Disasters 2020: fires, floods, hurricanes, typhoons and locusts set records

The Covid-19 pandemic was unfortunately not the only natural disaster of 2020. There was so much that it was easy to forget everything that happened this year. Here is a brief example of the weather-related events in 2020:

• The year began with a series of wildfires in Australia that forced thousands to flee, killing at least 29 people and more than a billion animals. The fires that sent smoke around the world ignited amid weeks of record-breaking heat and drought.

• Swarms of locusts have swept across East Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, threatening spring food supplies for millions of people. The swarms were caused in part by torrential rainfall in East Africa.

• This summer, California recorded its worst burning season in terms of surface burns, as well as its largest single wildfire recorded. Colorado also had its largest wildfire in history, and flames in Washington and Oregon caused an unprecedented disaster.
• A record number of wildfires spread through the Pantanal, the largest tropical wetland in the world, over Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay this summer. Many of these flames were illegally set on fire to clear land for agriculture, and spread due to hot and dry conditions in a wet environment.
• A powerful storm, known as a derecho, swept through South Dakota, Nebraska, Illinois and Iowa in October, becoming the most costly thunderstorm in U.S. history, causing an estimated $ 7.5 billion in damages.

Huy Thanh / AFP via Getty Images

• Typhoon Goni became the largest tropical storm to ever land when it hit the Philippines in October, sweeping the country with winds reaching 195 miles per hour.

• More than 100 people died in Vietnam in October amid the worst floods in decades, caused by tropical storms and typhoons.
• The Atlantic Ocean experienced its most active hurricane season on record, with 30 named storms as the season ended in November. The hurricanes wreaked havoc in the Caribbean and Central America, leaving thousands fleeing the United States. More than 400 people have been killed this season by tropical storms in the Atlantic Ocean.
• In the waning days of 2020, tropical storm Chalane hit the coast of Mozambique, bringing heavy rains and 75 km / h winds to a region still recovering from the devastating strike by cyclone Idai last year.

These disasters were deadly and devastating, and several of them set even higher records. But although they originate in nature, mankind’s actions have made the events truly devastating. From continued construction in high-risk areas, the failure to evacuate people at risk, to climate change, disasters often lead to a much higher toll than they would otherwise do. As populations in vulnerable areas increase and with climate change again towards greater extremes, the risks may grow.

2020 was the year of the compound disaster

Covid-19 is hiding in the background of most natural disasters this year. Since the pandemic began, efforts to curb it have involved everything from spraying pesticides to locusts to organizing firefighters’ camps in the field.

And people fleeing disasters faced additional challenges as they tried to maintain social distance in shelters that tended to force people into proximity.

“The threat posed by the Covid-19 transmission means we must also be vigilant in protecting our emergency response teams and the people who assist them,” Oxfam Philippines Country Director Lot Felizco said in a statement on Typhoon Goni in November. . “The loss of critical facilities, vulnerabilities due to lack of adequate food and shelter, poor conditions in evacuation centers and constant displacement mean that we must ensure that response actions do not increase the risks of Covid-19 due to other outbreaks of disease.”

At the same time, disasters have made it harder to curb the spread of the coronavirus, which has already killed more than 1.79 million people around the world. The pandemic also devastated the world economy, and many local disaster responders saw the budget cuts and layoffs just as they needed the most support.

Alfredo Martinez / Getty Images

“Yes, it’s a health crisis,” said Aaron Clark-Ginsberg, a social scientist who studies disasters at the RAND Corporation. “It is also an economic crisis and a social crisis.”

Disasters in 2020 also worsened when extreme weather struck repeatedly. Louisiana, for example, has seen five major storms land this year, including Hurricane Laura, the strongest storm in the region in 150 years.

Meanwhile, wildfires in the western United States not only destroyed homes and businesses, but also smoked over large parts of the country, making the air orange and breathing the air as bad as a pack of cigarettes a day. That dirty air, in turn, exacerbated the risks for Covid-19, a disease that affects the airways. “Exposure to air pollution in wildfire smoke can irritate the lungs, cause inflammation, alter immune function and increase susceptibility to respiratory infections, probably COVID-19,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The events this year have shown that disasters are not single events, but phenomena that overlap. In the future, disaster planners will have to take better account of how many things can go wrong at once, and that areas may not have time to fully recover from one disaster before the next one occurs.

Disasters in 2020 were costly, and this is partly our fault

Across the world, more than 40 disasters each have resulted in at least $ 1 billion in damages. The United States in particular has set a record for the number of billion-dollar disasters this year, with at least 18 such events. This includes not only hurricanes and wildfires, but also droughts and heat waves. Hurricane Laura was one of the most expensive events of the year for the US, with a revenue of $ 12 billion.

NOAA

However, the dollar amounts do not tell the whole story. Poorer people are often more severely affected by storms, floods and fires. But because their property is valued lower, the price can not underestimate the extent of the destruction. Damage to facilities such as offices and factories often also appears more expensive than damage to human homes. The places with the most expensive disasters are therefore not necessarily the places that get the heaviest.

At the same time, the economic damage from disasters is increasing in part because more people and property are suffering damage. For example, about 40 percent of the world’s population lives within 100 kilometers of a coastline. About 40 percent of the U.S. population lives in a coastal country. The number of people in these areas is increasing, leading to more homes, offices and industries. This means that when storms and hurricanes arrive, it will take a higher toll.

Similarly, people in the western United States continue to build in fire-sensitive regions. It not only increases the destruction of wildfires when they burn, but also increases the likelihood of the fires being lit in the first place, as the vast majority of wildfires are lit by human activities. One study found that 645,000 homes in California would be in a very high wildfire area by 2050, based on current trends.

At the same time, people are changing the climate. The emission of gases that capture heat by burning fossil fuels in the atmosphere intensifies the raw components of many of these disasters – air temperature, ocean temperature and rainfall – and pushes them to be more destructive. Climate change does not “cause” disasters, but it does make them more likely to reach greater extremes.

Over the past few years, scientists have gained a better understanding of how extreme events can be attributed to human-caused climate change. For example, a study by the World Weather Attribution Research Consortium investigating forest fires in Australia found that climate change increased the probability of the conditions that ignited the flames by at least 30 percent.

Climate change is also taking the form of how these disasters unfold. One climate change signal emerging in recent hurricanes is a rapid intensification, which defines NOAA as a gain of 35 km / h in wind speeds over 24 hours. It was visible this year in Hurricane Laura, which rose from Category 2 to Category 4 in a matter of hours.

Between 1982 and 2009, the number of tropical Atlantic storms that increased rapidly increased in part due to man-made climate change, according to a 2019 study in the journal Nature communication. Climate models also show that rapid intensification will increase as average temperatures rise.

It is then clear that the consequences of disasters result from natural forces as well as decisions of mankind. However, because people drive many of the factors that make extreme weather so devastating, people can also take steps to reduce these consequences. This could take the form of relocating high-risk areas, building seawalls and protective infrastructure, and investing more in disaster management so that communities can recover more quickly. And in the long run, reducing greenhouse gas emissions will help prevent the most extreme disaster scenarios.

But the consequences of this year’s disasters will continue for a long time if people want to rebuild their lives and face the trauma. “Disasters change people, they change communities, and they change societies,” Clark-Ginsberg said. This means that the shadow of 2020 is likely to extend to 2021 – and beyond.