Fatalities due to weather hazards

B. Geerts and E. Linacre

1/'99


Deaths due to weather hazards each year amount to about 50 in Australia, over 1,000 in he USA, and more than 100,000 globally (Table 1). The main causes of mortality are quite different in the Third World than in developed countries.

Table 1: Annual number of human fatalities due to weather hazards. In the USA and Australia, the numbers are approximate averages for the period 1966-1995. The world data represent an average for 1968-1992. The numbers between brackets are the yearly number of deaths per 1 million people [(1),(2),(3),(4)]

Type of weather hazard

World (4)

USA (1), (3)

Australia (2)

heat waves

>20,000

~1,000 (4.0)

23 (1.4)

winter storms and coldness

?

165 (0.7)

0

heavy rain and floods

12,100 (2.4)

136 (0.5)

11 (0.7)

lightning

2,000 (0.4)

85 (0.3)

3 (0.2)

other wind storms

28,500 (5.7)

87 (0.4)

-

tornadoes

?

73 (0.3)

1 (0.1)

tropical cyclones

8,800 (1.8)

25 (0.1)

13 (0.8)

hail

?

1 (0.0)

0

drought (+bushfires)

73,600 (14.7)

0

3 (0.2)

 

Developed World

The most likely killer here is the heat, and its threat of fatal heat waves is more imminent due to global warming. Heat deaths and fatalities related to severe storms and hurricanes occur primarily in summer, which is why the vast majority of weather-related deaths in the USA occur in summer (1). The number of deaths due to lightning, tornadoes and hurricanes in the USA has fallen steadily during the 20th century (Table 2), whereas the number of death related to floods has declined less and only more recently (6). However weather disasters have become more expensive in the USA. Property damage insurance claims due to hurricanes, tornadoes, hail, and snow increased fourfold between 1986-1995, after adjustment for inflation (7).

Per capita heat deaths appear less common in Australia than in the USA, whereas deaths related to severe weather are about equally likely. This is surprising since Australia has a warmer climate, free of strong tornadoes. It should be emphasized that comparisons cannot be made easily, especially between countries, since the attribution of a death to a weather event is somewhat subjective. For instance, when a tropical cyclone makes landfall, flooding due to the associated storm surge may cause more fatalities in the coastal areas than other hurricane factors such as extreme wind, lightning and heavy rain. Also, most deaths during heat waves are amongst elderly people and people of marginal health. Attribution of a cause of death is not always easy.

Table 2. Weather-related fatalities in the USA (Source: USA Today)

decade

lightning

tornadoes

hurricanes

floods

1940-49

3,293

1,788

216

619

1950-59

1,841

1,409

877

791

1960-69

1,332

935

587

1,297

1970-79

978

986

217

1,819

1980-89

726

521

118

1,097

1990-97*

592

513

97

876

* pro-rated to a 10-year period, to facilitate the evaluation of trends

Third World

Floods and wind storms have caused many more fatalities in the Third World than in the US or Australia, mainly because of inadequate preparedness and warning in the Third World. A tropical cyclone killed 600,000 people in the floodplains of the Ganges/Brahmaputra river delta of Bangladesh in 1970 (5). More than half of all weather-related deaths worldwide are related to drought, mainly because of the Sahelian famines of the early 1970's and the mid-1980's. Unfortunately, drought is not as selective as heat, whose victims are mainly the elderly or people of poor health. It is not known how many people worldwide succumb to extreme heat conditions.

  

References

(1) Changnon, S.A., K.E. Kunkel & B.C. Reinke 1996. Impacts and responses to the 1995 heat wave. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. 77, 1497-506.

(2) Data from a newsletter of the Natural Hazards Research Centre, Macquarie University, Sydney.

(3) National Weather Service, 1997: Summary of Natural Hazard Fatalities for 1995 in the United States.

(4) IFRCRCS, 1994: World Disasters Report 1994. Martinus Nijhoff, Dordrecht, NL.

(5) Smith, K. 1996: Environmental Hazards. Second Edition. Routledge, 389 pp.

(6) USA Today

(7) AMS Council 1998. Policy statement on weather analysis and forecasting. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 79, 2161-3.