Top 100 Countries by Climate Risk Index (Heat, Floods, Storms), 2025

Composite Climate Hazard Exposure Score 2025: heat, floods and storms on a 0–100 scale

Climate risk is not the same as the number of disasters recorded in one year. Event counts describe what happened during a period, while a useful country comparison has to connect physical hazards with exposed people, assets and the ability of systems to absorb shocks.

This ranking compares national exposure to three climate-related hazard families: heat, floods and storms. A higher score means a country has a stronger combined exposure profile and needs closer subnational review before decisions about infrastructure, insurance, supply chains or public planning are made.

Scale: 0 (lower) → 100 (higher) Components: Heat • Flood • Storm Weights: Heat 40% • Flood 35% • Storm 25% Reference year: 2025 composite

Table 1 — Top 10 countries by Composite Climate Hazard Exposure Score, 2025

The top of the distribution is dominated by countries where multiple hazards coincide (for example, high heat plus high flood risk), and where exposure and vulnerability amplify impacts. A key analytical point is that two countries can share similar overall scores but for different reasons: one may be driven mostly by heat stress, another by flood exposure, and another by tropical cyclones.

Drivers and structure: why similar totals can mean different risk realities

A single score is useful only when the component drivers are visible. Similar composite scores can come from very different combinations of heat, flood and storm exposure. This matters because mitigation and adaptation levers differ: heat risk often concentrates in cities and labour-intensive sectors; flood risk is highly sensitive to land use, drainage, and protective infrastructure; storm risk can be dominated by tropical cyclone exposure and building standards.

Three patterns appear repeatedly in the country profiles: multi-hazard exposure, where heat and flood are both elevated; storm-dominant exposure, typical for cyclone regions and small island states; and heat-dominant exposure, common in arid and semi-arid climates where extreme temperatures are the main driver. The highest-scoring countries often combine more than one of these patterns.

Bar chart — Top 20 Composite Climate Hazard Exposure Score, 2025

Radar chart — Heat vs Flood vs Storm profiles for the Top 7

Table 2 — Top 100 countries, 2025 (composite score with component drivers)

The table lists the Top 100 by composite score and shows the three drivers behind each result. The risk-profile cell makes it easier to see whether a country is heat-dominant, flood-heavy, storm-exposed or multi-hazard. In practice, the largest differences between countries at similar score levels often come from storm exposure (highly regional) and flood hazard (strongly shaped by geography and drainage basins), while heat risk tends to have broader regional coherence.

What the 2025 ranking implies: unbalanced profiles, regional patterns and practical use

The ranking is most useful when it is read as a set of country profiles, not only as a league table. Two countries can sit close together in the overall Top 100 and still face very different climate pressures. The main value is in seeing which hazard drives each result and where several hazards overlap.

Countries with unbalanced profiles (a high driver with weaker secondary risks)

A common unbalanced pattern is heat-dominant risk. Countries in arid and semi-arid zones can score very high on heat, while storms remain structurally limited and flood risk is more localised to specific basins. In the table, examples include Niger and Chad (very high heat scores with low storm scores), as well as parts of the Middle East where extreme heat is the primary driver. In such profiles, health impacts, labour productivity, water stress and power demand peaks tend to carry a larger share of the risk signal than cyclone landfalls.

Another unbalanced pattern is storm-dominant risk, where tropical cyclone intensity and exposure dominate. Many small island states show this structure: their storm score is high, and floods can also be elevated due to coastal processes, while heat is meaningful but not always the single strongest driver. Examples in the Top 100 include Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and several Pacific islands. In these cases, a limited land area concentrates assets and critical infrastructure, making resilience and recovery capacity central to impact outcomes.

A third unbalanced pattern is flood-heavy profiles, where geography (river deltas, low-lying coastlines, basin dynamics) raises flood risk substantially. Delta countries and densely populated coastal plains frequently fall into this group, with Bangladesh being a prominent multi-hazard example where flood remains extremely strong. In Europe, flood-heavy profiles can appear even with moderate heat and storm scores, reflecting exposure and the economics of assets at risk rather than tropical cyclone hazard.

Regional picture in 2025 (why the Top 100 looks the way it does)

The 2025 Top 100 is shaped by two layers: (1) long-run climate and hazard structure, and (2) where people and assets are concentrated. South and Southeast Asia stand out because dense populations overlap with a combination of heat stress and high riverine/coastal flood exposure, and in some locations, cyclone hazard. Sub-Saharan Africa shows many heat-elevated profiles and flood exposure in key basins, where vulnerability and coping capacity can magnify impacts. Small Island Developing States cluster because storm exposure can dominate expected losses, and recovery constraints can matter as much as the physical hazard itself.

Importantly, the ranking does not imply that lower-ranked countries have “no risk.” It indicates that, on a harmonised global scale, the combination of heat, flood and storm drivers is comparatively smaller or that exposure/vulnerability proxies are lower. Within-country variation can be large: coastal provinces, major cities, or specific river basins can face far higher risk than the national average.

How the score is typically used (business, insurance, public planning)

In practical work, a country-level hazard score should be combined with sector exposure and subnational analysis. Its value is to show where deeper due diligence is most likely to matter. Typical applications include: (a) prioritising adaptation planning and resilient infrastructure funding, (b) informing insurance and reinsurance portfolio screening (especially for flood and storm tail risks), (c) identifying where supply chains may face disruption from compound events, and (d) supporting development and humanitarian risk reduction strategies where vulnerability amplifies hazard impacts.

A five-point gap on the 0–100 scale does not equal a fixed percentage change in losses. It means the country has a higher composite exposure level under the heat, flood and storm weighting used here.