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Mumbai: Ten extreme events influenced by the climate crisis caused more than $4 billion each in damage, according to a study conducted by Christian Aid.
The report ‘Counting the cost 2024: a year of climate breakdown’, released on Monday, identifies the ten most expensive climate disasters of the year.
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 human suffering caused by the climate crisis reflects political choices. There is nothing natural about the growing severity and frequency of droughts, floods and storms. Disasters are being supercharged by decisions to keep burning fossil fuels, and to allow emissions to rise. And they’re being made worse by the consistent failure to deliver on financial commitments to the poorest and most climate-vulnerable countries,” said Christian Aid CEO Patrick Watt.
In 2025 we need to see governments leading, and taking action to accelerate the green transition, reduce emissions, and fund their promises, he said in a press statement.
While the top ten focuses on financial costs, which are usually higher in richer countries because they have higher property values and can afford insurance, some of the most devastating extreme weather events in 2024 hit poorer nations, which have contributed little to causing the climate crisis and have the least resources to respond.
These included Cyclone Chido which devastated the islands of Mayotte in December and may have killed more than a thousand people. A terrible drought in Colombia saw the Amazon River there drop by 90%, threatening the livelihoods of Indigenous people who rely on it for food and transport. Heatwaves affected 33 million people in Bangladesh whilst also worsening the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. West Africa was hit with terrible floods which affected more than 6.6 million people in Nigeria, Chad and Niger. In Southern Africa, the worst drought in living memory, affected more than 14 million people in Zambia, Malawi, Namibia and Zimbabwe.