Close to 100 million people affected by hottest year ever

El Niño played a major role in the extreme climatic conditions, which led to disaster in many parts of the world.

Out of approximately 98.6 million people caught up in disasters last year, an incredible 92% were caused by adverse climatic conditions, according to a new UN report.

As the hottest year on record, a major driver of these disasters was the impact of El Niño – the strength of which led many countries to be unprepared for what was to come.Over half of the total affected were victims of one of the 32 recorded major droughts that occurred in 2015. Indeed, the 50.5 million individuals impacted was twice the annual average for such disasters.

China, the US, India, the Philippines and Indonesia were the countries most affected during the year, with 26, 22, 19, 15 and 11 disasters, respectively.

The major outcome of this study was that the reduction of greenhouse gases and the curbing of global warming is of crucial importance in preventing future disasters.

After droughts, the opposite extreme, floods, had the largest impact on people in 2015. However, the number of people affected and the total number of deaths were well below the annual average (based on the last decade).

Storms came next on the list, although once again the impact in 2015 was below annual average levels. This is partly due to the improvements of disaster management systems and infrastructure, especially in Asia. Early warning systems in particular have had a positive impact.

Although deaths from disaster were down in 2015 on the national average, there are two major issues to address in this respect. Firstly, the number of deaths that have occurred due to extreme heat may well have been underestimated and are hard to calculate accurately. Secondly, both disaster planning and response improvements have managed to cap the number of fatalities despite the high prevalence of disaster.