Record-setting heavy precipitation occurrence in 2024

Precipitation extremes have increased globally in recent decades, consistent with a warming climate.

By Thackeray, Norris, Hall +2Science AdvancesOct 9, 2026

Score████░░░░░░4.4

Key numbers

40% of the 2024 anomaly
20% with El Ni

VerdictWorth a reader's time today.

Read the original

Abstract

Precipitation extremes have increased globally in recent decades, consistent with a warming climate. We find that 2024 experienced a record-high frequency of heavy (≥99th percentile; F P≥99 ) precipitation events globally based on MSWEP (Multi-Source Weighted-Ensemble Precipitation) observations from 1979 to 2025. This extends a long-term trend of ∼0.03%/decade in F P≥99 , with similar but more uncertain increases for the 99.9th percentile. Unlike prior high F P≥99 years, 2024’s record was more globally distributed and emerged from a distinct seasonal evolution. El Niño and rare concurrent multi-basin tropical ocean warmth drove elevated extremes early in the year, before lagged global tropospheric responses and long-term warming sustained and amplified extremes through boreal summer. Climate models indicate that years with 2024-level F P≥99 typically require either stronger El Niño forcing or concurrent multi-basin sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies. Diagnostic projections within constrained ensemble members suggest that ∼40% of the 2024 anomaly aligns with global mean temperatures and ∼20% with El Niño variability, with some of the remainder linked to basin-scale SST structure.

Chad W. Thackeray, Jesse Norris, Alex D. Hall, Mark D. Zelinka, Stephen Po–Chedley

The editor's rubric

Heuristic review

Dimension	Level	Weight	What that level means
Leverage	███░░ 3	16%	A method or resource many groups across the field will adopt within a year.
Magnitude	███░░ 3	20%	Large gain: roughly 2x, or a clear new state of the art on a hard, unsaturated problem.
Evidence	███░░ 3	20%	Solid: multiple benchmarks or cohorts, ablations, fair baselines, released code or data.
Novelty	███░░ 3	10%	A genuinely new approach to an open problem.
Trajectory	██░░░ 2	14%	Some room to improve with obvious engineering.
Stakes	███░░ 3	20%	Meaningful benefit to many people within a few years.

Editor’s rationale

Heuristic triage from title and abstract text only, not a reading of the paper. Cues found: method (we report); gains (state of the art); novelty (alternative to status quo, open problem); scale (scalable); stakes (global scale, climate).

How the score was computed

rank-2026-10-07

Score████░░░░░░4.4

Score = 10 × (75% × adjusted merit / 10 + 15% × attention + 10% × freshness)

Merit: 5.7 / 10; Weighted rubric, evidence-gated.
Adjusted merit: 4.8 / 10; Shrunk toward the desk prior by editor confidence (44%).
Attention: 0%; Citations, upvotes, points, mentions.
Freshness: 85%; Half-life decay since publication.

Citations0 (reference 15, via openalex, Oct 11, 2026, 07:29 UTC)

The record

Reviewed by heuristic-v6 on Oct 11, 2026, 07:29 UTC. Paper type: method.
Categories: Climate variability and models, Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations, Climate Change and Environmental Impact, Global and Planetary Change, Environmental Science
TOP, No.3 in the Climate & Energy edition of October 11, 2026.