Weather disasters are killing fewer people than before UN agency says

Weather disasters are striking the world four to five times more often and causing seven times more damage than in the 1970s, the United Nations weather agency reports.

But these disasters are killing far fewer people. In the 1970s and 1980s, they killed an average of about 170 people a day worldwide. In the 2010s, that dropped to about 40 per day, the World Meteorological Organization said in a report Wednesday that looks at more than 11,000 weather disasters in the past half-century.

The report comes during a disaster-filled summer globally, including deadly floods in Germany and a heat wave in the Mediterranean, and with the United States simultaneously struck by powerful Hurricane Ida and an onslaught of drought-worsened wildfires.

"The good news is that we have been able to minimize" the number of casualties once there started being a growing number of disasters such as heat waves, flooding events, drought and "especially intense tropical storms" like Ida, which hit Louisiana and Mississippi, Petteri Taalas, WMO's secretary general, told a news conference.

"But the bad news is that the economic losses have been growing very rapidly and this growth is supposed to continue," he said. "We are going to see more climatic extremes because of climate change, and these negative trends in climate will continue for the coming decades."

In the 1970s, the world averaged about 711 weather disasters a year, but from 2000 to 2009 that was up to 3,536 a year or nearly 10 a day, according to the report, which used data from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters in Belgium. The average number of yearly disasters dropped a bit in the 2010s to 3,165, the report said.

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Most death and damage during 50 years of weather disasters came from storms, flooding and drought.

More than 90 per cent of the more than two million deaths are in what the UN considers developing countries, while nearly 60 per cent of the economic damage occurred in richer countries.

In the 1970s, weather disasters cost about $220 billion ($175 billion US) globally, when adjusted to 2019 dollars, the UN found. That increased to $1.74 trillion for the period from 2010 to 2019.

Why there's more destruction, less death

What's driving the destruction is that more people are moving into dangerous areas as climate change is making weather disasters stronger and more frequent, UN disaster and weather officials said.

James Douris, science officer with the World Meteorological Organization, told CBC News climate change is also changing where certain hazards occur, and some are hitting populations unfamiliar with how to deal with them.

For example, he said, in 2013, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines hit further south than any previous typhoon. Local residents didn't know what a storm surge was.

"So they didn't act upon it," he said. The storm ended up killing more than 6,000 people.

But in general, experts said, better weather warnings and preparedness are lessening the death toll.

Susan Cutter, director of the Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute at the University of South Carolina, noted progress in learning to live with risk and protecting ourselves.

Mohamed Ibrahim, a refugee from Somalia, carries the body of his 18-month-old daughter Sahro Mohamed, who died of acute severe malnutrition and dehydration amid a drought in 2011. More than 90 per cent of the more than two million deaths related to weather disasters in the past 50 years are in what the UN considers developing countries. (Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)

"On the other hand, we're still making stupid decisions about where we're putting our infrastructure," she said. "But it's OK. We're not losing lives, we're just losing stuff."

Samantha Montano, an emergency management professor at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and author of the book Disasterology, said she worries that death tolls may stop decreasing because of the increase in extreme weather from climate change especially hitting poorer countries.

"The disparity in which countries have had the resources to dedicate to minimizing disaster deaths is of huge concern,"  she said. "Deaths decreasing in recent decades does not mean that they will continue to do so unless we continue to invest in these efforts."

Douris said many countries don't have the resources to implement early warning systems to protect their people, and financing needs to be made available to help them.

He said there have already been some successes, as in Bangladesh where the UN and the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society set up a cyclone warning system. Now, when a cyclone is coming, people bicycle to nearby villages to warn everyone to go to shelters that have been built above the reach of the storm surge.

Homes sit flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida in LaPlace, La., on Tuesday. While Ida caused widespread property damage, it's expected to cause less loss of life than major hurricanes of the past. (Gerald Herbert/The Associated Press)

Hurricane Ida is a good example of heavy damage and what will probably be less loss of life than past major hurricanes, Cutter said. This year, she added, weather disasters "seem to be coming every couple weeks," with Ida, U.S. wildfires and floods in Germany, China and Tennessee.

The five most expensive weather disasters since 1970 were all storms in the United States, topped by 2005's Hurricane Katrina. The five deadliest weather disasters were in Africa and Asia â€" topped by the Ethiopian drought and famine in the mid-1980s and Cyclone Bhola in Bangladesh in 1970.

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