The economic damage of weather- and climate-related disasters continues to rise, even as improvements in early warning have helped reduce the human toll, the U.N. weather agency said Monday. The World Meteorological Organization, in an updated report, tallied nearly 12,000 extreme weather, climate and water-related events over the past half-century around the globe that have killed more than 2 million people and caused economic damage of $4.3 trillion. But improved early warnings and coordinated disaster management has slashed the human casualty toll over the past half a century” WMO said in a statement. The trend of rising economic damage is expected to continue. “Thanks to early warnings and disaster management these catastrophic mortality rates are now thankfully history.”“Early warnings save lives,” he said.

Source: Ethiopian News May 22, 2023 23:35 UTC