Global Extreme Weather and Climate Change Dashboard
North America
North America accounts for 51.2% of global weather/climate economic losses and 3.7% 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 North America -- not every phenomenon runs for every continent; see the "Not Yet Available" note below for what North America's source data doesn't yet support.
Summary Judgment — North America
– of – tracked variables for North America show a detected change (– increasing, – decreasing) — see the tiles below for each one.
AR6 reports observed increases in drought and fire weather across western and central North America, and observed increases in extreme precipitation in the east — but the continent-wide indices tracked here for drought, flooding, and both wildfire metrics currently show no detected change. This divergence most likely traces to AR6's sub-regional signals diluting when averaged across the whole continent (including Canada, Mexico, and Central America), rather than to any error in the underlying regional trends AR6 cites.
Source: AR6 WGI Regional Fact Sheet — North and Central America — 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… | Not directly comparable |
| Wildfire | Computing… | Not directly comparable |
| Winter Storms | Computing… | Not directly comparable |
| Extreme Heat | Computing… | Consistent |
| Tropical Cyclones | Computing… | Not directly comparable |
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 — North and Central America.
Economic Losses & Loss of Life — North America's Share
North America'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 North America's row.
Economic losses, 1980–2025
North America accounts for 51.2% 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
North America accounts for 3.7% 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 North America, 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 North America-scoped index, never a global figure relabeled. Clicking a tile opens that variable's full interactive chart, scoped to North America. See the Methodology page for the full per-continent coverage status behind what appears here and what doesn't.
Detection of Long-Term Change — North America
Flooding — North America
North America'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 major-flood occurrence study across 1,200+ minimally-altered North American and European gauges (1961-2010, and 1931-2010 for a longer subset) found the number of statistically significant trends was about what would be expected by chance alone -- changes over time were dominated by multidecadal variability, not a clear directional climate trend, as of that record's endpoint.
Hodgkins et al. 2017, Journal of Hydrology 552 -- full citation in the Library.