3 days Ago By Stuti Mishra
The climate crisis took a hefty economic toll in 2024, with just 10 disasters causing over $200bn in damage, according to a new report by Christian Aid . The report, released on Monday, lists the storms, hurricanes , floods, and typhoons which caused the most damage in monetary terms this year. Top of the list is Hurricane Milton, which caused $60bn in damage when it tore through the US in October and killed 25 people.
Hurricane Helene, which struck the US, Cuba and Mexico in September, caused at least $55bn in losses as well as 232 fatalities. Floods in China caused a loss of $15.6bn and claimed 315 lives.
Storm Boris and flooding in Spain and Germany combined for at least $14bn in damage and 258 fatalities. The growing intensity of such disasters, scientists say, is being “supercharged” by fossil fuel emissions. “There is nothing natural about the growing severity and frequency of droughts, floods, and storms,” said Christian Aid CEO Patrick Watt.
“Disasters are being supercharged by decisions to keep burning fossil fuels, and to allow emissions to rise.” The charity analyses insurance payouts to calculate losses from disasters every year. For the first time since it started compiling the list in 2018, there have been two disasters in a year amounting to losses of over $50bn in a year.
The US alone suffered almost 71 per cent of the losses from 10 worst disasters. The country was hit by so many costly storms throughout the year that, even when hurricanes are removed, they caused over $60bn in damage. Since the figures are based mostly on insured losses, the true costs are likely to be even higher, Christian Aid said.
Scientists, however, note that while the financial costs of climate disasters are staggering, they tell only part of the story. Many of the worst-affected regions are in poorer nations, where fewer people have access to insurance, and the human toll is much harder to quantify. Cyclone Chido, which struck the French territory of Mayotte in December, may have killed over 1,000 people.
In Colombia, a severe drought caused the Amazon river to drop by 90 per cent, jeopardising the livelihoods of Indigenous communities who depend on it for food and transport. Heatwaves in Bangladesh affected 33 million people, while in Southern Africa, a historic drought left 14 million struggling for survival across Zambia, Malawi, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. “This report is just a snapshot of climate devastation in 2024,” Dr Mariam Zachariah, World Weather Attribution researcher who analyses extreme events to discern the role of climate change at Imperial College London, said.
“There are many more droughts, heatwaves, wildfires and floods not included that are becoming more frequent and intense. Most of these disasters show clear fingerprints of climate change. Extreme weather is clearly causing incredible suffering in all corners of the world.
Behind the billion-dollar figures are lost lives and livelihoods.” A year of record heat The report comes as 2024 is set to become the hottest year on record , surpassing 2023, with global temperatures edging dangerously close to the 1.5C threshold above pre-industrial levels.
Scientists warn that breaching this limit – set as a goal in the Paris Agreement – will bring even more catastrophic consequences. Hurricane Helene, for example, was fuelled by unusually warm sea temperatures that scientists say were made 200-500 times more likely by climate change. Politicians who “downplay the urgency of the climate crisis only serve to harm their own people and cause untold suffering around the world”, climate expert Joanna Haigh said.
Scientists say a rapid shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy is crucial, but governments also need to increase investment in climate adaptation for the most vulnerable communities. “The economic impact of these extreme weather events should be a wake-up call,” professor Haigh, emeritus professor of atmospheric physics at Imperial College London, said. “The good news is that ever-worsening crises don’t have to be our long-term future.
The technologies of a clean energy economy exist, but we need leaders to invest in them and roll them out at scale.”.
