Freak weather costs China $7.5 billion

Environmental Finance

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London, 7 February: China’s worst winter weather for perhaps 50 years has damaged more than a million homes, killed more than 60 people and resulted in economic losses of $7.5 billion, according to the country's ministry of civil affairs.

Nineteen provinces in China, almost two-thirds of the country, have been lashed by severe winter storms for the last four weeks. An estimated 100 million inhabitants have been directly affected by the weather, such as through the loss of power and water, said the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) secretariat.

“So-called ‘freak weather’ is becoming more common and reducing the vulnerability to these unexpected extremes must be a top priority for governments,” said Geneva-based ISDR director Sálvano Briceño.

“The intensifying effect of climate change on weather, combined with global trends of rapid urbanisation and environmental degradation, will lead to ever more complex disasters involving more and more people,” he added.

Peter Sousounis, senior research scientist at Boston-based loss modelling firm AIR Worldwide, said some forecasters were linking the intensity of the storm to La Niña, a phenomenon in which sea surface temperatures across the central and eastern Pacific Ocean are lower than normal.

“La Niña intensifies the east Asian winter monsoon, causing cold surges from Siberia to travel farther south ... La Niña can also generate much stronger winds at the jet-stream level, which provides energy for storm development,” Sousounis said.

AIR Worldwide did not provide a figure for the insured losses from the disaster.

The storms have relented in recent days, but the latest weather reports indicate that more harsh weather is on the way.

Updated 08 February 2008

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