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Coughing Up Billions of Dollars to Save Florida’s Insurance Market
In the three months since Hurricane Ian struck Florida, the state’s fragile property insurance market has been teetering on the brink of collapse. The historic storm caused over $50 billion in damage, and dealt a body blow to an industry that was already struggling to stay standing: Several insurance companies had already collapsed this year even before the hurricane, and major funders are now poised to abandon those that remain.
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What's the Link Between Global Warming and Extreme Weather?
Heavy snowfall und subzero temperatures have wreaked havoc on the United States this holiday season. DW takes a closer look at how this and other types of extreme weather link back to climate change.
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A Water War Is Brewing Over the Dwindling Colorado River
Diminished by climate change and overuse, the river can no longer provide the water states try to take from it.
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Weather Is Again Determining Economic Outcomes
Europe’s energy crisis has brought the return of weather-based economics. “The crisis is a reminder that, for all their technological sophistication, even rich-world economies must rely on the munificence of nature,” the Economist writes, adding that “in the absence of a transition to green forms of energy the weather would begin to play an even bigger role in economics.”
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2022’s U.S. Climate Disasters: A Tale of Too Much Rain – and Too Little
The year 2022 will be remembered across the U.S. for its devastating flooding and storms – and also for its extreme heat waves and droughts, including one so severe it briefly shut down traffic on the Mississippi River.
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Drought Encouraged Attila’s Huns to Attack the Roman Empire, Tree Rings Suggest
Hunnic peoples migrated westward across Eurasia, switched between farming and herding, and became violent raiders in response to severe drought in the Danube frontier provinces of the Roman empire.
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Record Low Water Levels on the Mississippi River in 2022 Show How Climate Change Is Altering Large Rivers
In 2022, water levels in some of the world’s largest rivers, including the Rhine in Europe and the Yangtze in China, fell to historically low levels. The Mississippi River fell so low in Memphis, Tennessee, in mid-October that barges were unable to float, requiring dredging and special water releases from upstream reservoirs to keep channels navigable.
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Major Fires an Increasing Risk as the Air Gets Thirstier
Greater atmospheric demand for water means a dramatic increase in the risk of major fires in global forests unless we take urgent and effective climate action, new research finds.
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The World’s Insurance Bill from Natural Disasters This Year: $115 Billion
Extreme weather events have caused an estimated $115 billion in insured financial losses around the world this year according to Swiss Re, the Zurich-based reinsurance giant. That’s 42 percent higher than the 10-year average of $81 billion.
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Renewable Power’s Growth Is Being Turbocharged as Countries Seek Energy Security
The global energy crisis has triggered unprecedented momentum behind renewables, with the world set to add as much renewable power in the next 5 years as it did in the past 20
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Global Warming Doubled the Risk for Copenhagen’s historic 2011 Cloudburst
On 2 July 2011, the Danish capital Copenhagen suffered a cloudburst of historic proportions, causing damage and destruction costing billions of kroner. Researchers have used detailed weather models to clearly tie increased temperatures to that historic cloudburst.
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Major Global Security Challenges
What are the major threats the world is facing? Researchers highlight five such threats: The growing role of disinformation; attacks on the idea of democracy; environmental challenges; economic instability; and terrorism – both domestic and foreign.
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Probable Maximum Flood Events Will Significantly Increase Over Next Decades
The flood capacity of dams could be at greater risk of being exceeded due to out-of-date modelling for potential maximum rainfall. A new study concludes that the rainfall model that engineers use to help design critical infrastructure such as large dams and nuclear power plants need to be updated to account for climate change.
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With Climate Impacts Growing, Insurance Companies Face Big Challenges
The impacts of climate change are all around us: sea level rise, severe heat waves, drought, extreme rainfall, more powerful storms. These impacts are making natural disasters more intense and more frequent. Losses from each disaster—drought and wildfires in the southwest, severe storms in the Midwest, flooding in Kentucky and Missouri, and hurricanes in the southeast—have exceeded $1 billion, with the cumulative cost of disasters over the last five years reaching $788.4 billion.
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Earth Had its 4th-Warmest October on Record
The planet added another warm month to a warm year, with October 2022 ranking as the world’s fourth-warmest October in 143 years. The Northern Hemisphere saw its second-warmest October and Europe saw its warmest October on record.
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More headlines
The long view
How Climate Change Will Affect Conflict and U.S. Military Operations
“People talk about climate change as a threat multiplier,” said Karen Sudkamp, an associate director of the Infrastructure, Immigration, and Security Operations Program within the RAND Homeland Security Research Division. “But at what point do we need to start talking about the threat multiplier actually becoming a significant threat all its own?”