Climate Facts: Extreme weather events caused over 2 million deaths between 1970 and 2021, says UN

The complexities of climate change and its associated jargon can be difficult to understand.

TheCable’s quick climate facts will help demystify these concepts through easy-to-understand and straightforward explanations.

Here are some to keep at the tip of your fingers:

• The United Nations Water says extreme weather events are making water more scarce, more unpredictable and more polluted. The organisation said these impacts threaten sustainable development, biodiversity, and people’s access to water and sanitation.
• Ocean heat content (OHC) is the measurement of how much heat is stored in the ocean, and according to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), it was higher between 2018 and 2022 than in any other five-year period.
• Ocean warming can lead to coral bleaching, threatening coral ecosystems that provide food and livelihoods to millions of people and protect coastlines from storms, says WMO. 
• The United Nations (UN) said weather, climate, and water-related disasters caused 2,087,229 deaths between 1970 and 2021.
• According to the UN, 90 percent of the deaths were people living in developing countries, the organisation said.