There is increasing amounts of evidence that anthropogenic climate change is driving an increase in occurrence of landslides around the world. In recent years we have seen some remarkable events, including the 7 February 2021 Chamoli debris flow in northern India, which killed over 200 people and destroyed several hydroelectric dams; the 12 to 16 February 2023 landfall of Cyclone Gabrielle in New Zealand, which triggered over 800,000 landslides; and the 4 October 2023 landslide-induced glacial lake outburst flood in the Himalayas, which killed about 200 people and destroyed a series of hydroelectric dams along the Teesta river. In all these cases, it is likely that anthropogenic climate change played a role.

The year 2024 has seen exceptionally high sea surface and atmospheric temperatures, driven by a combination of long-term climate change and an intense El Nino event. Interestingly, it has also been characterized by a record number of fatal landslides worldwide – as of the end of August 2024, a total of 476 fatal landslides had occurred, killing 3,693 people. The previous highest total at that point in the year was 361 fatal landslides. A number of remarkable landslide events have occurred, including failures with over 50 fatalities in China, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Nepal, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Uganda, Vietnam and India. Of particular note has been multiple landslide events in which extreme rainfall has triggered hundreds of landslides, which have coalesced into channelised debris flows.

There is strong evidence that this high level of landslides has been primarily associated with unusually high rainfall intensities, often occurring within seasonally wet periods, such as the southwest monsoon in the Indian subcontinent. Melting of permafrost and the exposure of the landscape to mudflows in the aftermath of wildfires has also played a role.

The implications for future landslide patterns are stark. The rapid warming now being seen will mean that the high atmospheric and sea surface temperatures observed in 2024 will become increasingly common – the average temperature in 2024 is likely to have been about 1.5°C above the long-term baseline. This figure is anticipated to be the average atmospheric temperature by about 2040. Thus, it is possible that the high level of landslides observed in 2024 will soon become the norm, with profound implications for the management of landslide risk globally.

Professor David Petley has been the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hull in the United Kingdom since September 2022. Prior to this he held senior leadership positions at the University of Durham, the University of East Anglia and the University of Sheffield. Dave is an earth scientist by training, with a strong focus on landslides. His research interests have centred on the use of novel technologies for understanding landslide movement, combining for example the use of InSAR, high resolution satellite imagery, LIDAR and GPS monitoring to determine patterns of deformation in time and space. This has been supported by the development of novel laboratory instrumentation to simulate the conditions within landslides, allowing exploration of deformation types and patterns. Dave also has a strong interest in the societal cost of landslides, and in ways to build resilience, especially in poor communities. Dave has worked extensively on landslides in high mountain areas, such as Taiwan, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, Chile and China, as well as on slopes closer to home. Dave also maintains the popular Landslide Blog, hosted by the American Geophysical Union, which aims to raise awareness of landslides in society. As Vice-Chancellor, Dave is the most senior academic and the CEO of the University of Hull, which has 15,000 students and 3,000 staff members.