Extreme weather causes huge losses in 2020

Extreme weather causes huge losses in 2020
Flooding in India this year was linked to a very heavy Monsoon. Source: BABU
2 Min Read

Daily US Times: A report from the charity Christian Aid said the world continued to pay a very high price for extreme weather in 2020.

Against a backdrop of climate change, the Christian Aid’s study lists 10 events that saw thousands of lives lost and major insurance costs.

Six of the events took place in Asia, with floods in India and China causing damages of more than $40bn.

In the United States, record hurricanes and wildfires caused some $60bn in losses.

While the world has been struggling to get to grips with the Covid pandemic, millions of people have also had to cope with the impacts of extreme weather events.

Christian Aid’s list of ten floods, fires and stormes, all cost at least $1.5bn – with nine of the 10 costing at least $5bn.

An unusually rainy monsoon season was associated with some of the most damaging storms in Asia, where some of the biggest losses were. Over a period of months, massive flooding in India saw millions of people displaced from their homes with more than 2,000 deaths.

The value of the insured losses is estimated at 10 billion dollars.

China faced even greater financial damage from flooding, running to around $32bn between June and October this year, but the loss of life from these events was much smaller than in India.

While these were slow-moving disasters, but some events did mammoth damage in a short period of time.

Cyclone Amphan struck the Bay of Bengal in May that caused losses estimated at $13bn in just a few days.

You may read: Report: Chinese economy to overtake US ‘by 2028’ due to Covid