Data
Number of recorded natural disaster events
EM-DAT
What you should know about this indicator
- EM-DAT defines a disaster as a situation or event which overwhelms local capacity, necessitating a request to the national or international level for external assistance; an unforeseen and often sudden event that causes great damage, destruction, and human suffering. Of all EM-DAT disasters, we select geophysical, meteorological, hydrological, and climatological events, which include droughts, earthquakes, extreme temperatures, floods, glacial lake outburst floods, mass movements, extreme weather events, volcanic activity, and wildfires.
- Drought is defined as an extended period of unusually low precipitation that produces a shortage of water for people, animals, and plants. Drought is different from most other hazards in that it develops slowly, sometimes even over the years, and its onset is generally difficult to detect.
- An earthquake is defined as a sudden movement of a block of the Earth's crust along a geological fault and associated ground shaking. The data includes the impacts of earthquake events, aftershocks and tsunamis.
- Extreme temperature is used as a general term for temperature variations above (extreme heat) or below (extreme cold) normal conditions.
- Extreme weather events include tornadoes, hailstorms, thunderstorms, sandstorms, blizzards, and extreme wind events.
- Flood is used as a general term for the overflow of water from a stream channel onto normally dry land in the floodplain (riverine flooding), higher-than-normal levels along the coast (coastal flooding) and in lakes or reservoirs as well as ponding of water at or near the point where the rain fell (flash floods).
- Volcanic activity is defined as any type of volcanic event near an opening/vent in the Earth's surface including volcanic eruptions of lava, ash, hot vapor, gas, and pyroclastic material.
- A wildfire is defined as any uncontrolled and non-prescribed combustion or burning of plants in a natural setting such as a forest, grassland, brush land or tundra, which consumes natural fuels and spreads based on environmental conditions (e.g., wind, or topography). Wildfires can be triggered by lightning or human actions.
- A dry mass movement is defined as any type of downslope movement of earth materials under hydrological dry conditions.
- A wet mass movement is defined as a type of mass movement that occur when heavy rain or rapid snow/ice melt send large amounts of vegetation, mud, or rock down a slope driven by gravitational forces.
- Glacial lake outburst floods are defined as those that occur when water held back by a glacier or moraine is suddenly released. Glacial lakes can be at the front of the glacier (marginal lake) or below the ice sheet (sub-glacial lake).
- Fog is defined as water droplets that are suspended in the air near the Earth's surface. Fog is simply a cloud that is in contact with the ground. Currently, the only fog disaster recorded in EM-DAT is the Great Smog of London in 1952.
Number of recorded natural disaster events
EM-DAT
Number of reported natural disasters in any given year. Note that the historical increase largely reflects improvements in data reporting, and should not be used to assess the total number of events.
Source
EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
April 11, 2024
Next expected update
April 2025
Date range
1900–2024
Unit
events
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Number of recorded natural disaster events”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Rosado (2022) - “Natural Disasters”. Data adapted from EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-natural-disaster-events [online resource]How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain (2024) – with major processing by Our World in DataFull citation
EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Number of recorded natural disaster events – EM-DAT” [dataset]. EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, “Natural disasters” [original data]. Retrieved November 25, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-natural-disaster-events