CATASTROPHIC

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does catastrophic mean? 

• CATASTROPHIC (adjective)
  The adjective CATASTROPHIC has 1 sense:

1. extremely harmful; bringing physical or financial ruin

  Familiarity information: CATASTROPHIC used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CATASTROPHIC (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Extremely harmful; bringing physical or financial ruin

Synonyms:

catastrophic; ruinous

Context example:

a ruinous course of action

Similar:

harmful (causing or capable of causing harm)

 Context examples 

Making it cheaper to do so could help the global community remove the 100 billion to 1 trillion tons of carbon necessary to avoid catastrophic global warming by mid-century.

(Scientists Turn CO2 into Solid Coal, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

It is also rocked by “violent weather systems, catastrophic storms" and high temperatures reaching 2,500 degree Celsius.

(Exoplanet Could Have Clouds of Rubies, Sapphires, VOA)

Still, massive increases in surface melting due to unusually warm weather can trigger catastrophic ice-shelf collapses.

(Reframing the dangers Antarctica's meltwater ponds pose to ice shelves and sea level, National Science Foundation)

For three hurricane seasons in a row, storms with record-breaking rainfall have caused catastrophic flooding in the southern United States: Harvey in 2017, Florence in 2018 and Imelda in 2019.

(Why are big storms bringing so much more rain?, National Science Foundation)

While some radio bursts could be caused by a single catastrophic event such as a supernova, those events wouldn’t repeat.

(Mysterious Radio Signals Detected from Deep Space, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

The prehistoric hurricanes were likely category 3 storms (such as Hurricane Katrina) or category 4 storms (Hurricane Hugo) that would be catastrophic if they hit the region today.

(Monster hurricanes struck U.S. Northeast during prehistoric periods of ocean warming, NSF)

Half of the Great Barrier Reef, the largest reef system in the world, suffered catastrophic damage in a 2016 heat wave, followed by bleaching the next year.

(Loudspeakers used to attract fish back to dying coral reefs, SciDev.Net)

The rock sequences recovered by this scientific drilling expedition record an unprecedented level of detail about one of the most catastrophic events in Earth's history, said Candace Major, a section head in NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences.

(Rocks at asteroid impact site record first day of dinosaur extinction, National Science Foundation)

The size of a school bus, the satellite is one of the largest pieces of 'junk' in orbit and could become a catastrophic hazard if struck by other space debris and broken into fragments.

(Australia Developing Lasers to Track, Destroy Space Junk, VOA)

Banwell and co-author Professor Doug MacAyeal from the University of Chicago had previously suggested that the filling and draining of hundreds of lakes might have led to the catastrophic breakup of the Larsen B Ice Shelf 2002 when 3,250 square kilometres of ice was lost in just a few days.

(Surface lakes cause Antarctic ice shelves to ‘flex’, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)