115 DEATHS EACH DAY
On average, a disaster linked to weather, climate and water extremes has thus occurred every single day over the past 50 years, killing 115 people and causing US$202 million in daily losses, WMO found.
More than 91 percent of the deaths occurred in developing countries, it said.
Droughts were responsible for the largest losses of human life during the period, alone accounting for some 650,000 deaths, while storms have left over 577,000 people dead.
Floods have meanwhile killed nearly 59,000 over the past 50 years and extreme temperatures have killed close to 56,000, the report found.
On a positive note, the report found that even as the number of weather and climate-related disasters ballooned over the past half-century, the number of associated deaths declined nearly threefold.
The toll fell from over 50,000 deaths each year in the 1970s to fewer than 20,000 in the 2010s, WMO said.
And while the 1970s and 1980 reported an average of 170 related deaths per day, the daily average in the 1990s fell to 90, and then to 40 in the 2010s.
Taalas said dramatic improvements in early warning systems were largely to thank for the drop in deaths.
“Quite simply, we are better than ever before at saving lives,” he said.
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