Kerala Tops List Of Areas Hit By Global Disasters, And Is The Fourth Highest In Terms Of Economic Damage As A Result

World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) on Thursday released a report that states that the Kerala floods have caused the maximum number of casualties worldwide. The State of Global Climate of 2018 report also pointed out that 2018 was the fourth consecutively warm year globally.

The report says that this flood was Kerala’s worst since the 1920s, displacing more than 1.4 million people from their homes and affecting 5.4 million. It has caused the fourth highest economic losses globally.

Other heavy casualties took place in the floods of Japan, Korea, and Nigeria, and a heatwave in Pakistan. And the highest economic cost liability was Hurricane Florence, that hit the US in September, reported Indian Express.

The report also elucidates that of the 17.7 million Internally Displaced Persons, 2.3 million people have been displaced due to weather and climate-related disasters as of September 2018.

Instead of the average of the annual 53 tropical storms, this year saw 70 of them, most of them from the four basins of the northern hemisphere. It also stated that 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 were the warmest years ever to be recorded in the last 22 years.