In March 2026 I recorded 61 fatal landslides causing 520 fatalities, the highest March total on record.
This is my regular update for the number of fatal global landslides, focusing on March 2026. AAs usual, this data has been collected in line with the methodology described in Froude and Petley (2018) and in Petley (2012). References are listed below – please cite these articles if you use this analysis. Data presented in these updates should be treated as being provisional at this stage.
The headline figures are as follows:
March 2026: 61 fatal landslides causing 520 fatalities;
This is very surprising total once again – 61 fatal landslides is the highest March total in my long term dataset – the previous record was 49 events in 2024. The baseline mean (2004-2016) is c.23 fatal landslides.
Loyal readers will know that my preferred way to present the annual data is using the cumulative total number of fatal landslides calculated in pentads (five day blocks). To make this easier to interpret, I have converted the pentads into day numbers through the year (so 1 January is day number 1, 31 December is day number 365).
This is the data for 2026 to the end of March:-
The factors that are driving this very high level of recorded fatal landslides are not clear to me at this point. Perhaps it is a change in the quality of information I’m collating, although this seems unlikely to be the sole cause. Perhaps it is associated with the rapid degradation that is occurring in mountain areas (more on this to come). Perhaps it is the result of climate change. Interestingly, March 2026 was exceptionally warm compared to the long term record, globally, but it was “only” the fourth warmest March on record. March 2024 was the warmest on record.
This all requires more detailed analysis, which I have yet to do. But, at the moment, 2026 is proving to be a bad year for fatal landslides. A major caveat though is that the early months of the year are not a good predictor of what might happen through the Northern Hemisphere summer months, driven mainly by the SW monsoon in South Asia, the summer monsoon in East Asia and patterns of tropical cyclones.
References
Froude, M. and Petley, D.N. 2018. Global fatal landslide occurrence from 2004 to 2016. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 18, 2161-2181.
Petley, D.N. 2012. Global patterns of loss of life from landslides. Geology 40 (10), 927-930.