Weather disasters ‘stronger and more frequent than in 1970s’

UN agency says weather disasters strike four to five times more often - but are killing fewer people

Weather disasters are striking the world four to five times more often and causing seven times more damage than in the 1970s, the United Nations weather agency has said.

But these disasters are killing far fewer people. In the 1970s and 1980s, they killed an average of about 170 people a day worldwide. In the 2010s, that dropped to about 40 per day, the World Meteorological Organization said in a report released on Wednesday that examined more than 11,000 weather disasters over the past half-century.