IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/climat/v158y2020i3d10.1007_s10584-019-02556-w.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Countrywide climate features during recorded climate-related disasters

Author

Listed:
  • Elisabeth Tschumi

    (University of Bern
    Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich)

  • Jakob Zscheischler

    (University of Bern
    Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich)

Abstract

Climate-related disasters cause substantial disruptions to human societies. With climate change, many extreme weather and climate events are expected to become more severe and more frequent. The International Disaster Database (EM-DAT) records climate-related disasters associated with observed impacts such as affected people and economic damage on a country basis. Although disasters are classified into different meteorological categories, they are usually not linked to observed climate anomalies. Here, we investigate countrywide climate features associated with disasters that have occurred between 1950 and 2015 and have been classified as droughts, floods, heat waves, and cold waves using superposed epoch analysis. We find that disasters classified as heat waves are associated with significant countrywide increases in annual mean temperature of on average 0.13 ∘C and a significant decrease in annual precipitation of 3.2%. Drought disasters show positive temperature anomalies of 0.08 ∘C and a 4.8 % precipitation decrease. Disasters classified as droughts and heat waves are thus associated with significant annual countrywide anomalies in both temperature and precipitation. During years of flood disasters, precipitation is increased by 2.8 %. Cold wave disasters show no significant signal for either temperature or precipitation. We further find that climate anomalies tend to be larger in smaller countries, an expected behavior when computing countrywide averages. In addition, our results suggest that extreme weather disasters in developed countries are typically associated with larger climate anomalies compared to developing countries. This effect could be due to different levels of vulnerability, as a climate anomaly needs to be larger in a developed country to cause a societal disruption. Our analysis provides a first link between recorded climate-related disasters and observed climate data, which is an important step towards linking climate and impact communities and ultimately better constraining future disaster risk.

Suggested Citation

  • Elisabeth Tschumi & Jakob Zscheischler, 2020. "Countrywide climate features during recorded climate-related disasters," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 593-609, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:158:y:2020:i:3:d:10.1007_s10584-019-02556-w
    DOI: 10.1007/s10584-019-02556-w
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-019-02556-w
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10584-019-02556-w?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Corey Lesk & Pedram Rowhani & Navin Ramankutty, 2016. "Influence of extreme weather disasters on global crop production," Nature, Nature, vol. 529(7584), pages 84-87, January.
    2. Bryan Jones & Brian C. O’Neill & Larry McDaniel & Seth McGinnis & Linda O. Mearns & Claudia Tebaldi, 2015. "Future population exposure to US heat extremes," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(7), pages 652-655, July.
    3. Jakob Zscheischler & Seth Westra & Bart J. J. M. Hurk & Sonia I. Seneviratne & Philip J. Ward & Andy Pitman & Amir AghaKouchak & David N. Bresch & Michael Leonard & Thomas Wahl & Xuebin Zhang, 2018. "Future climate risk from compound events," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 8(6), pages 469-477, June.
    4. Oleg Smirnov & Minghua Zhang & Tingyin Xiao & John Orbell & Amy Lobben & Josef Gordon, 2016. "The relative importance of climate change and population growth for exposure to future extreme droughts," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 138(1), pages 41-53, September.
    5. M. Monirul Qader Mirza, 2003. "Climate change and extreme weather events: can developing countries adapt?," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(3), pages 233-248, September.
    6. Michael Leonard & Seth Westra & Aloke Phatak & Martin Lambert & Bart van den Hurk & Kathleen McInnes & James Risbey & Sandra Schuster & Doerte Jakob & Mark Stafford‐Smith, 2014. "A compound event framework for understanding extreme impacts," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 5(1), pages 113-128, January.
    7. Pascal Peduzzi, 2019. "The Disaster Risk, Global Change, and Sustainability Nexus," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-21, February.
    8. Siti Nuryanah & Sardar M. N. Islam, 2015. "The Context of the Case Study," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Corporate Governance and Financial Management, chapter 5, pages 145-156, Palgrave Macmillan.
    9. J. Brad Adams & Michael E. Mann & Caspar M. Ammann, 2003. "Proxy evidence for an El Niño-like response to volcanic forcing," Nature, Nature, vol. 426(6964), pages 274-278, November.
    10. Matthew E. Kahn, 2005. "The Death Toll from Natural Disasters: The Role of Income, Geography, and Institutions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(2), pages 271-284, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael M. Santos & Ana Vaz Ferreira & João C. G. Lanzinha, 2023. "The Possibilities of Capturing Rainwater and Reducing the Impact of Floods: A Proposal for the City of Beira, Mozambique," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-17, January.
    2. Sitong Yang & Shouwei Li & Xue Rui & Tianxiang Zhao, 2024. "The impact of climate risk on the asset side and liability side of the insurance industry: evidence from China," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 1-51, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Randell, Heather & Jiang, Chengsheng & Liang, Xin-Zhong & Murtugudde, Raghu & Sapkota, Amir, 2021. "Food insecurity and compound environmental shocks in Nepal: Implications for a changing climate," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    2. Yuqing Zhang & Guangxiong Mao & Changchun Chen & Liucheng Shen & Binyu Xiao, 2021. "Population Exposure to Compound Droughts and Heatwaves in the Observations and ERA5 Reanalysis Data in the Gan River Basin, China," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-28, September.
    3. Luke J. Harrington & Carl-Friedrich Schleussner & Friederike E. L. Otto, 2021. "Quantifying uncertainty in aggregated climate change risk assessments," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-10, December.
    4. Zhao, Rui & Zhang, Dayong & Guo, Mengmeng, 2024. "Do natural disasters affect stock price crash risk? Evidence from emerging markets," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    5. Dominik Paprotny & Michalis I. Vousdoukas & Oswaldo Morales-Nápoles & Sebastiaan N. Jonkman & Luc Feyen, 2020. "Pan-European hydrodynamic models and their ability to identify compound floods," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 101(3), pages 933-957, April.
    6. Gonçalves, Ana & Marques, Margarida Correia & Loureiro, Sílvia & Nieto, Raquel & Liberato, Margarida L.R., 2023. "Disruption risk analysis of the overhead power lines in Portugal," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 263(PA).
    7. Emanuele Bevacqua & Laura Suarez-Gutierrez & Aglaé Jézéquel & Flavio Lehner & Mathieu Vrac & Pascal Yiou & Jakob Zscheischler, 2023. "Advancing research on compound weather and climate events via large ensemble model simulations," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-16, December.
    8. Amelia Aburn & Dennis Wesselbaum, 2017. "Gone with the Wind: International Migration," Working Papers 1708, University of Otago, Department of Economics, revised Apr 2017.
    9. Kai Tao & Jian Fang & Wentao Yang & Jiayi Fang & Baoyin Liu, 2023. "Characterizing compound floods from heavy rainfall and upstream–downstream extreme flow in middle Yangtze River from 1980 to 2020," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 115(2), pages 1097-1114, January.
    10. Go Shimada, 2022. "The Impact of Climate-Change-Related Disasters on Africa’s Economic Growth, Agriculture, and Conflicts: Can Humanitarian Aid and Food Assistance Offset the Damage?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-16, January.
    11. Xiao-Chen Yuan & Xun Sun, 2019. "Climate change impacts on socioeconomic damages from weather-related events in China," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 99(3), pages 1197-1213, December.
    12. Bucheli, Janic & Dalhaus, Tobias & Finger, Robert, 2022. "Temperature effects on crop yields in heat index insurance," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    13. Jenna Dodson & Patricia Dérer & Philip Cafaro & Frank Götmark, 2022. "Population growth, family planning and the Paris Agreement: an assessment of the nationally determined contributions (NDCs)," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 561-576, September.
    14. Zhang, Yitong & Hao, Zengchao & Zhang, Yu, 2023. "Agricultural risk assessment of compound dry and hot events in China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).
    15. Sha Chen & Zhongkui Luo & Xubin Pan, 2013. "Natural disasters in China: 1900–2011," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 69(3), pages 1597-1605, December.
    16. Chandra Bahinipati & Unmesh Patnaik, 2015. "The damages from climatic extremes in India: do disaster-specific and generic adaptation measures matter?," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 17(1), pages 157-177, January.
    17. Christopher Burgess & Michael Taylor & Tannecia Stephenson & Arpita Mandal & Leiska Powell, 2015. "A macro-scale flood risk model for Jamaica with impact of climate variability," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 78(1), pages 231-256, August.
    18. He, Liuyue & Xu, Zhenci & Wang, Sufen & Bao, Jianxia & Fan, Yunfei & Daccache, Andre, 2022. "Optimal crop planting pattern can be harmful to reach carbon neutrality: Evidence from food-energy-water-carbon nexus perspective," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 308(C).
    19. Leah Platt Boustan & Matthew E. Kahn & Paul W. Rhode, 2012. "Moving to Higher Ground: Migration Response to Natural Disasters in the Early Twentieth Century," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 238-244, May.
    20. Cécile Couharde & Rémi Generoso, 2015. "Hydro-climatic thresholds and economic growth reversals in developing countries: an empirical investigation," EconomiX Working Papers 2015-26, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:158:y:2020:i:3:d:10.1007_s10584-019-02556-w. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.