Counting the Cost 2024: A year of climate breakdown

New study: Top 10 climate disasters cost the world billions in 2024

• Study identifies the year’s 10 costliest extreme events influenced by the climate crisis - each caused more than $4 billion in damage.
• Report also examines 10 other extreme events that caused massive human and environmental damage, mostly in the poorest countries.
• Hurricane Milton which struck the US in October cost $60 billion
• “Politicians who downplay the urgency of the climate crisis only serve to harm their own people” – Emeritus Professor Joanna Haigh, Imperial College London

A new report by Christian Aid, Counting the cost 2024: a year of climate breakdown, identifies the ten most expensive climate disasters of the year.

The ten most financially costly events all had an impact of more than $4 billion. Most of these estimates are based only on insured losses, meaning the true financial costs are likely to be even higher, while the human costs are often uncounted.

The report also highlights ten extreme weather events that didn’t rack up big enough insured losses to make the top ten but were just as devastating and often affected millions. These included several events in poorer countries where many people don’t have insurance and where data is less available.

In terms of events which caused the biggest financial cost in 2024, the US bore the brunt, with October’s Hurricane Milton topping the list as the single biggest one-off event at $60 billion in damage and killing 25 people. Hurricane Helene which struck the US, Cuba and Mexico in September was next at $55 billion and killed 232. In fact, the US was hit by so many costly storms throughout the year that even when hurricanes were removed, the other convective storms cost more than $60 billion in damage and killed 88 people.

No part of the world was spared from crippling climate disasters in 2024, with floods in China costing $15.6 billion and killing 315 people, and Typhoon Yagi which battered southwest Asia, killing more than 800 people. Yagi made landfall on September 2 in the Philippines, before moving on to Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand, where it triggered landslides, flash flooding and damaged hundreds of thousands of homes and agricultural land.

Europe accounted for three of the top 10 costliest disasters with Storm Boris in central Europe and floods in Spain and Germany costing a combined $13.87 billion, and killing 258 people, 226 of which were in Valencia’s floods in October. In Brazil, host of the COP30 climate summit in 2025, floods in the state of Rio Grande do Sul killed 183 people and caused $5 billion in damage. The UK didn’t make the list this year but in December the Environment Agency warned that a quarter of properties in England, eight million, could be at risk of flooding by 2050 due to climate change

While the top ten focuses on financial costs, which are usually higher in richer countries because they have higher property values and can afford insurance, some of the most devastating extreme weather events in 2024 hit poorer nations, which have contributed little to causing the climate crisis and have the least resources to respond.

These included Cyclone Chido which devastated the islands of Mayotte in December and may have killed more than a thousand people. A terrible drought in Colombia saw the Amazon River there drop by 90%, threatening the livelihoods of Indigenous people who rely on it for food and transport. Heatwaves affected 33 million people in Bangladesh whilst also worsening the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. West Africa was hit with terrible floods which affected more than 6.6 million people in Nigeria, Chad and Niger. In Southern Africa, the worst drought in living memory affected more than 14 million people in Zambia, Malawi, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

Christian Aid says these extreme events highlight the need for more urgent action to reduce carbon emissions and accelerate the transition to renewable energy and underlines the importance of providing funding for vulnerable people.

Christian Aid CEO, Patrick Watt, said:

“The human suffering caused by the climate crisis reflects political choices. There is nothing natural about the growing severity and frequency of droughts, floods and storms. Disasters are being supercharged by decisions to keep burning fossil fuels, and to allow emissions to rise. And they’re being made worse by the consistent failure to deliver on financial commitments to the poorest and most climate-vulnerable countries. In 2025 we need to see governments leading, and taking action to accelerate the green transition, reduce emissions, and fund their promises.

“The transition to a global economy powered by renewables is inevitable but the question is whether it will move fast enough to protect the poorest people. At the moment, the answer to that is no. Rich countries must provide the funding needed to help the poorest communities adapt to climate impacts they have done little to cause.

“The scientific evidence of the lethal toll that burning fossil fuels is taking on people and planet is incontrovertible. This will likely be the hottest year ever recorded, breaking last year’s previous record. These terrible climate disasters are a warning sign of what is to come if we do not accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels. They also show the urgent need for adaptation measures, especially in the global South, where resources are especially stretched, and people are most vulnerable to extreme weather events.”

Joanna Haigh, Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Physics, Imperial College London, said:

“This report is a sobering reminder that climate change cannot be ignored and in fact will get much worse until we do something to stop it. Politicians who downplay the urgency of the climate crisis only serve to harm their own people and cause untold suffering around the world.

“The hard reality is that climate change will not be stopped by political rhetoric, we need to see concrete actions taken to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. The economic impact of these extreme weather events should be a wake-up call. The good news is that ever worsening crises doesn’t have to be our long-term future. The technologies of a clean energy economy exist, but we need leaders to invest in them and roll them out at scale.”

Davide Faranda, Research Director in Climate Physics at the Institute Pierre Simon Laplace (France), said:

"Once again, this report shows us that climate change is already having an unbearable cost on our lives. In the last 12 months, extreme weather killed thousands across the world and brought massive damage to our cities and natural ecosystems.

“The good news is that we can stop and reverse this tendency, and a solution already exists to do so: it’s critical that we stop burning fossil fuels to stop fuelling extreme weather. If we don’t, we’ll keep seeing more and more years of suffering and destruction, limiting our window to devise effective adaptation strategies."

Dr Mariam Zachariah, World Weather Attribution researcher at Imperial College London, said:

"This report is just a snapshot of climate devastation in 2024. There are many more droughts, heatwaves, wildfires and floods not included that are becoming more frequent and intense.

"Most of these disasters show clear fingerprints of climate change. Extreme weather is clearly causing incredible suffering in all corners of the world. Behind the billion-dollar figures are lost lives and livelihoods.

"We need to keep investing in ways to help people out of harm’s way. Reducing our use of coal, oil and gas, the same fossil fuels that are intensifying these events is an important step in this direction. Another is to create conditions to better cope with extreme weather. Unless we work on both fronts, the cost of climate change will continue to increase."

ENDS

Notes to editors

For more information or interview requests, please contact Joe Ware on jware@christian-aid.org or +447870944485.