Tuesday, November 27, 2018

It's Getting Better All the Time

New paper shows no climate trend in hurricane damage losses in the United States
Dr. Roger Pielke Junior writes:

Our major update to the CONUS normalized hurricane loss dataset has now been published, after several years of effort and an intensive review process by Nature Sustainability.

Weinkle et al. 2018.Normalized hurricane damage in the continental United States 1900–2017, Nature Sustainability. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-018-0165-2
Abstract.

Direct economic losses result when a hurricane encounters an exposed, vulnerable society. A normalization estimates direct economic losses from a historical extreme event if that same event was to occur under contemporary societal conditions. Under the global indicator framework of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the reduction of direct economic losses as a proportion of total economic activity is identified as a key indicator of progress in the mitigation of disaster impacts. Understanding loss trends in the context of development can therefore aid in assessing sustainable development. This analysis provides a major update to the leading dataset on normalized US hurricane losses in the continental United States from 1900 to 2017. Over this period, 197 hurricanes resulted in 206 landfalls with about US$2 trillion in normalized (2018) damage, or just under US$17 billion annually. Consistent with observed trends in the frequency and intensity of hurricane landfalls along the continental United States since 1900, the updated normalized loss estimates also show no trend. A more detailed comparison of trends in hurricanes and normalized losses over various periods in the twentieth century to 2017 demonstrates a very high degree of consistency.

And hurricane frequency is not changing either.


And world wide, weather related losses are decreasing as a function of GNP


But every time a hurricane occurs, the media rushes to blame global warming, and Donald Trump.

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