Perilous weather events on steady rise, experts say

There were 472 high-impact weather events recorded in Greece between 2000 and 2009, with socioeconomic consequences caused by 657 events such as floods, lightning and others, according to a study by researchers at the National Observatory of Athens’ Institute for Environmental and Sustainable Development Research (IEPBA), which has created a database on such events that is open to the public.

Of these high-impact weather events, which expert say are steadily rising each year, 32% had severe effects in at least five Greek prefectures, causing disasters or deaths, 37% had a significant effect on networks and infrastructure in at least two to four prefectures and a large city, and 31% had a small effect, mainly on transport and communications, in one prefecture.

Of those phenomena, 61.4% concerned floods. The database does not include fires and their catastrophic effects, like the ones seen in 2007 and this year.