makeshift shade where farmers take rest in Sandahkhaiti, a floating island village in the Brahmaputra River in Assam, India, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Residents rescue a woman who was caught amid the rain in the Mathare slum of Nairobi, Kenya, April 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Kasuku)

Residents take refugee at Ombaka Primary School after fleeing floodwaters in Ombaka Village, Kisumu, Kenya, April 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Brian Ongoro)

Mark Ojibway wades in shallow water looking for walleye during the spring spearfishing season at the Chippewa Flowage on the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation, near Hayward, Wis., April 14, 2024. (AP Photo/John Locher)

People collect water from an open drain in Guwahati, India, March 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Residents bathe in a dam of Unda River in Klungkung, Bali, Indonesia, March 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Firdia Lisnawati)

Residents collect drinking water that falls naturally down a mountain in the Rocinha favela of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, March 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

A resident fills his water tank at the Pamplona Alta hilltop neighborhood in Lima, Peru, March 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

A man carries jugs to fetch water from a hole in the sandy riverbed in Makueni County, Kenya, Feb. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

Fishermen fold a net near the shores of the Arabian Sea in Mumbai, India, Feb. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

Workers carry cattle dung, used to make natural fertilizer, in Pedavuppudu village, India, Feb. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

Farmers make barricades after blocking a highway during a protest near Mollerussa, Spain, Feb. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Naiki Vaast spearfishes along the coral reef in Vairao, Tahiti, French Polynesia, Jan. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

Nguyen Thi Thuy, a vendor who sells steamed buns on a floating market, paddles her boat in Can Tho, Vietnam, Jan. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Do Hoang Trung, who lives on a houseboat with his twin sister and their grandmother, sleeps under a mosquito net in Can Tho, Vietnam, Jan. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

A worker inspects the permanent foundations being constructed on the coral reef for a judging tower to be used during the Olympic Games surf competition in Teahupo'o, Tahiti, French Polynesia, Jan. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

A senior Russian general was killed Tuesday by a bomb hidden in a scooter outside his apartment building in Moscow, a day after Ukraine’s security service leveled criminal charges against him. A Ukrainian official said the service carried out the attack.

Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the chief of the military’s nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed as he left for his office. Kirillov’s assistant also died in the attack.

Kirillov, 54, was under sanctions from several countries, including the U.K. and Canada, for his actions in Moscow’s war in Ukraine. On Monday, Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, opened a criminal investigation against him, accusing him of directing the use of banned chemical weapons.

An official with the SBU said the agency was behind the attack. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information, described Kirillov as a “war criminal and an entirely legitimate target.”

The SBU has said it recorded more than 4,800 occasions when Russia used chemical weapons on the battlefield since its full-scale invasion in February 2022. In May, the U.S. State Department said that it had recorded the use of chloropicrin, a poison gas first deployed in World War I, against Ukrainian troops.

Russia has denied using any chemical weapons in Ukraine and, in turn, has accused Kyiv of using toxic agents in combat.

Kirillov, who took his current job in 2017, was one of the most high-profile figures to level those accusations. He held numerous briefings to accuse the Ukrainian military of using toxic agents and planning to launch attacks with radioactive substances — claims that Ukraine and its Western allies rejected as propaganda.

The bomb used in Tuesday's attack was triggered remotely, according to Russian news reports. Images from the scene showed shattered windows and scorched brickwork.

The SBU official provided video that they said was of the bombing. It shows two men leaving a building shortly before a blast fills the frame.

Russia’s top state investigative agency said it's looking into Kirillov’s death as a case of terrorism, and officials in Moscow vowed to punish Ukraine.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired by President Vladimir Putin, described the attack as an attempt by Kyiv to distract public attention from its military failures and vowed that its “senior military-political leadership will face inevitable retribution.”

In the past year, Russia has been on the front foot in the war, grinding deeper into the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine despite heavy losses. Ukraine tried to change the dynamic with an incursion into Russia's Kursk region, but it has continued to slowly lose ground on its own territory.

Since Russia invaded, several prominent figures have been killed in targeted attacks believed to have been carried out by Ukraine.

Darya Dugina, a commentator on Russian TV channels and the daughter of Kremlin-linked nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin, died in a 2022 car bombing that investigators suspected was aimed at her father.

Vladlen Tatarsky, a popular military blogger, died in April 2023, when a statuette given to him at a party in St. Petersburg exploded. A Russian woman, who said she presented the figurine on orders of a contact in Ukraine, was convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison.

In December 2023, Illia Kiva, a former pro-Moscow Ukrainian lawmaker who fled to Russia, was shot and killed near Moscow. The Ukrainian military intelligence lauded the killing, warning that other “traitors of Ukraine” would share the same fate.

On Dec. 9, a bomb planted under a car in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Donetsk killed Sergei Yevsyukov, the former head of the Olenivka Prison where dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war died in a missile strike in July 2022. One other person was injured in the blast. Russian authorities said they detained a suspect in the attack.

Associated Press writer Illia Novikov contributed from Kyiv, Ukraine.

Investigators work at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces and his assistant, seen at left, were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

Investigators work at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces and his assistant, seen at lower center, were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT - Investigators stand near the body of Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces after he and his assistant were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT - Investigators work at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, center, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces and his assistant, right, were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

EDS NOTE: GRAPHIC CONTENT - Investigators work at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, right, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces and his assistant were killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

FILE - In this photo taken from video released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Feb. 28, 2023, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense troops of the Russian Armed Forces Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov speaks during a briefing in Moscow, Russia. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)

Investigators work at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces was killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

A body lies at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces was killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

Investigates work at the place where Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence Forces was killed by an explosive device planted close to a residential apartment's block in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

FILE - Maj. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the chief of the Russian military's radiation, chemical and biological protection unit, attends a briefing in Kubinka Patriot park, outside Moscow, Russia, on June 22, 2018. (AP Photo, File)