It is not your imagination. Weather and climate disasters have become more frequent since the 1970s

(CNN) – Some extreme weather event or climate disaster has occurred every day, on average, somewhere in the world for the past 50 years, representing a five-fold increase over that period, a new UN analysis shows.

Each climate disaster led to an average economic loss of a staggering $ 383 million, according to the iReport of the World Meteorological Organizationl. The economic cost of these disasters has increased sevenfold since the 1970s.

The report examined more than 11,000 weather disasters over the past five decades and comes to the end of a summer filled with extreme weather across the Northern Hemisphere – while the United States has been hit by a cocktail of wildfires sparked by drought, flooding and Most recently, Hurricane Ida, China and Germany experienced deadly floods in July as southern Europe battled its own wildfires.

“What we think of as climate change is now getting very personal,” Jennifer Marlon, a climate scientist at the Yale School of the Environment, told CNN. “It is not very far anymore, now it is in our garden, it is in our patios, it is in our basements, it is even in our lungs like breathing the smoke from these forest fires.”

But the good news is that these disasters are killing far fewer people, thanks to lessons learned from past disasters and improved early warning and management systems. In the 1970s and 1980s, disasters caused by climate change killed an average of about 170 people each day around the world. That number dropped to around 40 a day in the 2010s.

“The economic cost of Hurricane Ida has yet to be fully assessed, as the true magnitude of the damage becomes apparent,” World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Secretary General Petteri Taalas told CNN. “But it is clear that the loss of life was kept to a minimum due to all the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina and the excellent early warning systems.”

In Europe, although storms and floods were the most frequent causes of disasters, extreme heat accounted for the highest number of deaths (93%) with almost 150,000 lives lost in the last 50 years. In Africa, droughts caused the highest number of deaths, accounting for 95% of climate-related deaths in the region.

Dozens of people died during a flood that destroyed the San Bernardino neighborhood in Caracas, Venezuela, in December 1999.

While extreme weather events can affect anyone in the world, the report found that they affect and impact different countries and groups of people unevenly. More than 91% of deaths related to weather and climate disasters occurred in developing countries, for example.

“On the contrary, the loss of life by tropical cyclone Idai, which hit Mozambique in 2019, was very high because the forecasts did not give enough indications about the impact of winds, rains and floods, and did not reach those who they needed them more, “Taalas added. Cyclone Idai killed more than 1,000 people in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawai in 2019.

The financial costs and loss of income associated with these extreme weather events are also increasing dramatically, accounting for three-quarters of all reported economic losses.

“It is encouraging, no doubt, that the death toll is declining, but the economy is deeply disturbing,” said Marlon, who was not involved in the report.

According to the report, storms and floods caused the greatest economic losses.

Six of the world’s costliest weather and climate-related disasters occurred in the US alone, and three occurred in 2017: Hurricane Harvey in Texas caused $ 96.9 billion in losses; Hurricane María, in Puerto Rico, caused losses of US $ 69.4 billion; and Hurricane Irma, which hit Florida, along with the Caribbean, caused $ 58.2 billion in losses. Hurricane Katrina, which hit the same area that Ida just hit, was responsible for the biggest loss.

The United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has historically borrowed from the Treasury Department to pay disaster claims. By August 2020, FEMA’s debt had skyrocketed to $ 20.5 billion, despite Congress erasing a $ 16 billion debt from Hurricane Katrina in October 2017 to pay for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. .

Climate change has become one of the main drivers of these disasters. According to peer-reviewed studies compiled by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, approximately 80% of the extreme weather events reported between 2015 and 2017 showed significant human influence. Almost every analysis of major heat waves, since 2015, has been attributed in part to man-made climate change, according to the report.

As the climate crisis accelerates, extreme weather events will become more frequent and severe. While the death toll is lower than it was 50 years ago, Marlon said more people will remain at risk and more vulnerable to climate disasters, unless the planet dramatically reduces greenhouse gas emissions and improves greenhouse gas emissions. emergency preparedness systems.

“People must recognize that these events that happened in the past are no longer a good predictor of the future and that we must be much more prepared because we are in a different world,” said Marlon. “We have more vulnerable people at risk, so we really need to develop a stronger preparedness culture.”