{"id":83823,"date":"2023-10-10T12:50:09","date_gmt":"2023-10-10T16:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.carilec.org\/?p=83823"},"modified":"2023-10-10T12:50:09","modified_gmt":"2023-10-10T16:50:09","slug":"climate-crisis-costing-16m-an-hour-in-extreme-weather-damage-study-estimates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carilec.org\/climate-crisis-costing-16m-an-hour-in-extreme-weather-damage-study-estimates\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate crisis costing $16m an hour in extreme weather damage, study estimates"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Analysis shows at least $2.8tn in damage from 2000 to 2019 through worsened storms, floods and heatwaves<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The damage caused by the climate crisis through extreme weather has cost $16m (\u00a313m) an hour for the past 20 years, according to a new estimate.<\/p>\n

Storms, floods, heatwaves and droughts have taken many lives and destroyed swathes of property in recent decades, with global heating making the events more frequent and intense. The study is the first to calculate a global figure for the increased costs directly attributable to human-caused\u00a0global heating.<\/a><\/p>\n

It found average costs of $140bn (\u00a3115bn) a year from 2000 to 2019, although the figure varies significantly from year to year. The latest data shows $280bn in costs in 2022. The researchers said lack of data, particularly in low-income countries, meant the figures were likely to be seriously underestimated. Additional climate costs, such as from crop yield declines and sea level rise, were also not included.<\/p>\n

The researchers produced the estimates by combining data on how much global heating worsened extreme weather events with economic data on losses. The study also found that the number of people affected by extreme weather because of the climate crisis was 1.2 billion over two decades.<\/p>\n

Two-thirds of the damage costs were due to the lives lost, while a third was due to property and other assets being destroyed. Storms, such as\u00a0Hurricane Harvey<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Cyclone Nargis<\/a>, were responsible for two-thirds of the climate costs, with 16% from heatwaves and 10% from floods and droughts.<\/p>\n

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People wait to be rescued from their home in Houston, Texas, after the area was flooded by Hurricane Harvey in August 2017. Storms areresponsible for two-thirds of the climate costs. Photograph: Joe Raedle\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

The researchers said their methods could be used to calculate how much funding was needed for a\u00a0loss and damage fund<\/a>\u00a0established at the UN\u2019s climate summit in 2022, which is intended to pay for the recovery from extreme weather disasters in poorer countries. It could also rapidly determine the specific climate cost of individual disasters, enabling faster delivery of funds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe headline number is $140bn a year and, first of all, that\u2019s already a big number,\u201d said Prof Ilan Noy, at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, who carried out the study with colleague Rebecca Newman. \u201cSecond, when you compare it to the standard quantification of the cost of climate change [using computer models], it seems those quantifications are underestimating the impact of climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noy said there were a lot of extreme weather events for which there was no data on numbers of people killed or economic damage: \u201cThat indicates our headline number of $140bn is a significant understatement.\u201d For example, he said, heatwave death data was only available in Europe. \u201cWe have no idea how many people died from heatwaves in all of sub-Saharan Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n