An abandoned house damaged by coastal erosion in Capesterre-Belle-Eau, in the French Caribbean archipelago of Guadeloupe. AFP
The 10 costliest weather disasters worldwide this year saw insured damages worth $150 billion, topping the figure for 2019 and reflecting a long-term impact of global warming, according to a report on December 28.
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 November, the true cost of the year’s climate-enhanced calamities was in fact far higher because most losses were uninsured.
The burden fell disproportionately on poor nations, according to the annual tally from global NGO Christian Aid, entitled Count the cost of 2020: a year of climate breakdown.
Only four per cent of economic losses from climate-impacted extreme events in low-income countries were insured, compared with 60 per cent in high-income economies, the report said, citing a study last month in The Lancet.
Christian Aid’s climate policy head Kat Kramer said: “Whether floods in Asia, locusts in Africa, or storms in Europe and the Americas, climate change has continued to rage in 2020.”
Extreme weather disasters, of course, have plagued humanity long before manmade global warming began to mess with the planet’s climate system.
But more than a century of temperature and precipitation data, along with decades of satellite data on hurricanes and sea level rise, have left no doubt that Earth’s warming surface temperature is amplifying their impact.
Massive tropical storms – variously known as hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones – are now more likely, for example, 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 $41 billion in damages – suggest the world could see more such storms as well.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) had to use Greek symbols after running out of letters in the Latin alphabet.
Intense summer flooding in China and India, where the monsoon season brought abnormal amounts of rainfall for the second year running, are also consistent with projections on how climate will impact precipitation.
Five of the most costly extreme weather events this year were related to Asia’s unusually rainy monsoon.
Wildfires that scorched record areas in California, Australia and even Russia’s Siberian hinterland, much of it within the Arctic Circle, are also consistent with a warmer world, and a predicted to get worse as temperatures climb.
The planet’s average surface temperature has gone up at least 1.1 degrees Celsius on average compared to the late 19th-century, with much of that warming occurring in the last half-century.
The 2015 Paris Agreement enjoins the world’s nations to collectively cap global warming at “well below” 2C, and even 1.5C if feasible.
A landmark report in 2018 from the UN’s IPCC climate science advisory panel showed that 1.5C is a safer threshold, but the likelihood of staying below it have grown vanishingly small, according to many experts.
