The Impact of Climate Change on Natural Disasters - Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems for Climate Change - page 29

Fig. 2.6 Number of climate-related disasters around the world (1980-2011). Data from EM-DAT.
EM-DAT records a natural hazard as a disaster if one of the following criteria is met: ten or more
people are reported killed, hundred or more are reported affected, state of emergency is declared,
or international assistance is called for (Reproduced from UNISDR 2012 )
What role has climate change played in this observed increase of hazardous
events? When interpreting the drivers of historical trends in hazardous events over
the last few decades, it is important to remember that the data is based on observa-
tions of events. Parts of the historical increase in hazardous events can be credited
to better reporting. The increased exposure to events, due to population growth, as
well as the radically increased access to information, due to the progress in informa-
tion technology (e.g., global media coverage, Internet), lead to better reporting of
hazardous events (Peduzzi 2005 ).
Reporting of non-climate events can be used to separate the role of climate
change from that of improvement in observations. Earthquakes, for example, are not
climate events and can hence be used as a basis to judge the infl uence on improved
access to information versus the infl uence on climate change (Peduzzi 2005 ). Both
the number of reported earthquakes as well as of reported climatic disasters has
increased since 1970, which is in line with better access to information, as media
coverage was global by the end of 1970s. However, since this initial increase, the
number of earthquakes remained steady, whereas the numbers of fl oods, for example,
continued to increase (Peduzzi 2005 ). The fact that tectonic events remain steady
and climatic events are increasing raises concern about the impact of climate change
on the frequency of natural hazards (Peduzzi 2005 ).