Okuzeka
Environment & Climate vocabulary · Climate Change and Climate Science

Extreme weather

Meaning in environment & climate, with examples

/ɪkˈstriːm ˈweðər/nounCore term

In environment & climate, extreme weather means: Weather that is much more severe than usual for a place and time of year, such as heatwaves, very heavy rain, floods, droughts and strong storms.

In Turkish: aşırı hava olayları, ekstrem hava olayları

How it is used

Common in news, insurance and climate risk reports. People talk about extreme weather events and their frequency and intensity. Scientists use attribution studies to estimate how much climate change made a particular event more likely or more severe.

Example sentences

  1. Extreme weather caused more than $2 billion of insured losses in the region last year.

  2. Our supply chain risk analysis now includes extreme weather events such as floods at supplier sites.

Common collocations

  • extreme weather events
  • frequency of extreme weather
  • more extreme weather
  • extreme weather conditions
  • heatwaveA period of several days of unusually hot weather for a particular place and season, often with high night-time temperatures as well.
  • droughtA long period with much less rain than normal, which leaves too little water for people, farming, rivers and ecosystems.
  • climate riskThe possibility that climate change, or the policies and market changes it brings, will cause financial losses or other harm to a company, investor, community or asset.
  • resilienceThe ability of a community, city, business or ecosystem to prepare for, cope with and recover quickly from shocks such as floods, heatwaves or droughts.
  • adaptationChanges in how people, cities, businesses and ecosystems work so that they can cope with the current and expected effects of climate change.

More terms: Climate Change and Climate Science

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