Extreme weather has cost Europe about €500bn over 40 years | Extreme weather | The Guardian
Fiona Harvey
Severe floods and other extreme weather have cost Europe about half a trillion euros in the past four decades, with Germany, France and Italy the worst-hit countries.
Between 90,000 and 142,000 deaths were attributed to weather and climate-related events over the period 1980 to 2020, the overwhelming majority of them from heatwaves.
The data, published by the European Environment Agency on Thursday, does not show a clear trend of increase in losses over the decades from the impact of the climate crisis. This is because the economic impacts tend to be concentrated in a few major events – more than 60% of the economic losses came from just 3% of the weather events over the period – and these can strike anywhere and cause vastly different results.