90% of Disasters over Past Two Decades Were Due To Weather-Related Events

The United Nations has recently released a new disaster report which shows that over the past 10 years, weather-related disasters have occurred almost daily. In other words, the weather-related disasters have occurred almost twice of what occurred two decades ago.

The report titled, ‘The Human Cost of Weather Related Disasters’, concluded that over the past two decades nearly 90% of the disasters were weather-related and rest 10% of the disasters occurred were geographical disasters that included earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

As per study authors, whether the rise in weather events is associated to climate change is still under debate. But several climatologists agree on the point that warming up of the atmosphere aggravates the severity of some weather related disasters.

According to the disaster report released Monday, weather related disasters are becoming more frequent. It also states that 6,457 weather-related disasters that occurred between 1995 and 2015 took over 606,000 lives and affected more than four billion people.

Floods alone accounted for 47% of the weather-related disasters, and it affected almost 2.9 billion people. Out of the total number of people affected due to floods 95% of them were Asians.

The United States and China reported the highest numbers of weather-related disasters during the 20-year period. According to the report, the top ten countries that were most affected were China, India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, Brazil, Vietnam, Kenya and Ethiopia.

An event to be called as a natural disaster must meet at least one of four criteria i.e. ten or more people reported killed, 100 or more people reported to be affected, a declaration of a state of emergency, or a call for international assistance.