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Floods in Pakistan, election in Brazil, war in Ukraine: Top climate stories of 2022

Homes are surrounded by floodwaters in Sohbat Pur city, a district of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province. (Zahid Hussain/AP)
Homes are surrounded by floodwaters in Sohbat Pur city, a district of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province. (Zahid Hussain/AP)

As another year comes to a close, where are we on climate? Well, the numbers don’t look great. Climate-related weather disasters have cost about $29 billion globally this year, according to insurance broker Aon. Those disasters included 14 severe weather events, six floods, five droughts three tropical cyclones and a windstorm.

Heat waves in Europe also killed 16,000 people; another 1,700 died in Pakistan’s flooding. This year also took a heavy toll on Alpine glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet. But there were also some rays of hope.

New York Times science writer David Wallace-Wells, author of “Uninhabitable Earth” joins Here & Now‘s Robin Young to talk about the most important climate stories of 2022.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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