2022 Was A Bad Disaster Year Across The Globe. More Data Is In

Destruction from Hurricane Ian in Florida in 
September, 2022. It was the world's most expensive
weather and climate related disaster of last year.

 The world was beset by around weather-related disasters in 2022 that caused well over $300 billion in damage, according to insurance analysts. 

The actual numbers depend on the analyst, each of which has different methods of establishing losses. 

As Jeff Masters in Yale Climate Connections writes, the insurance broker Gallagher Re counted 42 disasters costing $360 billion, with 39 percent of that being insured losses. 

Meanwhile, another insurance broker, Aon, says there were 37 weather related disasters in 2022 with a total economic loss of $313 billion. That's 4 percent above the inflation adjusted average for the 21st century so far. 

Insurers are seeing a distinct upward trend in the inflation-adjusted cost of disasters since about 1990 and that trend has accelerated in the past decade or so. 

As the insurance analysts note, it's difficult to tease apart what proportion of the disaster losses are brought on by climate change and which part of the problem is created by increases in wealth and exposure to potential disasters. 

Hurricane Ian in Florida during late September is an excellent case in point. It caused roughly a third of the insured and economic losses in the 2022 list of billion dollar disasters.

Climate change might have helped the hurricane reach the high intensity it reached. But the storm hit parts of Florida that have seen intense coastal development, despite the risk of destructive hurricanes with or without climate change. 

The year saw three so-called "mega disasters" defined as a calamity causing ay least $20 billion in damage. The three in 2022 were Hurricane Ian, a drought in the United States (about $21 billion in losses) and another drought in Europe (about $25 billion)

DEATHS

Heat waves tend to be the most deadly type of weather disaster. You wouldn't think so watching the news, because heat waves are simply not that photogenic. Heat waves are sort of the neutron bomb of weather calamities. Buildings, trees, and other property emerge from heat waves largely unscathed, but the human cost is immense.

This was true in 2022. The deadliest disaster last year was extreme heat waves in Europe, which caused about 40,000 direct and indirect deaths, according to a Gallagher Re analysis of country-level excess mortality statistics, as reported by Masters in Yale Climate Connections.  

In terms of direct deaths alone, the worst 2022 disasters were monsoons in India, with 2,047 fatalities and other monsoons in Pakistan, responsible for 1,735 deaths.  

Three African nations, Nigeria, South Africa and Somalia, had their costliest disaster on record in 2022. Nigeria suffered $4.2 billion in damage fro flooding; another flood in South Africa caused $3.5 billion in losses. 

Drought in Somalia that started in 2021 and continued well into 2022 caused $1.1 billion in damage. The figures are adjusted for inflation.