Global weather disasters triggered by climate change are four or five times more likely to strike, and cause seven times more damage than in the 1970s, potentially making Ida the most costly hurricane ever recorded, the U.N. weather agency said Wednesday.
But these catastrophes kill significantly fewer people than normal, the report from the United Nations Weather Service found.
In the 1970s and 1980s some 170 people died per day on average around the world as a result of storms.
In the 2010s, that amount plummeted to around 40 per day, according to the World Meteorological Organisation in its report on Wednesday, which examined more than 11.000 weather disasters in the past 11,000 years.
The announcement comes during a disastrous summer around the world that saw the US hit simultaneously by powerful Hurricane Ida and a bout of drought-fuelled wildfires.
“The good news is that we have been able to minimize the amount of casualties once we have started having growing amount of disasters: heatwaves, flooding events, drought, and especially … intense tropical storms like Ida,” said Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the WMO, at a press conference.
