The hundred-year series of weather-related fatalities in the Czech Republic: Interaction of climate, environment and society

Severe weather patterns may directly cause or influence deadly events during various human activities, particularly in the context of recent climate change. The paper investigates weather-related fatalities over the territory of the Czech Republic in the 1921–2020 period. The unique database, created from documentary evidence (particularly newspapers), includes for each deadly event besides weather event also a set of information concerning of the fatality itself and related circumstances. Totally 2,729 detected fatalities during 100 years were associated to weather categories frost (38%), convective storm (19%), flood (17%), fog (11%), snow and glaze ice (8%), windstorm (5%) and other inclement weather (2%). For each individual category a detailed analysis was done. Fatalities, extending over the whole country, had a main maximum in the winter (January) and secondary in the summer (July), corresponding to the occurrence of extreme weather. Deaths were interpreted mainly as direct, caused by freezing to death/hypothermia or drowning, happening in the afternoon and night in open countryside or on rivers and water bodies. Males outnumbered females and adult the categories child and elderly. Hazardous behaviour of victims was more frequent than non-hazardous. Information on fatalities and structure of their characteristics reflects strongly historical milestones of the country, political and socioeconomic changes as well as changes in the life style. Besides important weather effects on the deadliest events, the character of fatality data with weaker temporal coverage in 1945–1961 and 1978–1995 do not allow to clearly prove the effects of long-term climate variability. Detailed knowledge of weather-related fatalities with respect to their spatiotemporal occurrence, structure and characteristics, with a nearly half of them being classified as hazardous behaviour of victims (or culprits of deadly events), offer possibility to learn from these fatality data with the aim to apply appropriate risk communication and contribute to the potential decreasing of fatalities (injuries) during extreme weather events.