Human induced-climate change worsened 10 deadliest disasters in past 2 decades: Report

Climate change has exacerbated the 10 deadliest extreme weather events since 2004 that caused more than 500,000 deaths, according to a new report on Thursday.

Scientists from the World Weather Attribution group at Imperial College London found that human-driven climate change worsened the deadly storms, heat waves, and floods that have affected Europe, Africa, and Asia over the past 20 years.

Reanalyzing the 10 deadliest weather events from 2004, the study noted that the devastating heat wave in 2003 that killed tens of thousands across Europe is the "first undeniable evidence" that climate change was not an abstract and distant threat of the future.

"That was the first time that scientists clearly identified the fingerprints of climate change in a specific weather event and marked the beginning of a new research field that today is known as ‘attribution science'," said the report.

Mentioning other extreme weather events over the years, the study said there is no such thing as a natural disaster, rather it is the vulnerability and the exposure of the population that turns meteorological hazards into humanitarian disasters.

"Our work, alongside the wider scientific literature, now shows that with every ton of coal, oil and gas burned, all heatwaves get hotter, and the overwhelming majority of heavy rainfall events, droughts, and tropical cyclones get more intense."

The report also pointed out that in some cases like the deadly Russian heatwave of 2010, the role of climate change in exacerbating the dimension of the weather events has likely been underestimated.

"The most extreme heatwaves across the world are made orders of magnitude more likely by climate change," it added.

The other deadly events that the scientists focused on were 2011 drought in Somalia, 2015 heat waves in France, and more recently, heat waves across Europe in 2022 and 2023 that caused 37,000 deaths combined.

Tropical cyclones in Bangladesh, Myanmar, and the Philippines in 2007, 2008, and 2013, respectively, were also evaluated in the study which found that all were made more likely and intense by climate change.

Mentioning the importance of reducing vulnerability and exposure to save lives from deadly weather events, the study stated that the inevitable losses and damages that occur as a result underscores the urgent need for mitigation to reduce the pace and number of these extremely rare events going forward.