[ti:UN Agency: Weather Disasters Becoming More Common and Costly] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:00.04]The number of disasters driven by climate change, [00:04.28]such as floods and heatwaves, [00:06.76]have increased by five times over the past 50 years. [00:11.60]Such disasters have killed more than 2 million people [00:16.48]and cost governments $3.64 trillion since 1979. [00:24.40]A United Nations agency reported the findings Wednesday. [00:29.08]The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) [00:34.64]says its "Atlas" is the most complete examination ever of death [00:40.16]and economic losses from weather, water and climate extremes. [00:46.68]The agency looked at about 11,000 disasters [00:51.40]that took place between 1970-2019. [00:56.44]They included major catastrophes [01:00.04]such as Ethiopia's period of extreme dry weather in 1983. [01:06.20]The drought killed more than 300,000 people [01:10.60]and was the single most deadly event the WMO looked at. [01:15.72]Also included was Hurricane Katrina, [01:19.56]which struck the United States in 2005. [01:24.52]That disaster was the most costly included in the report, [01:29.20]with losses of $163.6 billion. [01:34.72]The agency said the growing number of major disasters [01:39.00]was due to both climate change and improved disaster reporting. [01:45.20]WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas told reporters Wednesday: [01:51.40]"Thanks to our early warning service improvement [01:55.16]we have been able to have a decrease of the casualties [01:59.60]at these kind of events, but the bad news [02:02.88]is that the economic losses have been growing very rapidly [02:07.08]and this growth is supposed to continue." [02:10.68]The report's findings add to evidence [02:14.64]that extreme weather events are becoming more common [02:18.20]due to climate change. [02:20.68]Costs from the events also rose from $175.4 billion in the 1970s [02:29.04]to $1.38 trillion in the 2010s. [02:34.04]While disasters became more costly and common, [02:38.52]the yearly death toll has fallen from more than 50,000 in the 1970s [02:45.20]to around 18,000 in the 2010s. [02:48.76]Such findings suggest that better planning efforts are working. [02:54.32]The WMO hopes the report will be used [02:58.32]to help governments develop policies to better protect people. [03:03.64]More than 91 percent of the 2 million deaths [03:07.16]occurred in developing countries, the report said. [03:10.72]The report noted that only half of the WMO's 193 members [03:17.32]have complex early warning systems. [03:21.48]It also said that "severe gaps" in weather observations, [03:25.80]especially in Africa, were making early warning systems less effective. [03:32.64]Mami Mizutori is head of the U.N. office for disaster risk reduction. [03:39.28]She urged the world's major economies [03:42.40]to help hard-hit developing countries [03:45.28]pay for warning systems and risk modeling. [03:49.60]I'm Ashley Thompson. 更多听力请访问51VOA.COM