The past year has seen horrific flooding that engulfed one-third of Pakistan, one of the three costliest hurricanes in US history, devastating droughts in Europe and China , drought-induced famine in Africa and heat waves everywhere.
And yet, it has already been worse.
Even with all that damage and loss of life, the cost of damage from climate-related disasters has fallen to US$268 billion this year, a 12% decline from more than US$300 billion in 2021, according to the major reinsurer Swiss Re.
These weather disasters, some of which have been exacerbated by human-caused climate change, occur so frequently that this year’s avalanche, which would have shattered records 20 years ago, almost feels like a respite.
Welcome to the new abnormality.
“We have almost become accustomed to extremes. And this year might look particularly intense compared to previous years, but if you compare it to the most intense years, like 2017 and 2020 and 2021… it looks like a slight downward adjustment, said economist and meteorologist Adam Smith, of the American agency NOAA. You’re getting used to it, but it’s not a good way to face the future. »
There have been disasters this year in the United States that have caused losses of at least $1 billion in all categories except winter storms: hurricanes, floods, droughts, heat waves, wildfires, hailstorms and even a powerful windstorm called “derecho”.
Smith said NOAA hasn’t finished tallying up the damage caused by Hurricane Ian, which hit Florida, but it’s likely to exceed US$100 billion, which would cost him third behind Hurricanes Katrina in 2005 and Harvey in 2017.
In the 1980s, a climate catastrophe causing damages of at least a billion dollars occurred every 82 days in the United States; today it’s every 18 days, even taking inflation into account.
Globally, “if we focus on the last six years, between 2017 and 2022, it has been particularly painful”, especially in comparison with the previous five years, said one of the leaders of Swiss Re, Martin Bertogg.
“It looked like a change of regime, some called it the new normal,” he explained. Rather, he sees it as a return, after a brief pause, to a long-term trend that sees the cost of disasters increasing by 5% to 7% per year.
“A growing body of scientific evidence shows that climate change accentuates the variability as well as the average” of climate disasters, said Professor Chris Field, of Stanford University. It means that some years give us more trouble than others. In some years, we are hit like never before. »
“The important thing is that the trend of disasters is increasing,” he added. And it will continue to increase until we stop warming. »
Looking at damages, which are mostly insured losses, can give a distorted picture of the situation, since the cost of a disaster will depend greatly on the wealth of the affected region, and less on the scale of the disaster itself, pointed out Debarati Guha-Sapir, from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.
More importantly, these numbers are for dollars, not people, which also distorts the picture, said Ms. Guha-Sapir and Professor Kristie Ebi of the University of Washington, such as the floods that killed some 1,700 people in Pakistan. .
Although climate change is clearly to blame, Swiss Re’s Bertogg estimates that two-thirds or more of the rise in damage is attributable to more people and property being at risk. Bertogg, Swiss Re Re, estimates that two-thirds or more of the rise in damage is attributable to more people and property being at risk.
Urbanization across the world puts more people in dense environments, which inflates the bill when disaster strikes, he said. Urban sprawl also makes cities more vulnerable, he added, citing as an example the brush fires that are destroying more and more homes built in California’s hills.
There are also more and more constructions along coasts and rivers, making them more vulnerable to storms and floods, the latter representing “the greatest threat to the global economy”, said Mr. Bertogg.