Summer of extreme events costs Europe over 40 billion

The floods, which affected 53 regions, damaged infrastructure, buildings and crops: the estimated damage in this case is 6.5 billion.

Added to these direct losses are those resulting from the disruption of supply chains.

"The true costs of extreme weather events emerge slowly because they affect lives and livelihoods through a wide range of channels beyond the initial impact," Usman says. "Official estimates of the impact," he adds, "are often delayed." The goal of the newly presented research is "to provide timely estimates of the impact of summer 2025 extreme events on economic activity.

According to the authors of the study, the figures presented are conservative, for example because they do not include phenomena such as forest fires. Yet, even so, the damage estimate for the summer of 2025 far exceeds the estimate calculated for the whole of 2024 by the reinsurance company Swiss Re, according to which the direct economic losses from all natural catastrophes last year, including the catastrophic flooding caused by Cyclone Dana in Spain, would amount to 31 billion.

According to the study's authors, however, the macroeconomic costs "of catastrophes far exceed" the damage and loss estimates typically made by reinsurance companies, which do not include a wide range of factors: reduced productivity and production in the construction and reception sector due to heatwaves; the loss of production that occurs when factories are damaged; human costs; costs to government budgets; inflationary phenomena; and spillover effects through trade relations and supply chains.

as global warming accelerates, making climate disasters stronger and more frequent, investments in adaptation, i.e. in infrastructure and mechanisms that help reduce damage, and mitigation measures, i.e. the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through the greening of production and consumption systems, are increasingly urgent.