Climate change fuels disasters, but deaths don’t add up

AFP/APP

Paris, France: Climate change is turbocharging heatwaves, wildfires, floods and tropical storms, but how deadly have extreme weather events become for people in their path?

Annual climate reports released last week show the past three years were the hottest since the pre-industrial era, with no let-up in sight as the world continues to burn fossil fuels. Scientists warn that rising global temperatures are driving hotter summers, more frequent flooding, stronger storms and increasingly destructive wildfires and droughts.

But when it comes to deaths, the maths are far from straightforward.

Overall, mortality from extreme weather disasters has declined over recent decades. Yet the picture varies sharply by hazard and region: heatwaves are becoming deadlier, while people in low-income countries remain far more vulnerable.

More than 2.3 million people died from weather-related events between 1970 and 2025, according to an AFP analysis of EM-DAT, a global disaster database run by the Belgium-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED).

Between 2015 and 2025, the death toll stood at 305,156, down from 354,428 in the previous decade.

“It’s not because the events haven’t become more dangerous,” said Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown, a climate-health monitoring programme. “It’s because we have become a lot better at coping with them.”

Heatwaves: a ‘silent killer’

Heat is often described as a “silent killer” because its death toll can take months — or longer — to calculate, with the elderly and chronically ill especially at risk.

Last year, half the planet experienced more days than average with at least strong heat stress, defined as a “feels-like” temperature of 32°C or above, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

“It is very clear that extreme heat is becoming deadlier,” said Theodore Keeping, a researcher at Imperial College London, noting that scientists can now attribute excess deaths directly to temperature increases driven by climate change.

Read More: https://thepenpk.com/elderly-snow-leopard-dies-naturally-in-chitral/

Almost 61,800 people died from heatwaves worldwide in 2022. The toll fell to around 48,000 in 2023 before rising again to 66,825 in 2024, according to EM-DAT.

However, these figures are significantly higher than in earlier years because data on heat-related deaths — particularly from Europe — became more accessible after the Covid-19 pandemic, said CRED senior researcher Damien Delforge. He added that heatwave deaths typically take at least a year to be fully recorded and remain widely underreported.

The Lancet Countdown estimates global heat-related mortality averaged 546,000 deaths per year between 2012 and 2021 — a 63 percent increase compared with 1990-1999.

Better prepared, but limits remain

While floods and cyclones can still cause mass casualties, many countries are now better prepared through early warning systems, storm barriers and improved building codes.

Floods killed 55,423 people between 2015 and 2025, down from 66,043 in the previous decade, EM-DAT data show. Storm-related deaths fell even more sharply, to 36,652 from 184,237 in the preceding ten years.

“We have early warning systems that can protect lives, but the peril remains very, very high,” said Tobias Grimm, chief climate scientist at German reinsurer Munich Re.

Identifying clear annual trends is difficult, as a single catastrophic event can dramatically skew figures. Munich Re reported last week that deaths from floods, storms, wildfires and earthquakes rose to 17,200 last year, up from 11,000 in 2024, largely due to major earthquakes in Myanmar and Afghanistan.

Even so, the figure remained below the 10-year average of 17,800 deaths and far lower than the 30-year average of 41,900. The data excludes droughts and heatwaves.

“There is no clear trend when it comes to deaths from natural disasters,” Grimm said. “What we do know is that weather events are becoming more frequent and more intense.”

Romanello warned that while improved infrastructure has helped reduce mortality so far, its effectiveness has limits.

“When disasters strike one after another, without time to recover in between,” she said, “even the best systems can be overwhelmed.”