Disasters in 2020: fires, floods, hurricanes, typhoons and grasshoppers set records

The Covid-19 pandemic was unfortunately not the only natural disaster of 2020. There were so many that it is easy to forget everything that happened this year. Here is a brief sample of the 2020 climate-related events:

• The year began with a series of forest fires in Australia that forced thousands to flee, killing at least 29 people and more than a billion animals. The fires that sent smoke around the world lit up amid weeks of heat and drought records.

• Swarms of locusts descended on East Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, threatening the supply of food to millions of people in the spring. The swarms were caused in part by torrential rains in East Africa.

• This summer, California experienced its worst fire season ever recorded in terms of burnt area, as well as the largest forest fire ever recorded. Colorado also had its biggest forest fire in history, and fires in Washington and Oregon created an unprecedented disaster.
• A record number of forest fires this summer swept the Pantanal, the largest tropical humid area in the world, covering Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay. Many of these flames were illegally lit to clear land for agriculture and spread due to the heat and drought in a generally humid area.
• A powerful storm known as the derecho swept through South Dakota, Nebraska, Illinois and Iowa in October and became the most expensive storm in United States history, causing about $ 7.5 billion in damage.

Huy Thanh / AFP via Getty Images

• Typhoon Goni became the biggest tropical storm to hit the continent when it hit the Philippines in October, whipping the country with winds that reach 195 miles per hour.

• More than 100 people died in Vietnam in October amid the worst floods in decades, caused by tropical storms and typhoons.
• The Atlantic Ocean experienced its most active hurricane season on record, with 30 named storms as the season ended in November. Hurricanes caused destruction across the Caribbean and Central America, while forcing thousands of people to flee the United States. More than 400 people have been killed by tropical Atlantic storms this season.
• In the last days of 2020, tropical storm Chalane hit the coast of Mozambique, bringing heavy rains and winds of 75 mph to a region that is still recovering from last year’s devastating Cyclone Idai attack.

These disasters were deadly and destructive, and several of them set records even higher. But, although their origins lie in nature, it was the actions of humanity that made these events truly devastating. From continuing to build in high-risk areas, to stop evacuating people at risk, to changing the climate, disasters tend to have a much higher toll than otherwise. As populations increase in vulnerable areas and with climate change pushing the climate to greater extremes, the risks tend to increase.

2020 was the year of the compound disaster

Covid-19 was hidden in the background of most of this year’s natural disasters. Since the beginning of the pandemic, efforts to contain it have complicated everything from spraying pesticides for locust control to organizing camps for firefighters in the wild.

And people fleeing disasters faced extra challenges in trying to maintain social distance in shelters that tend to force people to get closer.

“The Covid-19 transmission threat means that we need to be even more vigilant to protect our emergency response teams and the people they are helping,” said Oxfam Philippines director Lot Felizco in a statement about typhoon Goni in November. “The loss of critical facilities, vulnerabilities due to lack of adequate food and shelter, poor conditions in evacuation centers and continuous displacement means that we have to ensure that response actions do not increase the risks of Covid-19 in addition to other disease outbreaks. “

At the same time, disasters have made it harder to contain the spread of the coronavirus, which has killed more than 1.79 million people worldwide. The pandemic has also devastated the global economy, and many responsible for responding to local disasters have seen budget cuts and layoffs just when they most needed support.

Alfredo Martinez / Getty Images

“Yes, it is a health crisis,” said Aaron Clark-Ginsberg, a social scientist who studies disasters at RAND Corporation. “It is also an economic crisis and it is a social crisis.”

Disasters in 2020 also worsened when the extreme weather repeatedly hit. Louisiana, for example, saw a record five major storms hitting the coast this year, including Hurricane Laura, the strongest storm to hit the region in 150 years.

In the meantime, consecutive forest fires across the western United States have not only destroyed homes and businesses, but have launched smoke across large areas of the country, turning the sky orange and making breathing of the air as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. This dirty air, in turn, worsened the risks of Covid-19, a disease that affects the airways. “Exposure to air pollutants in smoke from the fire can irritate the lungs, cause inflammation, alter immune function and increase susceptibility to respiratory infections, probably including COVID-19,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This year’s events showed that disasters are not singular events, but phenomena that overlap and intersect. In the future, disaster planners will have to better account for how many things can go wrong at once, and that areas may not have time to fully recover from one catastrophe before the next one happens.

Disasters in 2020 were expensive, and this is partly our fault

Worldwide, more than 40 disasters have resulted in damage of at least $ 1 billion each. The United States, in particular, has set a record for the number of billion dollar disasters this year, with at least 18 of those events. This includes not only hurricanes and forest fires, but also droughts and heat waves. Hurricane Laura was one of the most expensive events of the year for the United States, with more than $ 12 billion in damage.

NOAA

Dollar values, however, do not tell the whole story. The poorest people tend to be most severely affected by storms, floods and fires. But, since your property has a lower value, the price may underestimate the scope of the destruction. Damage to facilities like offices and factories is also often more expensive than damage to people’s homes. Therefore, the places with the most expensive disasters are not necessarily the places that suffer the most.

At the same time, economic damage from disasters is increasing in part because more people and property are at risk. For example, about 40% of the world’s population lives less than 100 kilometers from a coastline. About 40% of the US population lives in a coastal county. The number of people in these areas is growing, bringing with them more homes, offices and industries. This means that when storms and hurricanes arrive, they will take a higher toll.

Likewise, people in the western United States continue to build in fire-prone regions. This not only increases the destructiveness of forest fires when they burn, but also increases the likelihood of starting them in the first place, since the vast majority of forest fires are caused by human activity. A study found that 645,000 homes in California will be in “very high” areas of forest fires by 2050, based on current trends.

At the same time, people are changing the climate. Emissions of gases that trap heat in the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels are amplifying the basic ingredients of many of these disasters – air temperature, ocean temperature and rain – and making them more destructive. Climate change does not “cause” disasters, but it does make it more likely to reach greater extremes.

Scientists in recent years have better understood how to attribute extreme events to climate change caused by humans. For example, a study by the World Weather Attribution research consortium that investigates Australia’s forest fires found that climate change increased the likelihood of the conditions that fueled the fires by at least 30%.

Climate change is also shaping the way these disasters happen. A sign of climate change that has been emerging in recent hurricanes is rapid intensification, which NOAA defines as a gain of 35 mph or more in 24 hour wind speed. This was visible this year in Hurricane Laura, which rose from Category 2 to Category 4 over several hours.

Between 1982 and 2009, the number of tropical Atlantic storms that intensified rapidly increased significantly, partly due to man-made climate change, according to a 2019 study published in the newspaper Nature Communications. Climate models also show that rapid intensification will increase with increasing average temperature.

It is clear then that the impacts of disasters stem from both the forces of nature and the decisions of humanity. However, as people are driving many of the factors that make extreme weather conditions so devastating, they can also take steps to reduce those impacts. This can take the form of moving away from high-risk areas, building walls and protective infrastructure, and investing more in disaster management so that communities can recover more quickly. And in the long run, reducing greenhouse gas emissions will help to avoid the most extreme disaster scenarios.

But the impacts of this year’s disasters will last a long time, as people seek to rebuild their lives and deal with trauma. “Disasters change people, change communities and change societies,” said Clark-Ginsberg. This means that the shadow of 2020 is likely to extend until 2021 – and beyond.