Emmanuel Thomas I Thursday, July 27, 2023
MUNICH – Natural disasters worldwide caused $110 billion in damage over the first six months of 2023, according to figures released by German-based international reinsurance giant Munich Re on Thursday.
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The damage estimate was slightly less than in the first half of 2022 but is well above the average of $98 billion over the past decade, according to the company’s figures.
The worst natural disaster so far this year was the earthquake in the Turkish-Syrian border region in February, which claimed an estimated 58,000 lives and caused damage estimated at $40 billion dollars.
The devastating earthquake is also the main reason why the number of fatalities caused by natural disasters rose to 62,000 in the first half of the year, according to Munich Re. That would be the highest number of fatalities since 2010.
Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes in the United States also caused significant property damage, which Munich Re estimated at $35 billion.
But the company said that damage of that magnitude “now seem to be normal occurrences, rather than outliers.”
Earthquakes are not related to climate, but storms are.
“The first half of 2023 was characterized by record temperatures in many regions of the world, very high water temperatures in various ocean basins, droughts in parts of Europe and severe wildfires in north-eastern Canada,” said Ernst Rauch, the company’s top climate scientist.
Munich Re has been documenting natural disasters worldwide for decades, as this is an important basis for calculating insurance premiums and potential losses on its reinsurance policies.
