According to the reinsurer Munich, natural disasters caused damage worth $250 billion last year and claimed tens of thousands of lives. North America and Europe experienced higher levels of thunderstorm damage than ever before.
Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, storms and other natural events caused $250 billion in damage worldwide in 2023 and cost 74,000 people their lives. This is what the reinsurer Munich Re reports in the new edition of its annual natural catastrophe report.
Devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria
The death toll is the highest since 2010, said Ernst Rauch, the DAX group’s chief geoscientist. The devastating series of earthquakes in Turkey and Syria in February claimed the most victims with 58,000 deaths. In terms of economic damage of $50 billion, this was the worst natural disaster of the past year.
Munich Re has been documenting the global destruction caused by nature for decades, as this is important for calculating insurance premiums. The group’s business is to insure the risks of insurance companies.
More storm damage due to climate change
According to the report, the global damage pattern in 2023 differed from usual. Unlike in previous years, according to Munich Re, there was no immense damage in the industrialized countries from individual, very large hurricanes, floods or other major disasters. “Typically in the past we have had one or more really major events that caused a large part of the damage,” said chief geoscientist Rauch.
But there was no such peak load in 2023. Nevertheless, it was a year with “serious and noticeable damage,” said the scientist. “What is new and both socially and economically relevant is that the damage was very much driven by so-called severe thunderstorm events.”
According to Munich Re, the large number of medium-sized and smaller storms caused significantly more than half of the damage. “When it comes to severe thunderstorms/storms, we have been seeing a trend toward ever-increasing damage for years, something like a trend that is probably related to climate change,” said Rauch.
2023 will be the warmest year recorded so far
According to Munich Re, such high levels of thunderstorm damage have never been recorded in either North America or Europe: in North America it was $66 billion. For Europe, the group estimated the total damage at $10 billion. The insurance industry must adapt its risk management accordingly, explained Rauch. “But broader society must also be prepared for severe weather events to cause significantly greater damage.”
The storms would be favored by the very high global average temperatures. The DAX group pointed out that the average temperatures up to November were around 1.3 degrees Celsius above those in the pre-industrial period (1850-1900), making 2023 the warmest year since temperature measurements began.
Damages are increasing in the long term
Expert Rauch advocated better protecting buildings and infrastructure against extreme events. The total economic damage recorded in 2023 of $250 billion was roughly the same as the average for the past five years.
However, the longer-term trend is pointing upwards: adjusted for inflation, the total damage over the ten-year average (2013 to 2022) was $230 billion; the average over the 30 years from 1993 to 2022 was still $180 billion.
Gabriel Wirth, BR, tagesschau, January 9th, 2024 10:58 a.m