No evidence of increasing droughts, floods, hurricanes and wildfires, despite activist claims

By Kenneth Green of The Fraser Institute.

"Contrary to claims by many climate activists and politicians,
extreme weather events—including forest fires, droughts, floods and hurricanes—are
not increasing in frequency or intensity, finds a new study published today by the
Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.

“Earth Day has become a time when extraordinary claims are made about extreme
weather events, but before policymakers act on those extreme claims—often with
harmful regulations—it’s important to study the actual evidence,” said Kenneth Green,
a senior fellow with the Fraser Institute and author of Extreme Weather and Climate
Change.

The study finds that global temperatures have increased moderately since 1950 but
there is no evidence that extreme weather events are on the rise, including:

• Drought: Data from the World Meteorological Organization Standardized
Precipitation Index showed no statistically significant trends in drought duration
or magnitude—with the exception of some small regions in Africa and South
America—from 1900 to 2020.
• Flooding: Research in the Journal of Hydrology in 2017, analyzing 9,213
recording stations around the world, found there were more stations exhibiting
significant decreasing trends (in flood risk) than increasing trends.
• Hurricanes: Research conducted for the World Meteorological Organization in
2019 (updated in 2023) found no long-term trends in hurricanes or major
hurricanes recorded globally going back to 1980.
• Forest Fires: The Royal Society in London, in 2020, found that when
considering the total area burned at the global level, there is no overall increase,
but rather a decline over the last decades. In Canada, data from Canada’s
Wildland Fire Information System show that the number of fires and the area
burned in Canada have both been declining over the past 30 years.

“The evidence is clear—many of the claims that extreme weather events are
increasing are simply not empirically true,” Green said.

“Before governments impose new regulations or enact new programs, they need to
study the actual data and base their actions on facts, not unsubstantiated claims.”"

More from this study

Read the Full Report

View the Infographic

Read the News Release