Climate change fuelled natural disasters that caused $320 billion in losses last year, German reinsurance giant Munich Re said Thursday, warning that “our planet’s weather machine is shifting to a higher gear”.
The amount of insured losses totalled $140 billion (136 billion euros) over the past 12 months, making 2024 the third-highest total since 1980, Munich Re said in a report.
The findings echoed similar figures from Swiss Re, the other leader of the reinsurance industry, which calculated overall losses of around $310 billion, of which $135 billion were insured.
Last year is almost certain to go down as the hottest on record and the first to be 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than before the industrial revolution, the critical threshold laid down in the 2015 Paris accord on fighting climate change.
“Our planet’s weather machine is shifting to a higher gear,” said Tobias Grimm, chief climate scientist at Munich Re.
“Everyone pays the price for worsening weather extremes” driven by climate change, Grimm added, noting that the burden fell hardest on “people in countries with little insurance protection or publicly funded support to help with recovery”.
“The global community must finally take action and find ways to strengthen the resilience of all countries, and especially those that are the most vulnerable,” he said.
Above average
Overall and insured losses in 2024 were both well above the benchmark averages of the last 10 and 30 years, Munich Re said.
The totals were unusually high thanks to a “combination of rare major catastrophes, such as earthquakes and hurricanes, and more frequent events, such as hail, localised flooding and forest fires,” Grimm said.
“These phenomena have particularly increased in intensity and frequency over the years,” he said.
Weather catastrophes were behind 93 percent of the overall losses, as a series of hurricanes swept around the tropics, Munich Re calculated.
Cyclones alone accounted for $135 billion in losses, the majority of which were registered in the United States, which was buffeted by a series of powerful storms.
Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which blew across the southeastern United states in quick succession in September and October, were the two costliest catastrophes of the year.
Helene resulted in losses of $56 billion, causing flooding deep into the US interior and leaving over 200 people dead.
Meanwhile in Europe, the region around Valencia in Spain saw the continent’s most serious catastrophe, with over 200 dead and causing $11 billion in damages.
Heavy toll
A flood attribution study in Spain showed that climate change had “doubled the likelihood” of precipitation like that seen around Valencia, Grimm said.
The region saw about 500 mm (20 inches) of precipitation in a single day in October, as much as the area normally experiences in an entire year, Munich Re said.
In total, around 11,000 people lost their lives as a result of natural catastrophes in 2024, a heavy toll that was nonetheless lower than average, Munich Re said.
The year’s deadliest storm was Typhoon Yagi, which swept through the Philippines to mainland China, killing some 850 people and causing total losses of $14 billion.
“In developing countries, the lack of infrastructure and inadequate building regulations amplify human and material losses,” Grimm said.
Another problem was the gap in coverage in such areas, to which one solution was so-called parametric insurance, Grimm said.
“Defined parameters, such as wind strength, enable rapid compensation after a storm, without the need to prove individual damages,” he said.
