Climatological/meteorological and hydrological disasters and the insurance sector

Abstract

Climate change is a continual fact during the Earth’s history. There had been many significant changes in the Earth’s climate during its evolutionary history and a lot of ecosystems had been affected by these changes. Especially the industrialization process showing rapid movement after industrial revolution has put serious pressure on the present and future climate. Human activities such as increased fossil fuel usage with the industrialization process, land-use changes, industrial processes and deforestation have increased atmospheric accumulation up of the various greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O). On the other hand, increase in frequency and severity of natural disasters can be explained mostly by the increase of the probability of extreme events due to the climate change. Increased numbers of people have been affected by climatological and meteorological catastrophes in every year. Various actions and activities such as disaster preparedness, mitigation, reduction and prevention of the impacts and early warnings are considerable with respect to the insurance sector. These activities and actions should be implemented in the frame of contemporary and comprehensive disaster management planes. Scope of the natural disaster should be expanded particularly in the countries and regions that are vulnerable to the impacts of the climate change and variability including drought events and/or natural disasters. Moreover, drought events should also be accepted as one of the severe natural disasters, and sustainable and applicable drought management plans should be developed in order to mitigate these disasters. In this context, main purpose of the study is to classify and shortly assess the climatological and meteorological disasters, and to attract attention necessity of a new disaster insurance system containing these disasters.