Every year, disasters related to weather, climate and water hazards cause significant loss of life and set back economic and social development by years, if not decades From 1970 to 2012, 8 835 disasters, 1 94 million deaths and US$ 2 4 trillion of economic losses were reported globally as a result of droughts, floods, windstorms, tropical cyclones, storm surges, extreme temperatures, landslides and wildfires, or by health epidemics and insect infestations directly linked to meteorological and hydrological conditions This Atlas, a joint publication of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) of the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, describes the distribution and impacts of weather-, climate- and water-related disasters from 1970 to 2012