Yes, 2022 Is A Year Strewn With Tons Of Mega Weather And Climate Disasters

Devastation in Fort Myers Beach, Florida after Hurricane Ian.
The hurricane was the most expensive natural disaster to hit
the world so far this year. 

 If you feel like your news feed this year has been filled with reports of huge weather and climate disasters, you're spot on. 

A report earlier this month by insurance broker Aon indicates the world has endured at least 29 disasters that cost $1 billion or more, as Yale Climate Connections reports. 

Of course, the costs of the disasters are still being tallied. Some of them, like droughts, are still ongoing.  

The most expensive disaster so far this year was Hurricane Ian in Florida, with well over $20 billion in damage. Some estimates are that Ian's tally could end up closer to $100 billion. 

Drought damage, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, have so far cost $38.4 billon.  

We've seen an increase in disasters each costing $20 billion or more in recent years. As Yale Climate Connections states: "This is greatly concerning, as mega-disaster are likely to overwhelm local resources needed to respond and recover, threaten insurers with insolvency, and disrupt global supply chains."

The U.S. Treasury Department is launching an assessment of worsening extreme weather and the impact this is having on insurance rates.  

Insurance is threatening to become unaffordable, or already is unaffordable, for people due to industry losses in big disasters. 

Worse than the cost of disasters is of course the loss of human life. The 137 deaths associated with Hurricane Ian is of course tragic. 

But heat waves tend to kill many, many more people.  Extreme heat waves in Europe this year are estimated to have caused 16,000 excess deaths. 

Probably the most victimized nation with disasters this year is Pakistan.  An unprecedented spring and early summer heat wave there caused immense drought damage to crops.  It also rapidly melted glaciers, which ironically caused devastating flash floods in mountainous regions. Many of these floods were from "glacial outbursts."

Lakes would form behind large ice dams as glaciers rapidly melted in the heat. Then these ice dams would collapse, sending walls of water and debris into populated valleys below.

After that, Pakistan had an extreme monsoon season that flooded perhaps 60 percent of the nation. Flood water still lingers in some areas as it will take months for the water to completely drain away. 

In the United States, ,Hurricane Ian is by far the most expensive disaster this year. Drought comes in as the second most expensive U.S. disaster so far this year, with $4 billion in mostly crop damage and counting. 

Numerous severe weather and flood outbreaks in the spring and summer collectively caused at least $16 billion in damage in the U.S.

Of course, there's a couple months left to go in 2022, so these numbers could go up even more. There's still time for a late season hurricane, severe weather outbreaks sometimes hit the U.S. in the fall and early winter, and destructive windstorms sometimes sweep Europe in November and December.