Environment

Climate Disasters Now Happening Daily: UN

Weather-related disasters have nearly doubled over the past 30 years — now occurring almost daily somewhere in the world, according to a new report.

Published by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), The Human Cost of Weather Related Disasters (PDF copy) fell short of directly blaming climate change for the increase.

But it did warn, “predictions of more extreme weather in the future almost certainly mean that we will witness a continued upward trend in weather-related disasters in the decades ahead.”

The report found that 600,000 people have died as a result of floods, storms, heatwaves, droughts and other weather-related events since 1995.

About 4.1 billion others being injured, left homeless or in need of emergency assistance.

There were an average of 335 weather-related disasters annually between 2005 and this year, up 14 percent from 1995 to 2004 and almost twice as many as during the years from 1985 to 1994.

The report ranked the United States, China, India, Philippines and Indonesia as being hit by the highest number of disasters.