The researchers focused on the 10 deadliest weather events registered in the International Disaster Database since 2004. That was when the first study was published linking a weather event – a heatwave in Europe – with our changing climate.
The deadliest event of the last two decades was a drought in Somalia in 2011 which is reckoned to have killed more than 250,000 people. The researchers found the low rainfall that drove the drought was made more likely and more extreme by climate change.
The list includes the heatwave that hit France in 2015 killing more than 3,000 people, where researchers say high temperatures were made twice as likely because of climate change.
It also contains the European heatwaves of 2022, when 53,000 people died, and 2023, which led to 37,000 people losing their lives. The latter would have been impossible without climate change, the study finds.
It says the deadly tropical cyclones that hit Bangladesh in 2007, Myanmar in 2008 and the Philippines in 2013 were all made more likely and intense by climate change. That was also the case with the floods that hit India in 2013.
The researchers say the real death toll from these events is likely to be significantly higher than the figures they quote.
That is because fatalities linked to heatwaves do not tend to be recorded as such in much of the world, especially in poorer nations which are most vulnerable.
The study was carried out before the storms in Spain left dozens dead this week.
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