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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Damian Carrington Environment editor

Climate crisis costing $16m an hour in extreme weather damage, study estimates

People sit by a creek with huge wildfire and billows of smoke in the background.
People watch the McDougall Creek wildfire in West Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, in August 2023. Photograph: Darren Hull/AFP/Getty Images

The damage caused by the climate crisis through extreme weather has cost $16m (£13m) an hour for the past 20 years, according to a new estimate.

Storms, floods, heatwaves and droughts have taken many lives and destroyed swathes of property in recent decades, with global heating making the events more frequent and intense. The study is the first to calculate a global figure for the increased costs directly attributable to human-caused global heating.

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