2024 fatal landslides at the half way point

The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides.

At the weekend we reached the half way point through the calendar year, so it is timely to provide an update on the number of fatal landslides, following my note of a month ago. This data is based on online reports of incidents that I collate on a daily basis – the methodology is described in Froude and Petley (2018). It includes landslides, rockfalls, debris flows and suchlike that lead to a loss of life, but it does not include those triggered by earthquakes.

The provisional headline figures are as follows (note that these will be subject to revision in the coming months):-

• Number of fatal landslides to 30 June:- 310
• Number of fatalities to 30 June:- 2,315
• Number of fatal landslides in the month of June:- 83
• Number of fatalities in June:- 351

Once again, we have seen a month with an unusually high number of fatal landslides. This graph shows the cumulative number of fatal landslides by month for 2024 (in black) and for all previous years in the dataset (in grey):-

2024 continues to surpass all previous years. In terms of June itself, 83 landslides is the highest total I have recorded -the previous highest total was 67, so this is a surprising outcome.

The causes of this behaviour are not clear, but once again I can speculate that it might be associated with the high global atmospheric and sea surface temperatures, which appear to be generating exceptionally intense rainfall events in many locations. Those high temperatures are a consequence of the combination of long term global warming plus the recent El Nino event.

As the graph above shows, and as highlighted in Petley and Froude (2018), the majority of global landslides occur in the northern hemisphere summer due to monsoonal rainfall in Asia. This more intense period typically starts in late June / early July. It is very unclear as to how this will pan out in 2024, but we have already seen substantial numbers of fatal landslides in China, Nepal, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, but also extending across to Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan.

The typhoon season has not yet really got going- it was unusually late in starting. The 7 May 2024 season forecast from Tropical Storm Risk is for a below average season. If correct, this could reduce the total number of fatal landslides in 2024.

One final point to make about 2024 – we are seeing large landslide impacts on major infrastructure projects, including the collapse of leach heap pads and tailings facilities in mines; debris flows striking dams; and landslides on roads and railways. It is unclear to me as to whether the impact of these events is being fully recognised by governments, investors and insurers.

Reference

Froude, M. and Petley, D.N. 2018.  Global fatal landslide occurrence from 2004 to 2016.  Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 18, 2161-2181.

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