AP photos reveal intensity, insecurity and inequality in 2023 as world altered by climate change

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Local residents watch a wildfire in Avantas village, near Alexandroupolis, Greece, Aug. 21, 2023. (AP Photo/Achilleas Chiras)

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A woman carries her pet dogs as residents are evacuated on rubber boats through floodwaters in Zhuozhou in northern China’s Hebei province, south of Beijing, Aug. 2, 2023. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

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A residential swimming pool hangs on a cliffside after a landslide in San Clemente, Calif., March 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

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A man talks on his phone as he looks through smoke from wildfires in Canada at the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, N.J., June 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

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Children cool themselves with electric fans as they take a rest near the Forbidden City on a hot day in Beijing, June 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

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A woman, whose family members are trapped under rubble, wails after a landslide washed away houses in Raigad district, western Maharashtra state, India, July 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

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Wildfire destruction is visible Aug. 10, 2023, in Lahaina, Hawaii. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

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A person runs to avoid the flames of a wildfire in Gennadi village, on the Aegean Sea island of Rhodes, southeastern Greece, July 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

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A girl touches her father’s head as they are engulfed by mist from a public fountain on a hot day in Bucharest, Romania, July 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

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Rescuers recover the body of a person killed during flooding in Derna, Libya, Sept. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Ricardo Garcia Vilanova)

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A skier moves along a lit pathway during the polar night in Longyearbyen, Norway, Jan. 6, 2023. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

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The McDougall Creek wildfire burns on the mountainside above houses in West Kelowna, British Columbia, Aug. 18, 2023. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press via AP)

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A boat travels through a section of the Amazon River affected by drought in Amazonas state, near Manacapuru, Brazil, Sept. 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros)

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Pamela and Patrick Cerruti empty coins from Pajaro Coin Laundry as floodwaters surround machines in the community of Pajaro in Monterey County, Calif., March 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

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A cameraman walks up to the Rhone Glacier near Goms, Switzerland, Friday, June 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

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A train passes a railroad crossing between flooded fields in Nidderau-Eichen near Frankfurt, Germany, Jan. 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

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Birds fly over debris in the aftermath of Hurricane Otis in Acapulco, Mexico, Oct. 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

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A tribal woman tries to catch small fish as her granddaughter dozes off on her back in a paddy field on the outskirts of Guwahati, northeastern Assam state, India, March 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

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Fisherwomen and men pull in a net of fish off the coast of Chuao, Venezuela, June 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

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Jestina Nyamukunguvengu walks near a pearl millet crop in Zimbabwe’s arid Rushinga district, northeast of the capital Harare, Jan. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)

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A woman sits next to baskets filled with fish as she works at a market on the shore of the Senegal River in Saint Louis, Senegal, Jan. 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

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Yaad Ali, left, offers prayers as his wife Monuwara Begum cooks food in their flooded house in Sandahkhaiti, a floating island village in the Brahmaputra River in Morigaon district, Assam, India, Aug. 29, 2023. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

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People wait in the rain to receive free food distributed from volunteers outside a camp for people displaced from coastal areas in Sujawal, Pakistan’s southern district in the Sindh province, June 15, 2023, as Cyclone Biparjoy was approaching. (AP Photo/Pervez Masih)

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Workers harvest cranberries at Golden Eagle Farms, in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia, Oct. 12, 2023. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press via AP)

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Jay Begay holds the caul fat from a sheep, Sept. 6, 2023, in the community of Rocky Ridge, Ariz., on the Navajo Nation. (AP Photo/John Locher)

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Men fish amid dead fish floating near the shore of the Salado River during a drought in Buenos Aires province, Argentina, Jan. 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

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Jorge Martinez works the fires at his taco stand at sunset on a hot day, July 19, 2023, in Mexicali, Mexico. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

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A Kashmiri farmer walks back from saffron fields after a day of work in Pampore, south of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Nov. 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)

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Oumar Abdoulaye Sow sits at a water trough after giving water to his cows in the village of Fete Forrou, in the Matam region of Senegal, April 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

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A worker hops over an irrigation canal as he applies fertilizer to a sugar cane field in Albion, Guyana, April 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

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Darren Platt, left, captain of the Agnes Sabine, and first-year deckhand Juan Zuniga, right, step over nets as they dock the boat for refueling, June 23, 2023, in Kodiak, Alaska. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)

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Goats and sheep run toward a water point before undertaking a 24-kilometer (15-mile) journey to a new location in the Munkh-Khaan region of the Sukhbaatar district, in southeast Mongolia, May 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

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Yaad Ali, left, and his son Musikur Alam, row a boat to collect drinking water in the floodwaters in Sandahkhaiti, a floating island village in the Brahmaputra River in Morigaon district, Assam, India, Aug. 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

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People take items from a store in the aftermath of Hurricane Otis, in Acapulco, Mexico, Oct. 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Felix Marquez)

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Jay Begay, left, and his mother Helen butcher a sheep at their home Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023, in the community of Rocky Ridge, Ariz., on the Navajo Nation. (AP Photo/John Locher)

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Children are seen through a car window during rain outside a camp set up in a school building for people displaced from coastal areas due to Cyclone Biparjoy approaching, in Badin, in Pakistan’s southern district in the Sindh province, June 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)

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An Indigenous Wari’ boy swims in the Komi Memem River, named Laje in non-Indigenous maps, at Wari’ community in Guajara-Mirim, Rondonia state, Brazil, Thursday, July 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

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Joyce Ngui, left, fetches water in Athi River, Machakos county, Kenya, Oct. 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)

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A boy walks on plastic waste at the Badhwar Park beach on the Arabian Sea coast in Mumbai, India, June 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)

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A 40-year-old woman poses for a photo after an interview in Saint Louis, Senegal, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2023. The woman said she had to resort to prostitution last year after her fisherman husband left the city and cut contact. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

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Rekha Devi, a farm worker, washes her face next to her temporary shelter on an under-construction overpass after her family evacuated the flooded banks of the Yamuna River in New Delhi, India, Aug. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

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People attend a burial ceremony for some of the people who died following heavy rains caused by Cyclone Freddy in Blantyre, southern Malawi, March 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Thoko Chikondi)

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Neelam Tamar, suffering from heatstroke, recovers at the Lalitpur district hospital, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, June 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

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Dilrukshan Kumara looks at the ocean as he stands by the remains of his family’s home destroyed by erosion in Iranawila, Sri Lanka, June 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

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A woman carries a water jug as she walks back to her home after collecting drinking water from a mobile water tanker on World Water Day in a residential area in New Delhi, India, March 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

By PETER PRENGAMAN

Punishing heat that hovered and hung on much longer than usual. Flash floods that washed away large swaths of land and life. And wildfires that burned much of the year, leaving a wake of smoke and charred earth.

The toll of disasters propelled by climate change in 2023 can be tallied with numbers — thousands of people dead, millions of others who lost jobs, homes and hope, and tens of billions of dollars sheared off economies.

But numbers can’t reflect the way climate change is experienced — the intensity, the insecurity and the inequality that people on Earth are living. Associated Press photographers around the world captured moments in 2023 that collectively tell that story, one of a changing world.

INTENSITY

In so many skies, there was smoke, seen in the distance and breathed up close. From Canada to Greece to Hawaii, wildfires raged, consuming land while the flames fanned a thick haze that traveled around the globe. So intense were the wildfires in Canada that they released several times more air pollution than the entire country usually does in a year, working against world efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions, which fuel climate change.

There was also intense heat and desperate efforts to find relief — during a year on track to be the warmest in recorded history. In China, two little girls held small fans in front of their faces, while in Romania a father and daughter delighted in the mist of a public fountain. In Switzerland, a man walked toward the Rhone Glacier, which is melting like so many other glaciers worldwide.

And there was rain, that caused destruction. After Storm Daniel unleashed a torrent from the sky, floods in Libya killed more than 11,000 people, with several thousand others missing. In India, a woman wailed after a landslide washed away houses, leaving family members trapped under rubble. In the U.S., two people waded through water in a laundromat after major flooding.

INSECURITY

In so many places, floods, powerful storms and heat waves wiped out supplies of food. That led to hunger, forced people to migrate in search of sustenance and increased pressure on governments to respond.

In India, a woman cooked in her flooded home while her husband prayed, a scene of both devastation and resilience. In neighboring Pakistan, people waited in the rain to receive food distributed by volunteers outside a camp for internally displaced migrants — as Cyclone Biparjoy ominously approached. In Zimbabwe, a woman worked a field of millet, a cereal that is more resistant than other crops to changes in temperature.

In Argentina, men fished amid many floating carcasses of fish killed by drought and multiple heat waves that jacked up river temperatures and dried out landscapes across areas of South America. A hemisphere away, seemingly endless heat imperiled sheep herding, central to the culture of Navajo in the U.S. Farther west, in Alaska, men worked fishing boats with the knowledge that this year’s catch could be much less than last year’s, as climate change is upending their livelihood.

INEQUALITY

In every place that climate change made its mark, inequality was made worse.

Desperation could be seen in the eyes of Pakistani children, standing in the mud and looking through a window while it rained at a camp set up for internally displaced people. It gripped people in Kenya who must go deeper and deeper to access groundwater, as periodic drought has plagued East Africa.

On the other side of the African continent, in a coastal community in Senegal, desperation was felt by women who say they have had to turn to prostitution, thanks to depleted fish populations from climate change and fallout from an offshore gas drilling project.

In Malawi, coffins with people killed during heavy rains from Cyclone Freddy lay in the mud while family and friends, standing under a large tent, said goodbye.

In India, where floods frequently forced evacuations, a displaced farmworker, squatting over dirt, washed her face. In Sri Lanka, a man stood in debris from his home, destroyed by erosion. On this day, the seas were calm, but as the planet continues to warm, more storms are ahead.

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