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New study: Top 10 climate disasters cost the world billions in 2024Study identifies the year’s 10 costliest extreme events influenced by the climate crisis – each caused more than $4 billion in damage.
Report also examines 10 other extreme events that caused massive human and environmental damage, mostly in the poorest countries.
Hurricane Milton which struck the US in October cost $60 billion
“Politicians who downplay the urgency of the climate crisis only serve to harm their own people” – Emeritus Professor Joanna Haigh, Imperial College London
A new report by Christian Aid, Counting the cost 2024: a year of climate breakdown, identifies the ten most expensive climate disasters of the year.The ten most financially costly events all had an impact of more than $4 billion. Most of these estimates are based only on insured losses, meaning the true financial costs are likely to be even higher, while the human costs are often uncounted.The report also highlights 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 several events in poorer countries where many people don’t have insurance and where data is less available.In terms of events which caused the biggest financial cost in 2024, the US bore the brunt, 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 was next at $55 billion and killed 232. In fact, 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 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 COP30 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 this year 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 changeWhile the top ten focuses on financial costs, which are usually higher in richer countries because they have higher property value