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01 September 2021 Extreme climatic phenomena multiply. Over the past 50 years, events such as storms, floods and droughts have

grown fivefold

.



If in the 1970s the world had in fact an average of about 711 meteorological disasters a year, from 2000 to 2009 it reached 3,536 a year, about ten a day. Disasters that kill: in the 70s and 80s an average of about

170 victims a day

, while in the 2010s the toll fell to about 40 victims a day.



These extreme events also have a

very high cost

: from 2010 to 2019 they weighed an equivalent of 1.38 trillion dollars. This is what emerges from the new report of the World Meteorological Organization, which examines more than 11,000 meteorological disasters in the last fifty years.



More than 90% of the more than 2 million deaths - explain the experts of the World Meteorological Organization - in what the UN considers developing nations, while almost 60% of the economic damage occurred in the richest countries.  



The five most expensive weather disasters since 1970 have all been storms in the United States, surpassed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The five deadliest events occurred in Africa and Asia, overtaken by Ethiopian drought and famine in the mid-1980s. and from cyclone Bhola in Bangladesh in 1970.



Good and bad news


"The good news - explained Petteri Taalas, secretary general of the Wmo - is that we have been able to

reduce the number of victims

despite the growth of disasters: heat waves, flood events, droughts, and especially intense tropical storms such as Ida, which recently hit Louisiana and Mississippi in the U.S. The bad news, however, is that

economic losses

they have grown very rapidly and this growth looks set to continue. We will see more extreme events due to climate change and - he adds - these phenomena will continue in the coming decades. "



WMO experts finally believe that better meteorological surveys and the most advanced technologies are helping to reduce the number of deaths. Samantha Montano, professor of emergency management at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and author of the book 'Disasterology', however, says she is concerned that the number of deaths "may stop decreasing due to the increase in extreme events due to climate change that especially affects the poorest nations".