Climate change: Spiralling cost of weather disasters shows dramatic impact of just one degree of warming – Scotsman comment

Hurricane Katrina caused immense damage to the southern US coast with New Orleans particularly badly affected (Picture: Kyle Niemi/US Coast Guard via Getty Images)

The weather of 1970s Scotland may not seem all that very different to the weather we experience today, judged by the perhaps hazy memories of those who were around at the time.

However, on a global scale, the insurance industry will have noticed a huge difference.

For, according to figures produced by the United Nations’ weather agency, the cost of extreme storms and other such disasters has gone up by nearly eight times since the 1970s.

From 1970 to 1979, the bill was $175 billion (£127 billion), but from 2010 to 2019, it was $1.38 trillion (£1 trillion), which both figures expressed in 2019 dollars to account for inflation. Weather disasters are also occurring more than four times more often, the World Meteorological Organisation said.