Weather related natural disasters have occurred almost daily in the past decade occupying 90 percent of disasters, a U.N. report said on Monday.
A report issued by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) shows that 90 percent of major natural calamities have been caused by 6,457 recorded floods, storms, heatwaves, droughts and other weather related events.
The United Nations report, called "The Human Cost of Weather Related Disasters," found there were an average of 335 weather related disasters annually between 2005 and August this year. The report was issued by the U.N. Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.
Since 1995, weather related natural disasters have claimed lives of 606,000 people, left 4.1 billion injured, homeless or in need of aid, and accounted for 90 percent of all disasters, an increase of 14% from 1995-2004, and almost twice the level recorded during 1985-1995.
Floods accounted for 47% of all weather related natural disasters from 1995-2015, affecting 2.3 billion people and killing 157,000. Similarly, storms claimed lives of 242,00 people, about 40% of the global weather related deaths.
UNISDR estimates natural disasters of all types cause losses of $250 billion-$300 billion globally each year. The five countries hit by the highest number of disasters are the United States, China, India, Philippines and Indonesia.
Source:
"The Human Cost of Weather Related Disasters" from UNISDR. http://www.unisdr.org/archive/46793