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Climate change has added billions to the toll of hurricane strikes on the U.S., according to a study that challenges the prevailing scientific view that the rising cost is mainly because more buildings, towns and businesses are in the way.
“The rise in losses is consistent with an influence of global warming on the number and intensity of hurricanes, an influence which may have accounted for 2 per cent to 12 per cent of the US hurricane losses in 2005,” according to the study, which was published in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature Geoscience.
In 2005 alone, climate change was likely responsible for close to US$14 billion of additional damage, including devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.
The study claims that the extra costs in recent decades do not just stem from more homes, businesses and infrastructure that have been built near the coastlines.
“Increases in wealth and population alone cannot account for the observed trend in hurricane losses,” according to the study, whose lead author is Francisco Estrada, an economist at Mexico’s National Autonomous University.
Estrada and two colleagues from Europe said that this unexplained increase in economic losses over time is consistent with a climate change signal.
One scientist who has written extensively about US costs from weather damage said the study was flawed.
University of Colorado’s Roger Pielke, who was not involved in the study, said it should have included hurricane damage data from just the past 10 years (2006-2015), which have been quiet for hurricane activity. He said it’s “misleading” to end an analysis with the “exceptional” hurricane year of 2005.
“The period 2006-2015 has been well below average in terms of damage and US. hurricanes,” Pielke said.
“It is shocking that they did not include this further data.”
He also said that US hurricanes have not become more common or more intense, based on long-term data from 1900 to the present.
Another expert, meteorologist Steve Bowen of global reinsurance firm Aon Benfield, said “the study seems to use a reasonable approach to determine the results”.
Since 1960, Bowen said, economic losses from natural disasters as a percentage of the US economy have largely been flat.
“From my perspective, it is always healthy for there to be robust conversation within the scientific research community to challenge conventional thinking to better understand any trends that we’re seeing,” he said.
Agencies/Canadajournal
The US is in record territory in that a major hurricane hasn’t made landfall in the past 10 years, not since Wilma. If Katrina had hit a sparsely populated area instead of New Orleans, it wouldn’t have been anything more than a footnote in the history book.
Stupid article. Should read the Geoscience report. Not a single Cat3 for last 9 years in USA has made landfall. Has absolutely nothing to do with “climate” change. Best look at insurance related costing, housing replacement costs and what has been covered.And stop building in way of storm paths that are fairly well known.
Why has the insurance business (Warren Buffet) not raised insurance premiums for this threat? Do they know more than this researcher? Stopping the study on a high note?
Don’t piss down my neck and tell me it’s raining.
“In 2005 alone, climate change was likely responsible for close to US$14 billion of additional damage, including devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.”
Climate change, the one that has been happening since the earth has had an atmosphere changes the weather. That is not news.