Global Extreme Weather and Climate Change Dashboard
Europe
Europe accounts for 10.3% of global weather/climate economic losses and 19.1% of deaths, 1980-2025 (see Loss Normalization), broken down by phenomenon and cause below. This page also runs an IPCC AR6 Chapter 12 consistency check phenomenon by phenomenon, and hosts every live-computed variable this dashboard tracks at continent scale for Europe -- not every phenomenon runs for every continent; see the "Not Yet Available" note below for what Europe's source data doesn't yet support.
Summary Judgment — Europe
– of – tracked variables for Europe show a detected change (– increasing, – decreasing) — see the tiles below for each one.
The cleanest match of any continent: AR6 reports an observed, continent-wide increase in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes for Europe (high confidence), directly matching the detected heat wave increase here since 1949, the only continent with a dedicated heat metric. Flooding also aligns well: AR6 finds sub-regional divergence (increasing in northwestern Europe, more uncertain elsewhere), the same pattern the cited literature (Blöschl et al. 2019) and the live index here (no detected continent-wide change) both show. Europe's wildfire finding shows a clean detected decrease on both tracked metrics, with no observed AR6 fire-weather statement (only a projected one) to compare it against.
Source: AR6 WGI Regional Fact Sheet — Europe — this site detects observed historical trends only, never projections, so this comparison draws only on AR6's observed findings, excluding its projected ones.
Consistency with IPCC AR6 Chapter 12
Each phenomenon this site tracks for this continent, checked against AR6 WG1's Chapter 12 regional fact sheet -- see the Summary Judgment above for the fuller narrative version of this same comparison.
| Phenomenon | GWX finding | AR6 Ch.12 consistency |
|---|---|---|
| Drought | Computing… | Partially consistent |
| Flooding | Computing… | Partially consistent |
| Wildfire | Computing… | Not directly comparable |
| Winter Storms | Computing… | Not directly comparable |
| Extreme Heat | Computing… | Consistent |
Each note above draws only on AR6's observed findings, excluding its projected ones, the same standard the Summary Judgment box applies. Source: AR6 WGI Regional Fact Sheet — Europe.
Economic Losses & Loss of Life — Europe's Share
Europe's position within the same global economic-loss and mortality totals shown on the Loss Normalization page -- not a separate, continent-specific breakdown by phenomenon (no source publishes a full continent x phenomenon matrix; OWID and the World Bank give continent totals and phenomenon totals separately, not both at once). This page reuses those continent-level numbers, calling out Europe's row.
Economic losses, 1980–2025
Europe accounts for 10.3% of global weather/climate economic losses.
- North America $2,913.4B 51.2%
- Asia $1,833.3B 32.2%
- Europe $584.4B 10.3%
- South America $162.6B 2.9%
- Oceania $134.5B 2.4%
- Africa $60.1B 1.1%
Loss of life, 1980–2025
Europe accounts for 19.1% of global weather/climate deaths.
- Asia 663,197 37.5%
- Africa 642,787 36.3%
- Europe 337,192 19.1%
- North America 65,487 3.7%
- South America 56,280 3.2%
- Oceania 3,767 0.2%
Both pies are constant-2025-dollar / EM-DAT totals, same sourcing and methodology as the Loss Normalization page -- see that page for the full reconstruction methodology, inflation adjustment, and citations.
Extreme-weather and climate trends for Europe, drawn from the same underlying data as GWX's global variables, aggregated (or, for tropical cyclones, grouped by the ocean basin(s) that border this continent) to just this continent rather than the whole planet. Not every phenomenon this site tracks has a per-continent breakdown yet (see below for what's still missing and why) -- the tiles here show only a computed Europe-scoped index, never a global figure relabeled. Clicking a tile opens that variable's full interactive chart, scoped to Europe. See the Methodology page for the full per-continent coverage status behind what appears here and what doesn't.
Detection of Long-Term Change — Europe
Flooding — Europe
Europe's live GloFAS chart appears above, in the tile grid (both the percentile-based "high flow" series and GloFAS's Alert/Warning/Severe return-period tiers). The literature finding below supplies context the live index alone doesn't capture, rather than standing in as a placeholder for it.
A continent-wide study of five decades of observed river flood discharges found no single European trend, but clear opposing regional patterns: increasing floods in northwestern Europe (rising autumn/winter rainfall), decreasing floods in southern Europe (less precipitation, more evaporation), and decreasing floods in eastern Europe (less snow cover and snowmelt as winters warm). Regional trends ranged from roughly +11% to -23% per decade.
Blöschl et al. 2019, Nature 573 -- full citation in the Library.
Not Yet Available for Europe
Listed rather than silently omitted -- these gaps reflect what this site currently breaks out by continent, not a judgment that the phenomenon doesn't matter here.
- Tropical Cyclones
- No ocean basin this site tracks meaningfully affects this continent -- neither Europe nor South America sees tropical cyclones in any standard tracked basin (the rare Mediterranean "medicane" or South Atlantic storm like 2004's Catarina falls outside any tracked basin's climatology). This reflects an absence in the underlying climatology, not a data gap.