Executive summary
Argentina experienced consecutive extreme heat and flooding events in 2025, placing significant strain on communities, infrastructure and emergency response systems. World Weather Attribution analysis finds that human-caused climate change increased the likelihood and severity of both hazards. The back-to-back nature of these events highlights the growing challenge of managing compound and cascading climate risks, where recovery from one extreme is disrupted by the onset of another.
What happened
In 2025, parts of Argentina were affected by prolonged periods of extreme heat, followed closely by episodes of intense rainfall and flooding. The heatwave caused stress to public health systems, agriculture and energy supply, while subsequent heavy rainfall led to river flooding, flash floods and landslides.
The close succession of events limited recovery time. Infrastructure already weakened by heat-related stress was further damaged by flooding, and emergency services were required to respond to multiple hazards within a short timeframe.
What the attribution analysis found
World Weather Attribution finds that climate change increased the likelihood and intensity of both the extreme heat and heavy rainfall events. Rising global temperatures directly increased the probability of extreme heat, while a warmer atmosphere contributed to heavier rainfall during subsequent storms.
The analysis shows that the combined occurrence of these extremes is becoming more likely in today’s climate. While each hazard can be analysed separately, their interaction significantly increases overall risk and impact.
Confidence in the attribution is high for heat extremes and moderate for heavy rainfall, consistent with broader evidence across the region.
Compound and cascading risk
A key conclusion of the study is that compound events pose a greater challenge than isolated extremes. Consecutive hazards can overwhelm response capacity, exhaust resources and increase long-term impacts.
Heat can dry soils and stress infrastructure, increasing susceptibility to flooding when heavy rain follows. This interaction illustrates how climate change can amplify risk through multiple pathways.
How climate attribution fits into multi-hazard risk reporting
Climate attribution helps identify how climate change is influencing different hazards and their interactions. By showing that both heat and rainfall extremes are intensifying, attribution supports a shift towards multi-hazard and compound risk assessment rather than siloed hazard analysis.
Why this matters for organisations
For governments, utilities, agribusinesses and insurers in Argentina, the findings highlight rising exposure to compound climate risks. Supply chains, energy systems and agricultural production are particularly vulnerable to sequences of extremes that disrupt operations over extended periods.
How to use this in your own risk work
Organisations should incorporate compound hazard scenarios into risk assessments, stress-test assets and operations against back-to-back extremes and plan for limited recovery time between events. Strengthening flexibility and redundancy in systems will be essential to managing increasingly frequent compound climate risks.
Source
World Weather Attribution (2025). Consecutive extreme heat and flooding events in Argentina highlight the challenge of managing increasingly frequent and intense hazards in a warming climate.