Number of natural disasters per year worldwide 2023 | Statista (2024)

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Number of natural disasters per year worldwide 2023 | Statista? ›

In 2023, there was a total of 398 natural disasters events recorded worldwide, down from 398 recorded a year earlier. The Europe, Middle East and Africa region experienced the highest number of natural disasters that year.

In 2023,1 the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) recorded a total of 399 disasters related to natural hazards. 2 These events resulted in 86,473 fatalities and affected 93.1 million people. The economic losses amounted to US$202.7 billion.

How many natural disasters happen each year? On average, there are about 6,800 natural disasters that happen every year worldwide.

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): “The number of disasters has increased by a factor of five over the 50-year period, driven by climate change, more extreme weather, and improved reporting.” These points were repeated in leading media outlets such as the BBC and The Economist.

In 2024 (as of July 9), there have been 15 confirmed weather/climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each to affect United States. These events included 13 severe storm events and 2 winter storm events.

Not only are natural disasters occurring more frequently, but the average cost and death toll from each is up as well. The National Centers for Environmental Information has kept track of billion-dollar natural disasters since 1980, citing climate change as a critical reason for the increase.

In the span of 12 months in 2023, a staggering 15,600 earthquakes were detected. Among these, 19 seismic events reached a significant magnitude of 7.0 or higher, 128 were between magnitudes 6.0 and 6.9, and 1,637 registered magnitudes between 5.0 and 5.9.

A natural disaster is the negative impact following an actual occurrence of natural hazard in the event that it significantly harms a community. The National Risk Index is designed to help communities understand their relative natural hazard risk and the impacts they could expect during or after a disaster.

In terms of affected countries globally, China (577 events) and the United States of America (U.S.) (467 events) reported the highest number of disaster events, followed by India (321 events), Philippines (304 events), and Indonesia (278 events) (Figure 3).

What was the worst tragedy in US history? ›

The tropical cyclone that racked Galveston, Texas, was the deadliest natural disaster in US history, taking the lives of an estimated 12,000 people on September 18th, 1900. The category 4 hurricane had winds blowing upwards of 145 mph, killing 1 in 6 residents and utterly destroying 3,600 homes.

Natural disasters have been increasingly effecting nearly every part of the world in the past decade with catastrophic tornadoes, hurricanes and tsunamis. Affect is usually a verb, and it means to impact or change.

1. Hurricane Katrina (2005): $191.3 billion. The costliest U.S. hurricane ever to make landfall was Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. The Gulf Coast storm struck Louisiana and Mississippi as a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

The 1931 Yangtze River floods

Excessive rainfall over central China in July and August of 1931 triggered the most deadly natural disaster in world history — the Central China floods of 1931.

In 2005, the world experienced the largest amount of natural disasters that left a death toll of more than 90,000 after 442 incidents with another 160 million people in need of immediate assistance. The negative impacts of natural disasters depend on the intensity of individual incidents.

The infographic highlights the high frequency of storms and floods – with the top two responsible for over 70% of the world's natural disasters.

The Atlantic basin saw 20 named storms in 2023, which ranks fourth for the most named storms in a season since 1950. Seven of these were hurricanes and three intensified to major hurricanes (Category 3 or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale).

2023 is the warmest year on record according to ERA5. 2023 is also the warmest year on record according to the JRA-3Q dataset, for which the average temperature relative [2] to 1991-2020 is 0.02°C smaller than that of ERA5. The absolute value from JRA-3Q is 0.02°C larger than the ERA5 value.

On 6 February 2023, a series of earthquakes killed over 55,000 people in Türkiye (Turkey) and Syria, in the worst earthquakes the region has seen in 20 years. The scale of need remains immense. Emotional scars run deep – many people still live surrounded by rubble in a constant visual reminder of the tragedy.

Floods and extreme rainfall will cause the most loss of life. Floods pose the highest acute risk of climate-induced deaths. Floods could take as many as 8.5 million people's lives by 2050, according to the report.