A new report reveals that the ten worst climate disasters resulted in damage of over $228 billion worldwide in 2024. As per the report, these disasters left over 2,000 people dead worldwide. Most of these estimates are based only on insured losses, which means the actual costs incurred due to these calamities are likely to be even higher, while the human costs are often uncounted. The report titled ‘Counting the Cost 2024: A Year of Climate Breakdown’ by Christian Aid also showcase ten extreme weather events that didn’t rack up big enough insured losses to make the top ten but were just as devastating and often affected millions. These included many events in poorer countries, where many people don’t have insurance and data availability is poor.
US bore the brunt
The US bore half of the damage, with October’s Hurricane Milton topping the list as the single biggest one-off event at $60 billion in damage and killing 25 people. Hurricane Helene, which struck the US, Cuba and Mexico in September, caused damages amounting to $55 billion and left 232 people dead. Not only this much, the US was hit by so many costly storms throughout the year that even when hurricanes were removed, the other convective storms cost more than $60 billion in damage and killed 88 people.
No part of the world was spared from crippling climate disasters in 2024, with floods in China costing $15.6 billion and killing 315 people, and Typhoon Yagi which battered southwest Asia, killing more than 800 people. Yagi made landfall on September 2 in the Philippines, before moving on to Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand, where it triggered landslides, flash flooding and damaged hundreds of thousands of homes and agricultural land.
Europe accounted for 3 costliest disasters
Europe accounted for three of the top 10 costliest disasters with Storm Boris in central Europe and floods in Spain and Germany costing a combined $13.87 billion and killing 258 people, 226 of which were in Valencia’s floods in October. In Brazil, host of the COP-30 climate summit in 2025, floods in the state of Rio Grande do Sul killed 183 people and caused $5 billion in damage. The UK didn’t make the list in 2024 but in December the Environment Agency warned that a quarter of properties in England, eight million, could be at risk of flooding by 2050 due to climate change.
While the top ten focuses on financial costs, which are higher in richer countries because they have higher property values and can afford insurance, some of the most devastating weather events in 2024 hit poorer countries, which have contributed little to causing the climate crisis and have the least resources to respond. These included Cyclone Chido which devastated the islands of Mayotte in December and may have killed more than a thousand people. A drought in Colombia saw the Amazon River there drop by 90 %, threatening the livelihoods of Indigenous people who rely on it for food and transport.
Heatwaves affected 33 million people in Bangladesh whilst also worsening the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. West Africa was hit with terrible floods, which affected more than 6.6 million people in Nigeria, Chad and Niger. In Southern Africa, the worst drought in living memory affected more than 14 million people in Zambia, Malawi, Namibia and Zimbabwe.
Christian Aid says these extreme events highlight the need for more urgent action to reduce carbon emissions and accelerate the transition to renewable energy and underlines the importance of providing funding for vulnerable people. The Wayanad disaster in India, one among many in 2024, is not, among the worst calamities in 2024. Incessant monsoon rainfall on July 30 this year in Wayanad, in Kerala, led to deadly landslides that killed hundreds of people and caused damage to property valued at over $140 million, according to the media reports.
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