The 10 costliest weather disasters worldwide this year saw insured damages worth US$150 billion, topping the figure for last year and reflecting a long-term impact of global warming, a report released yesterday said.
The same disasters claimed at least 3,500 lives and displaced more than 13.5 million people.
From Australia’s out-of-control wildfires in January to a record number of Atlantic hurricanes through last month, the true cost of this year’s climate-enhanced calamities was far higher because most losses were uninsured.
Photo: AFP
Not surprisingly, the burden fell disproportionately on poor nations, the report titled Count the cost of 2020: A year of climate breakdown from global non-governmental group Christian Aid showed.
Only 4 percent of economic losses from climate-impacted extreme events in low-income countries were insured, compared with 60 percent in high-income economies, the report said, citing a study last month in The Lancet.
“Whether floods in Asia, locusts in Africa or storms in Europe and the Americas, climate change has continued to rage in 2020,” said Kat Kramer, Christian Aid’s global lead for climate change.
Extreme weather disasters have plagued humanity long before global warming caused by humans began to mess with the planet’s climate system. However, massive tropical storms are now more likely to be stronger, last longer, carry more water and wander beyond their historical range.
This year’s record-breaking 30 named Atlantic hurricanes — with at least 400 fatalities and US$41 billion in damages — suggest the world could see more such storms as well.
Intense summer flooding in China and India, where the monsoon season brought abnormal amounts of rain for the second year running, are also consistent with projections on how climate could affect precipitation.
Five of the most costly extreme weather events this year were related to Asia’s unusually rainy monsoon.
“The 2020 flood was one of the worst in the history of Bangladesh, more than a quarter of the country was under water,” said Shahjahan Mondal, director of the Institute of Flood and Water Management at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.
Wildfires that scorched record areas in Australia, California and even Russia’s Siberian hinterland, much of it within the Arctic Circle, are also consistent with a warmer world, and are predicted to get worse as temperatures climb.
If the growing frequency and intensity of natural weather disasters is consistent with modeling projections, the new field of attribution science is now able to put a number on how much more likely such an event is due to global warming.
For example, the unprecedented wildfires that destroyed 20 percent of Australia’s forests and killed tens of millions of wild animals late last year and at the beginning of this year were made at least 30 percent more likely, according to research led by Friederike Otto, associate director at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute.
Meanwhile, in Europe the chance of deadly heatwaves occurring has risen nearly 100 fold compared with a century earlier, according to recent research.
“Heatwaves and floods which used to be ‘once in a century’ events are becoming more regular occurrences,” World Meteorological Organization secretary-general Petteri Taalas said.
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