Could there be a relationship between the rising of the global temperatures and the number of natural disasters?
This question came up when talking to a friend about the unbelievable situation going on in Australia right now, where the whole country is engulfed in fire. We were wondering if the rising of the global temperatures could have a significant impact in the frequency and also in the destruction level of the natural disasters. My answer would be yes as I've read in a few places that the increase in the global surface temperatures would likely to cause more droughts and the raise in the water vapor in the atmosphere could fuel ever more powerful storms.
But I wasn't sure and I had no data to backup my assumptions. I then dig up some information about the global surface temperatures for the last decades and the occurrences, as well as the type, of the natural disasters for the same period. This simple analysis shows my findings. The figure below shows the temperature anomalies from 1850 to 2015. According to NASA,the temperature anomalies indicate how much warmer or colder it is than normal for a particular place and time. It is calculated using a 30 year period as a base, usually from 1951 to 1980.
It's cristal clear that from 1975 onwards there is a rising trend in the temperature anomalies, probably associated with climate change. The next image shows the number of natural disasters globally from 1950 to 2018. It's also clear that the absolute number of natural disasters has also grown significantly in the last few decades, specially the number of floods and extreme weather. If there is indeed a correlation between the rising of the global surface temperatures and the number of natural disasters, climate change may not be the only one to blame.
The urban population of the world has grown rapidly from 751 million in 1950 to 4.2 billion in 2018. Now 55% of the world's population lives in urban areas, and the numbers are likely to grown even further due to a number of reasons: harvesting automation, better living conditions, more job opportunities, etc. However, this increasing flow of people to urban areas may leave cities more susceptible to natural disasters or even making them deadlier. In fact, the majority of the world's cities are highly exposed to disasters, specially floods, hence explaining the rising number of such event on the figure above.
Climate change, however, could indeed help aggravate the situation due to the reasons discussed above. In fact, the next figure shows the temperature anomalies and the total occurrences of natural disasters. One can't help but see a correlation between the two. Does one imply the causation of the other? That might be true for extreme weather events, but it requires a lot more studies about the other types of natural disasters, as many other factors could have a much higher influence in such events.
