IN IMAGES, IN PICTURES – Drought, high temperatures, storms, hurricanes, floods… the year 2022 was marked by many extreme natural disasters.
«2022 was the year of extreme phenomenasays Fabio d’Andrea, CNRS research director at the Dynamic Meteorology Laboratory. Hurricane Ian in the United States and Cuba, floods in Pakistan, heat waves in Western Europe… Many weather-related natural disasters have hit the planet on both sides this year .
The Permanent Observatory of Natural Disasters (Cat Nat) recorded 891 events in the world in 2022. A figure “rather low“, estimates Yorik Baunay, director of the Observatory which has counted an average of one thousand events per year since 2012. However, “if there were fewer events, they were more intense“says the director. On a severity scale,they are slightly higher than the average of the last ten years».
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These extreme disasters also caused more victims. With 32,100 deaths in 2022, compared to 12,000 to 13,000 on average since 2012. But this parameter is “variable» since «all it takes is one big disaster in a developing country“, so that the number of deaths explodes, explains Yorik Baunay. This is the case this year with the floods that hit Pakistan.
In financial terms, the damage caused by these events has also increased, to the tune of $115 billion according to Swiss Re. The Swiss reinsurance giant says that 2022 is the second consecutive year in which total insured losses have exceeded the 100 billion dollars. They follow the trend of the last ten years, marked by an average annual increase of 5% to 7%.
Record temperatures in Western Europe
This year, an early heat wave set in in Western Europe resulting in record temperatures. According to the European climate change service Copernicus, the summer of 2022 was the hottest on record in this region of the world. Temperatures easily reached 40°C on the Iberian Peninsula and in southwestern France. The nights were also very warm with lows above 20°C.
This heat wave caused 14,108 deaths, all countries combined, and “especially in July“says Yorik Baunay. In France, 2,816 people lost their lives during the three heat waves, according to Public Health France (SPF). That is a relative excess mortality of +16.7%. Over the period from June to September, SPF counts “10,420 excess deaths from all causes (+ 6.1%)“. Against 15,000 deaths during the heat wave of 2003.
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A historic drought
As a result of extreme temperatures, drought has reached historic levels. The reason ? A rainfall deficit of 40% in France from the start of 2022. From April, the departments were forced one by one to restrict water as the water tables dried up. In total, 46 departments presented “red areas» subject to important restrictions.
«We have a rainfall deficit of 88% compared to what would have been necessary“, announced the Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu on 1is august. He also qualified the month of July as the driest month that France has known since the beginning of the surveys, in 1959.
This drought and the virtual absence of rain favored the outbreak of fires. The forests of Spain, Portugal, Morocco and France burned massively under the flames. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen fires of this size.“, says Yorik Baunay, challenged.
In France, from La Teste-de-Buch to Landiras in the South-West, passing through the Monts d’Arrée in Finistère and as far as the Brocéliande forest in Morbihan. A total of 72,000 hectares of forests went up in smoke this summer. “Six times more than the average of the last ten years“, recalled Emmanuel Macron in a speech on Friday, October 28.
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Deadly hailstones
Also in France, a violent hailstorm hit the Loire and Haute-Loire departments last July, causing heavy material damage. On social networks, many Internet users have published impressive images of these bad weather, with devastating hailstones.
In August, Corsica was the victim of violent storms, killing five people, including two at sea. A 62-year-old fisherman and a kayaker in her sixties lost their lives there. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin described this event as a natural disaster, due to its exceptional violence.
Yorik Baunay evokes a “record year for France” in this domain. The size of hailstones that can reach nine centimeters in diameter, unprecedented. This has generated “damage to homes, vehicles, etc.» whose losses would amount to «five billion euros».
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Storm Ian
On the other side of the Atlantic, Hurricane Ian devastated Cuba, the Cayman Islands and the southeastern United States at the end of September. Rated category 4 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, this storm caused heavy damage to property and humans, mainly in the densely populated US states of Florida and the Carolinas. It alone generated about half of the insured losses, for an estimated amount between 50 and 65 billion dollars.
In terms of human casualties, 148 people lost their lives there on 1is November and millions of people were left without electricity and forced to take refuge. Although it was voted the 22nd deadliest hurricane in the country’s history according to the National Weather Service, Hurricane Ian was less devastating than Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people in 2005.
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Floods in Pakistan
Started in June at the onset of the monsoon – the season of which runs from June to September – the floods in Pakistan intensified in August. They killed more than 1,700 people and affected 33 million people. The province of Sind, located in the south of the country, was the most affected with more than 300 dead. “Each year, the monsoon causes an average of between 2,000 and 3,000 deaths on the Asian continent“, informs Yorik Baunay. Usually, India and Bangladesh are the victims of such floods this season, he adds.
If these torrential rains turned into a natural disaster, it is because of “land development by men“, explains the director of Cat Nat. In effect, “they build houses in the beds of rivers, it does not forgive, especially in a developing country such as Pakistan».
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“Taste of the 2050s”
Christophe Cassou, CNRS researcher and main author of the IPCC report, does not say “surprised“, most “impressedby the severity of these extreme natural disasters. According to him, these events wereperfectly predicted by the IPCC reports of the 1900s and 2000s“. The year 2022 isemblematic of human influence on climateand global warming. But she’s just ataste of the 2050s“. The greater the human influence, the greater the frequency and severity of disasters.
Floods in Pakistan will increase in the coming years due to a “intensification of the water cycle“. Soil dryness will also worsen due toan increase in the evaporation of water from the earth, observe Fabio d’Andrea. It will dry up by the transpiration of the plants».
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Faced with this overexposure to climate risks, “the poorest countries are the most vulnerabledenounces Christophe Cassou. They are the ones who emit the least greenhouse gases, but those who suffer the heaviest consequences.“. This was one of the challenges of COP27: to reduce this “double jeopardyby promising financial aid to developing countries. “The minimum of promises has been put on the table, assures the researcher. But will they be respected?»