Extreme weather events cost EU economies €145bn in last decade, says EEA

Anthony Ryan shoveling snow at the entrance to Millers Weir, Athgarvan, Co Kildare, as the 'Beast from the East' weather front hit Ireland in 2018. Picture: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews.ie

Extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, and heatwaves have caused €145bn worth of economic losses in just a decade across Europe.

The fallout from climate change has been laid bare through data released by the European Commission's data analysis wing, Eurostat, following estimates from the European Environment Agency.

Data calculating climate loss per citizen shows that Ireland is among the highest in the entire bloc in 2020, only behind Greece and France as the toll of global warming has mounted.

In 2020, climate-related economic losses stood at €27 per EU person, with Greece almost three times higher than the EU average at €91 per person, followed by France at €62, and Ireland at €42, Eurostat said. 

The lowest losses per inhabitant were registered in Bulgaria at 70c per person, and €4 per person in Slovenia and Slovakia.

Between 2010 and 2020, damage was estimated at €145bn by the EEA.

The highest total loss was recorded in 2017 at just under €28bn, more than double that in 2020, as a result of the heatwaves registered in Europe that dried land and caused wildfire conditions. The lowest total loss was observed in 2012 at €3.7bn, Eurostat said.

'Climate-related economic losses'

So-called “climate-related economic losses” measures the economic losses from weather and climate-related events, according to Eurostat's calculations. 

Weather and climate-related events are defined as meteorological events such as storms, hydrological events such as floods and mass movements, and climatological events such as heatwaves, cold snaps, droughts, and forest fires.

Impacts on Ireland

Repeated flood events in recent years have struck all over Ireland, while a cold snap in the winter of 2010 brought the country to a standstill for days.

A harsh winter, including the 'Beast from the East' storm in March of 2018, followed by exceptional rainfall in the spring and a prolonged heatwave in the early summer months of that year led to a crisis in agriculture, chiefly in the fodder sector.

Research earlier this year from ClimAg, a programme based at University College Cork (UCC), showed that events such as the fodder crisis of 2018 are twice as likely to occur under mid-21st-century conditions.

Reported economic losses generally reflect monetised direct damages to certain assets and as such are only partial estimates of damage, according to Eurostat. 

They do not consider losses related to mortality and health, cultural heritage, or ecosystems services, which would considerably raise the estimate, it warned.

Costs from the climate change fallout will continue to rise — the 30-year moving average of climate-related economic losses shows a clear trend, increasing nearly 2% annually over the last decade, Eurostat said.

It comes as the Society of Actuaries in Ireland warned that "climate change is affecting how risks are underwritten, priced, managed, and reported globally, whether for general insurance, life insurance, pensions, other financial institutions, and social security".

Human influence is already making many extreme climate events, including heatwaves, heavy rainfall and droughts, more frequent and severe," the society stated. 

"Globally, events that were previously considered 1-in-50-year extreme heat events have become about five times more likely, while events previously considered 1-in-10-year events are now almost three times more likely."

CLIMATE & SUSTAINABILITY HUB