INTERNATIONAL: The UK charity Christian Aid calculates every year how much weather incidents have caused in communities and industry.

Events such as flooding, fires and heat waves has shown to hit harder in 2021 than compared to previous years. The ten most expensive weather disaster of this year has damaged $170 billion, while in 2020 the damages were calculated in $150 billion. It’s a 13% increase.

The hurricane Ida, hitting eastern United States by the end of August and killing at least 1,075 people has caused $65 billion in damages, making the most expensive weather incident of this year. Such expenses can be seen in the 1.3 million displaced population whose homes were destroyed during the hurricane.

The second most damaging catastrophe related to global warming of this year happened in Germany and Belgium in July, costing $43 billion in losses. At next, the winter storm in Texas damaged $23 billion, much related to the power grid which got destroyed during the tempest.

Not only those incidents have costed billions of dollars in damage. Cyclones in India and Bangladesh in May, flooding in Canada and late spring freeze in France were other costly incidents hitting different parts of the world in 2021.

The report has stressed, however, that such money to cover damages can only be input if there is money applied to it, which means that mostly costs for reconstructing affected areas are located in rich countries.

"Some of the most devastating extreme weather events in 2021 hit poorer nations, which have contributed little to causing climate change," the report's press release noted.

Some of the example mentioned by Christian Aid is the one that happened in South Sudan, where flooding affected around 800,000 people.

Another report has been issued by Swiss Re, the world's biggest reinsurer. It estimates that natural catastrophes caused around US$250 billion in damage this year, a 24% increase over last year, making such cost for insurance industry the fourth highest since 1970.