WASHINGTON (AP) — Heat waves that lead to sudden and damaging drought are spreading across the globe at an accelerating rate, highlighting how climate change-fueled extremes can build dangerously off each other, a new study found.
Researchers from South Korea and Australia looked at compound extreme weather — a one-two punch of heat and drought — and found it increasing as the world warms. But what's rising especially fast is the more damaging type when the heat comes first and that triggers the drought. In the 1980s, that kind of extreme covered only about 2.5% of Earth's land each year. By 2023, the last year the researchers studied, it was up to 16.7%, with a 10-year average of 7.9%
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FILE - Fire burns in a field of grass near Bumbalong, south of the Australian capital, Canberra, Feb. 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
FILE - Residents of a riverside community carry food and containers of drinking water after receiving aid due to the ongoing drought in Careiro da Varzea, Amazonas state, Brazil, Oct. 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros, File)
FILE - People prepare to swim in the Yangtze River near a bridge support column that shows previous water levels in southwestern China's Chongqing Municipality, Aug. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
FILE - Students carrying umbrellas stand on the dry riverbed of the Jialing Rivera, a tributary of the Yangtze, in southwestern China's Chongqing Municipality, Aug. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
FILE - A resident of a riverside community carries food and containers of drinking water after being distributed due to the ongoing drought in Careiro da Varzea, Amazonas state, Brazil, Oct. 24, 2023. (AP Photo /Edmar Barros, File)
The average has likely gone even higher with 2024's record global heat and a 2025 that was nearly as warm, the study's authors said.
In their study published in Friday's Science Advances, the scientists said the quickening rate of change is even more concerning than the raw numbers. For about the first two decades since 1980 they examined, the spread of heat-first extremes increased, but the rate in the last 22 years is eight times higher than the earlier rate, the study found.
Events where drought happens first, followed by high heat, remain more common and are also rising. But the researchers focused on those increasing cases where heat struck first. That's because when heat strikes first, the droughts are stronger than when the droughts come first or don't come with high heat, said co-author Sang-Wook Yeh, a climate scientist at Hanyang University in South Korea.
They also lead to "flash droughts,'' which are more damaging than ordinary droughts because they come on suddenly, not allowing people and farmers to prepare, said lead author Yong-Jun Kim, a Hanyang climate scientist.
Flash droughts — when warmer air gets thirstier it sucks more water out of soil — have been increasing in a warming world, past studies show.
“The study illustrates a key point about climate change: the most damaging impacts often come from compound extremes. When heat waves, drought, and wildfire risk occur together — as we saw in events like the Russian heat wave of 2010 or the Australian bushfires in 2019-20 — the impacts can escalate quickly,” said Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. “What this study shows is that warming doesn’t just make heat waves more likely — it changes how heat and drought interact, amplifying the risks we face."
Weaver was not part of the study, but he lives in the Pacific Northwest, where the 2021 heat dome and drought was what Kim called a top example of what they see rapidly increasing. Others include the 2022 heat and drought around China's Yangtze River and the 2023-24 record heat and drought in the Amazon, Kim said.
“The 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome illustrates how quickly these compound extremes can escalate — temperatures near 50°C (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in Lytton (British Columbia) were followed by rapid drying and extreme wildfire conditions that destroyed the community,” Weaver, a former Canadian legislator, said in an email.
The study found the biggest increases in heat-first droughts in South America, western Canada, Alaska and the western United States, and parts of central and eastern Africa.
Kim and Yeh said they noticed a “change point” around the year 2000, when everything sped up for heat-then-drought situations.
Jennifer Francis, a Woodwell Climate Research Center climate scientist who wasn’t part of the study, said that change point was “eerily coincident with the onset of rapid Arctic warming, sea-ice loss, and decline in spring snow cover on Northern Hemisphere continents.”
In addition to long-term warming causing more compound extremes, Kim said they saw a speeding-up in the way heat went from land to air and back again just before that 2000 change point. He and Yeh speculated that Earth may have crossed a “tipping point" where the change is irreversible.
Several aspects of Earth's climate and ecological systems changed in the late 1990s, with a possible trigger by a major El Nino event in 1997-98, said Gerald Meehl, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who wasn't part of the study. But he added that it's hard to tell whether they are permanent changes.
Some computer models forecast another major El Nino — a natural warming of parts of the Pacific that warp weather worldwide — brewing later this year.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
FILE - Fire burns in a field of grass near Bumbalong, south of the Australian capital, Canberra, Feb. 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)
FILE - Residents of a riverside community carry food and containers of drinking water after receiving aid due to the ongoing drought in Careiro da Varzea, Amazonas state, Brazil, Oct. 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros, File)
FILE - People prepare to swim in the Yangtze River near a bridge support column that shows previous water levels in southwestern China's Chongqing Municipality, Aug. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
FILE - Students carrying umbrellas stand on the dry riverbed of the Jialing Rivera, a tributary of the Yangtze, in southwestern China's Chongqing Municipality, Aug. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
FILE - A resident of a riverside community carries food and containers of drinking water after being distributed due to the ongoing drought in Careiro da Varzea, Amazonas state, Brazil, Oct. 24, 2023. (AP Photo /Edmar Barros, File)
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The folksy wisdom and jokes that were a staple of the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting for decades when Warren Buffett was leading the show will be missing Saturday, but shareholders still started lining up at midnight outside a Nebraska arena to listen to new CEO Greg Abel.
Attendance is down significantly this year with the arena only a little over half full as the meeting started. That’s much different from the past few years when more than 40,000 attended to listen to the 95-year-old Buffett and — before his death in 2023, Buffett’s longtime partner Charlie Munger was always part of the fun. Buffett gave up the CEO title in January, but he remains chairman and will be sitting with the rest of the Berkshire board on the floor to listen at the meeting.
Saturday’s meeting began with a video tribute to Buffett filled with clips from the previous 60 years of annual meetings. The first clip showed the standing ovation Buffett received last year after he surprised shareholders by announcing that he would step down.
Abel then announced the symbolic move of retiring jerseys with Buffett’s and Munger’s names on them that will hang in the rafters of the arena.
Buffett took the microphone briefly to praise Abel and recognize Apple CEO Tim Cook, who attended the meeting. Buffett said Abel has done a tremendous job so far, and Cook helped Berkshire's initial $35 billion investment in Apple grow to be worth $185 billion today. Cook even got a longer round of applause than Buffett did when he was introduced.
“Greg is doing everything I did and then some,” Buffett said, so his decision to step down has worked out great so far.
Abel has been on stage next to the legendary investor at the annual meetings for several years, but this year is his first time running the show. Investors expect the conversation to focus more on how the dozens of companies Berkshire owns are doing. The conglomerate owns major insurers like Geico, several major utilities like Pacificorp, BNSF railroad and an assortment of manufacturers, retail and service businesses.
Signs of the transition are peppered throughout the 200,000-square-foot exhibit hall where shareholders buy products from Berkshire companies. A caricature of Abel playing his favorite sport of hockey is front and center on commemorative boxes of See’s Candy with Buffett and Mrs. See in the background in hockey gear. At the Pilot Travel Center booth pictures of Abel and Buffett are plastered on the windshield of a semitrailer truck, but Abel is in the driver’s seat. And this year Jazwares created a Squishmallow version of Abel to go with the latest versions of Buffett and his longtime partner Charlie Munger as stuffed dolls that shareholders lined up to buy.
“Sadly we miss Warren and Charlie and that show which was fun, but it’s a business meeting for a lot of us and hearing what the businesses are doing is what it’s all about,” investor Chris Bloomstran, who is president of Semper Augustus Investments Group said.
Abel opened the meeting that way with a detailed discussion of how Berkshire's biggest businesses are performing. He gave a granular explanation about the performance of Berkshire’s insurers, its railroad and its utilities. And he emphasized the way Berkshire is using artificial intelligence “to solve problems at our companies.”
But also many people travel to Omaha primarily to meet up with like-minded value investors, who practice the approach that Buffett employed, and attend some of the investment conferences and meetings that are scheduled around Berkshire’s shareholder meeting.
“That’s why I’m really here, really here is to network with other people,” said Bob Robotti, who runs his own investment company. He doesn’t expect surprises from Abel and the other Berkshire executives at the meeting. “They shouldn’t say anything that would be shocking and surprising because they’re consistent with what they do.”
Many investors are watching closely for any changes Abel might make, but there’s not a lot of reason expect anything big. After all, Abel has been with Berkshire for more than 25 years, and he had already been managing all of the conglomerate’s noninsurance businesses for nearly eight years by the time he was promoted.
Abel did make a few administrative changes to establish a team to help support him, but he has promised to maintain Berkshire’s culture that allows the CEOs of all of its businesses to largely run their day-to-day operations while consulting with headquarters on any major investments and sending any extra cash to Omaha.
The CEOs of Dairy Queen, See’s Candy, Jazwares and Brooks Running all said very little has changed since Abel was promoted other than they now report to NetJets CEO Adam Johnson who is overseeing 32 retail and service businesses.
“I think this is a very deeply rooted culture that Warren has created, and I believe the transition to Greg is going to be rooted in those values that Warren has for 60 years instituted and will continue,” Brooks CEO Dan Sheridan said.
For years Buffett always said he was having too much fun running Berkshire to ever retire, but once the shock of his announcement in the final minutes of last years meeting wore off the company’s executives quickly agreed this plan for the transition was better so Buffett can still be around to advise Abel.
“Berkshire is as strong today as it’s ever been and Warren is still part of it,” DQ CEO Troy Bader said as his staff sold Dilly Bars to shareholders. “Warren is still present. So that’s the greatest combination right now, to be able to have that transition in leadership where Greg and Warren can still work together.”
Abel is known to be a more demanding and hands-on boss than Buffett ever was, but he does that by challenging Berkshire’s CEOs to strengthen their competitive advantages while taking care of their customers. Abel asks tough questions and offers advice that his CEOs appreciate, but he doesn’t tell them exactly what to do.
And with Buffett remaining Berkshire’s chairman and its largest shareholder it’s unlikely that Abel will make any drastic changes. So shareholders shouldn’t expect Berkshire to start paying a dividend or that Abel will suddenly split the company up. Instead, Abel will continue building on the foundation Buffett established over 60 years.
Robotti said the performance of Berkshire’s businesses should be much more important to shareholders than the entertainment value of the annual meetings.
“My hope and expectation are they’re picking people who have competency in running a business and not necessarily public speakers and presenters,” Robotti said.
Berkshire said Saturday morning that its profits more than doubled in the first-quarter to $10.1 billion, or $7,027 per Class A share, as the value of its investments grew and most of its businesses improved.
The paper value of Berkshire’s investments always has a major impact on its bottom line, and it did record a $5.8 billion gain on the stocks it did sell. The value of the portfolio did slip to just over $288 billion.
Berkshire’s massive cash pile continues to grow, and it hit $397.4 billion at the end of the first quarter.
Most of Berkshire’s varied businesses reported better operating earnings this year. The insurance unit that includes Geico and a number of other companies reported an underwriting profit of $1.7 billion, up from $1.34 billion last year. Profits also grew somewhat at BNSF railroad and Berkshire’s utility and manufacturing companies.
But Abel acknowledged there is more improvement needed — especially at BNSF.
“We see a lot of opportunity here to continue to get better,” Abel said about the railroad.
Portraits of Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett, left, and CEO Greg Abel sit in a semi truck at the Pilot display in the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting on Saturday, May 2, 2026, in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Rebecca S. Gratz)
Shareholders arrive inside the CHI Health Center Omaha for the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting on Saturday, May 2, 2026, in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Rebecca S. Gratz)
Shareholders enter the CHI Health Center Omaha for the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting on Saturday, May 2, 2026, in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Rebecca S. Gratz)
Shareholder Anna Larsen, 16, left, of Underwood, Iowa, poses for photo with her friend Ainsley Roberts, 17, in the Hello Kitty portion of the Squishmallows display in the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting on Saturday, May 2, 2026, in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Rebecca S. Gratz)
Shareholder Alex Vacca of Milwaukee poses for a photo in a foam hat in the Justin display od the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting on Saturday, May 2, 2026, in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Rebecca S. Gratz)
Author and former Omaha World-Herald reporter Steve Jordan signs copies of his book at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders event on Friday, May 1, 2026 in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Josh Funk)
A Berkshire Hathaway shareholder takes a selfie in front of a Pilot truck stops semi truck with pictures of Berkshire's top two executives behind the wheel: new CEO Greg Abel and Chairman Warren Buffett on Friday, May 1, 2026 in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Josh Funk)
Berkshire Hathaway shareholders stand in line to purchase Squishmallows versions of the company's top executives: CEO Greg Abel, Chairman Warren Buffett and former Vice Chairman Charlie Munger on Friday, May 1, 2026 in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Josh Funk)
Berkshire Hathaway shareholders line up to buy products at the Pampered Chef booth behind a cutout of longtime CEO Warren Buffett who stepped down in January on Friday, May 1, 2026 in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Josh Funk)
Shareholders line up to take pictures with depictions of Berkshire Hathaway's new CEO Greg Abel and Chairman Warren Buffett on Friday, May 1, 2026 in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Josh Funk)
