More than ninety percent of global natural disasters in this year were due to extreme weather events, said Margareta Wahlstrom, the United Nations Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction in Copenhagen Monday.

At a press conference of the UN climate meetings currently held in Copenhagen, Wahlstrom released a set of data from the Belgian WHO collaborating Center for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), which covers the period from January to November 2009.

The figures showed that weather related disasters accounts for 91.4 percent of all natural disasters recorded this year.

To be specific, out of the 245 disasters in 2009, 224 were weather related, accounting for 55 million people out of 58 million people affected, 7000 out of 8900 of those killed, and US$15 billion out of the 19 billion dollars in economic damages.

Because of more effective prediction and mitigation, the death and economic loss due to natural disasters are lower than previous years. Wahlstrom said it's a good news for people and countries.

"However extreme weather disasters remain top of the list and will continue to affect more people in the future", said Wahlstrom when talking about the increasing trend of weather related disasters and the background of climate change behind it.

The most influenced regions are in Asia and Africa. Asia is especially vulnerable to storms and floods, while Africa is tortured by drought.

"Access to clean water, in fact any access to any water at all, is already a major threat to human security. Disasters can be caused by too little water as well as too much water", said Wahlstrom.

(Xinhua News Agency December 15, 2009)