Global Extreme Weather and Climate Change Dashboard
South America
South America accounts for 2.9% of global weather/climate economic losses and 3.2% 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 South America -- not every phenomenon runs for every continent; see the "Not Yet Available" note below for what South America's source data doesn't yet support.
Summary Judgment — South America
– of – tracked variables for South America show a detected change (– increasing, – decreasing) — see the tiles below for each one.
AR6 reports high-confidence increases in drought frequency and duration in northern South America, matching the detected drought increase here for the continent. Flooding is the one place the numbers here disagree with each other, beyond disagreeing with AR6: the live GloFAS index shows a detected decrease in high-flow conditions, while separately cited literature (Barichivich et al. 2018) documents severe Amazon flooding roughly five times more frequent since the early 2000s — a tension between a broad continent-wide index and a well-documented regional case, left open rather than resolved by picking one.
Source: AR6 WGI Regional Fact Sheet — Central and South 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… | Consistent |
| Flooding | Computing… | Not directly comparable |
| Wildfire | 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 — Central and South America.
Economic Losses & Loss of Life — South America's Share
South 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 South America's row.
Economic losses, 1980–2025
South America accounts for 2.9% 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
South America accounts for 3.2% 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 South 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 South America-scoped index, never a global figure relabeled. Clicking a tile opens that variable's full interactive chart, scoped to South 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 — South America
Flooding — South America
South 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 striking, well-documented case: severe flooding at Manaus on the central Amazon has increased roughly fivefold since the early 2000s (from about one severe flood every 20 years in the early 20th century to about one every 4 years since), linked to a strengthened Walker circulation from tropical Atlantic warming and tropical Pacific cooling.
Barichivich, Espinoza et al. 2018, Science Advances 4(9) -- full citation in the Library.
Not Yet Available for South America
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.
- Extratropical Cyclone Intensity
- The source catalog (Gray, Volonte, Martinez-Alvarado, Harvey 2024) covers Northern Hemisphere WINTER (Oct-Mar) only -- it carries no genesis or track data near this continent, not just an unbuilt breakdown. See North America/Europe/Asia for the 3 continents this catalog covers.
- Heat Waves / Temperature Extremes
- The underlying GSN station network's density varies widely across continents: Europe and North America both clear a usable bar (see those pages), but Asia (peaks at 121 qualifying stations), Africa (37), South America (33), and Oceania (56) all stay well under 100 at their historical peak, too sparse to say "what changed" rather than "where the stations are."