Judging by the last few summers, Rio de Janeiro’s residents should be preparing for the worst. On March 17, 2024, the neighborhood of Guaratiba, in the city’s West Zone, recorded the highest apparent temperature in the last 10 years: 62.3° Celsius (144.14° Fahrenheit), according to data from Alerta Rio, a system run by the municipal government. On Feb. 20, 2025, the thermometer in Guaratiba hit 44°C (111°F), the highest temperature in the historical series, which began in 2014. 2024 was also the wettest summer in Brazil’s second-largest city since measurements began in 1997. In January, the average rainfall reached 349 millimeters (13.74 inches), surpassing the previous record from 2013 (347 mm, or 13.66 in), and nearly 200 mm (7.87 in) higher than the historical average for the month (161 mm, or 6.34 in). In other words, the intensity of the rains and the heat has been progressively increasing in recent years in Rio de Janeiro — two manifestations of global climate change with a high potential for disaster. Consider what happened between April and early May 2024 in the city of Porto Alegre, in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, where heavy rains caused floods that affected 2.4 million people, with 183 confirmed deaths. But Rio de Janeiro is no Porto Alegre: Rio has hills. The city sprawls around the bases and creeps up the slopes of three mountain ranges — Tijuca, Pedra Branca and Gericinó-Mendanha — making for thousands of precariously installed homes in defiance of the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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