Harbingers of decades of unnatural disasters
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Otto, Friederike EL
Raju, Emmanuel
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Extreme weather events and their impacts have dominated headlines throughout 2021 and 2022. The emphasis on the weather in reports of the events, often discussed in the context of climate change, has led many to believe that these disasters would not have happened without human-induced warming. However, our compilation of severe weather-related hazards and the most severe related disasters in those two years reveals that ultimately, all the listed disasters resulted from existing vulnerabilities and compounding stresses on social systems. Climate change often made the hazard worse, but much of the damage could have been prevented. We emphasise that the reporting of disasters should routinely address not only the weather-related hazards and humans’ role in changing the odds, but also vulnerability in order to guide disaster risk reduction and avoid risk creation processes.
Date Issued
2023-08-07
Date Acceptance
2023-07-25
Citation
Communications Earth & Environment, 2023, 4 (1), pp.1-7
ISSN
2662-4435
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Start Page
1
End Page
7
Journal / Book Title
Communications Earth & Environment
Volume
4
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-00943-x
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
280
Date Publish Online
2023-08-07