The year 2021 made an indelible mark in the annals of weather history. Not only did it feature the most extreme heat wave in history – the late June heat wave over western North America that smashed all-time records by unprecedented margins – it was also the first year to record four weather mega-disasters costing over $20 billion each, as seen in Figure 1 and Figure 2.
Figure 1. Time series of global weather mega-disasters costing at least $20 billion (adjusted to 2021 dollars). Data for the U.S. is from NOAA; data for the rest of the world is from the international disaster database, EMDAT. There has been a concerning rise in these mega-disasters in recent years, as evidenced by the blue linear trend line, and 2021 had the most on record: four. Note that the database from insurance broker Aon has at least one $20+ billion-dollar event not in the EMDAT database:…
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