Climate change impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2016

Climate change impacts on society
5.1.2 Number of climate-related extremes with recorded impacts
Key messages
• The number of reported climate extremes with relatively small damages has increased in recent decades, but this
increase seems to be driven primarily by better reporting and by socio-economic factors.
• The number of extreme events for which economic impacts have been reported has increased over the period 1980–2013.
This increase is driven by events with recorded losses of up to EUR 0.5 million, presumably as a result of better reporting.
• There is no apparent change in the number of extreme events in the analysed disaster database for events with recorded
losses of above EUR 0.5 million.
The number of climate extremes that have
demonstrably caused economic losses is sensitive to
climatic changes but also to a number of confounding
factors such as reporting bias, improvements in
disaster risk management, wealth and population
increase in hazard-prone areas. The potential for a
hazard to cause a disaster mainly depends on how
vulnerable an exposed community is to such hazards.
Well-designed disaster risk management and proactive
climate adaptation can reduce the impacts of climate
extremes and prevent them turning into disasters.
In recent years, policies for disaster risk reduction
and management have shifted to a comprehensive
multi-hazard approach that embraces prevention,
protection, preparedness, response and recovery
(EEA, 2011). Adaptation to climate change and disaster
risk management provide a range of complementary
approaches for managing the risks of climate extremes
(IPCC, 2012). The greater uptake of disaster insurance
has arguably improved the damage reporting for
extensive hazards (i.e. relatively frequent events with
limited damage).
The NatCatSERVICE database ( 75 ) comprises
4 443 records for climate-related disasters in Europe
(in the period 1980–2013), each with a unique
disaster event identification number, divided into
three categories (meteorological, hydrological and
climatological), with several sub-types within each
category. A further 442 events have been classified
as geophysical hazards, which are shown here for
comparison. The most commonly observed category
of disasters is meteorological (41 %), followed
by hydrological (33 %), climatological (15 %) and
geophysical (9 %) (see Figure 5.1, left). The difference
between the NatCatSERVICE database and the EM‐DAT
database ( 76 ) (see Figure 5.1, right) in the total number
of reported events and in their distribution over the
years is caused by the different data sources and
inclusion criteria used in the databases. The EM-DAT
database applies much more stringent inclusion
criteria.
The number of climate extremes on record in the
NatCatSERVICE database increased between 1980
and 2013, from around 80 per year in the 1980s to
120 in the 1990s and almost 140 in the 2000s. The
contrast between the increasing incidence of climate
extremes and the apparently constant number of
reported geophysical events has been previously used
to dismiss the possibility of reporting bias. However,
the increase is driven by events with recorded losses of
up to EUR 0.5 million. In contrast, the number of events
with losses above this threshold, which are responsible
for most of the overall losses, appears invariable since
1990 (see Figure 5.2).
Changes in recorded natural disasters need to be
interpreted with caution. Disaster occurrence and
disaster burden, in terms of people affected and
economic losses, are results of several interlinked
factors such as changes in wealth, changes in
( 75 ) NatCatSERVICE (http://www.munichre.com/natcatservice) is one of the most comprehensive natural catastrophe loss databases, managed
by Munich Reinsurance Company (Munich RE), based in Munich, Germany. As a proprietary database, it is not publicly accessible. The entire
Munich RE dataset, which covers the period 1980–2013, was provided to the EEA under institutional agreement (June 2014).
( 76 ) EM-DAT (http://www.emdat.be/database) is a natural catastrophe loss database, managed by CRED (School of Public Health, Université
Catholique de Louvain), based in Brussels, Belgium. Most data are available via the internet. Based on a letter of understanding (June 2014), the
EEA received the database covering the period 1980–2013.
192 Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2016 | An indicator-based report