Mapping and ranking global mortality, affected population and GDP loss risks for multiple climatic hazards

Abstract

Coping with extreme climate events and its related climatic disasters caused by climate change has become a global issue and drew wide attention from scientists, policy-makers and public. This paper calculated the expected annual multiple climatic hazards intensity index based on the results of nine climatic hazards including tropical cyclone, flood, landslide, storm surge, sand-dust storm, drought, heat wave, cold wave and wildfire. Then a vulnerability model involving the coping capacity indicator with mortality rate, affected population rate and GDP loss rate, was developed to estimate the expected annual affected population, mortality and GDP loss risks. The results showed that: countries with the highest risks are also the countries with large population or GDP. To substantially reduce the global total climatic hazards risks, these countries should reduce the exposure and improving the governance of integrated climatic risk; Without considering the total exposure, countries with the high mortality rate, affected population rate or GDP loss rate, which also have higher or lower coping capacity, such as the Philippines, Bangladesh and Vietnam, are the hotspots of the planning and strategy making for the climatic disaster risk reduction and should focus on promoting the coping capacity.