Harbingers of decades of unnatural disasters

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.