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Guide to natural hazard and climate risk management

Your  guide to the weather and climate risk outlook for 2024 - and how to manage and mitigate its risks.

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The significant risk of property damage and business interruption from extreme weather conditions in Australia means that it is now more important than ever for organisations to understand their exposures, assess preparedness for natural perils and take measures to mitigate them.

For the third consecutive season in a row in Australia, the La Niña weather pattern brought floods and destruction to some parts of Australia right up into the early months of 2023. La Niña continued to wreak havoc across Australia into the early months of 2023, particularly in areas prone to heavy rainfall and flooding.

As 2023 progressed, the extreme weather patterns brought on by La Niña in the Pacific Ocean began to dissipate, as La Niña began to make way for El Niño. Occurring when the sea surface temperatures rise in the Pacific1 – causing the rainfall to shift to the eastern Pacific Ocean – El Niño brings an increase in heatwaves and less rainfall, which can contribute to drought and an increase in bushfires. 

El Niño has been responsible for driving the recent bushfires in Victoria’s east over September and October 2023. A dry hot heatwave, marking Australia’s driest September on record,2 has helped fuel the fires which burned through more than 17,000 hectares of land in the south-eastern Gippsland area.3

Similarly, from August to October 2023, high temperatures and dry winds fuelled a series of ongoing fires in parts of southern Queensland and northern NSW,4 causing road closures, threatening properties and forcing residents in some areas to flee their homes.

According to the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA), La Niña brought record breaking rain and flooding to the east-coast of Australia throughout 2022 and 2023, and insured losses for the four-month period from September 2022 to January 2023 alone totalled A$1.6 billion.5

Marsh’s 2024 natural hazard and climate risk management guide is your one-stop resource to understanding how you manage the risk of climate. You will be provided with insights from the Bureau of Meteorology about the exposures created by upcoming weather events, natural hazard and climate risk management. Get your copy now. 

What you’ll learn:

  1. Weather and climate outlook for 2024 and beyond
  2. Australia long range forecast – state and territory breakdown
  3. Understanding your natural hazard risks and what is requires to mitigate these effectively
  4. Insurance lessons learned from previous extreme weather events
  5. The steps to becoming NatCat resilient

[1] El Niño southern oscillation (ENSO) | The Bureau of Meteorology

[2] BOM: September driest on record; dry summer expected | The Australian

[3] Bushfires in parts of southeast Australia amid spring heatwave | Reuters

[4] Qld bushfire timeline 2023: Tara, Western Downs & Landsborough fires | The Courier Mail

[5] 2022-23 Catastrophe resilience report | Insurance Council of Australia

This publication is not intended to be taken as advice regarding any individual situation and should not be relied upon as such. The information contained herein is based on sources we believe reliable, but we make no representation or warranty as to its accuracy. Marsh shall have no obligation to update this publication and shall have no liability to you or any other party arising out of this publication or any matter contained herein. Any modelling, analytics, or projections are subject to inherent uncertainty, and any relevant analysis could be materially affected if any underlying assumptions, conditions, information, or factors are inaccurate or incomplete or should change. LCPA 23/521

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