Huge year for natural disasters
BBC December 2008
The past year has been one of the most devastating
ever in terms of natural disasters, Munich Re, one of
the world's biggest re-insurance companies has said.
Sichuan quake: one of several
disasters to strike Asia in 2008
Munich Re said the impact of the disasters was greater than in 2007 in both human and
economic terms. The company suggested climate change was boosting the destructive
power of disasters like hurricanes and flooding. It has called for stricter curbs on emissions
to prevent further uncontrollable weather scenarios.
Although there were fewer "loss-producing events" in 2008 than in the previous year, the
impact of natural disasters was higher, said Munich Re in its annual assessment. More than
220,000 people died in events like cyclones, earthquakes and flooding, the most since
2004, the year of the Asian tsunami.
Meanwhile, overall global losses totalled about $200bn. This makes 2008 the third most
expensive year on record, after 1995, when the Kobe earthquake struck Japan, and 2005,
the year of Hurricane Katrina in the US.
Torsten Jeworrek of Munich Re said the pattern continued a long-term trend already
observed. "Climate change has already started and is very probably contributing to
increasingly frequent weather extremes and ensuing natural catastrophes," he said.
Asia was the continent worst hit by natural disasters in 2008.
Cyclone Nargis in Burma killed an estimated 130,000 people
and devastated much of the low-lying Irrawaddy Delta
region, while the earthquake which struck China's Sichuan
province in May left an estimated 70,000 dead and millions
homeless.
The most expensive single event in 2008 was Hurricane Ike,
North Atlantic: major hurricanes
which brought $30bn in losses. It was one of five major
hurricanes in the North Atlantic over the year, which saw a total of 16 tropical storms. In
addition, roughly 1,700 tornadoes across the US caused several billion dollars of damage, as
did periods of low pressure weather activity in Europe.
Munich Re quoted World Meteorological Organisation figures showing that 2008 was the
10th warmest year since reliable records began, meaning that the 10 warmest years on
record all occurred in the past 12 years. "It is now very probable that the progressive
warming of the atmosphere is due to the greenhouse gases emitted by human
activity," said Prof Peter Hoppe, head of Munich Re's Geo Risks Research.
"The logic is clear: when temperatures increase there is more evaporation and the
atmosphere has a greater capacity to absorb water vapour, with the result that its
energy content is higher. "This brings more intense and severe weather events with
corresponding effects in terms of losses."
The company said world leaders must put in place "effective and binding rules on CO2
emissions" to curb climate change and ensure that "future generations do not have to
live with weather scenarios that are difficult to control".