by Indur M. Goklany
Much to my surprise, I heard from NHC’s Dr. Eric Blake today on the fatalities data for hurricanes. I was sure he would take a break to catch his breath after Irene (and before Katia), and since I’m sure the NHC gets no respite during hurricane season. Regardless, I really want to thank him for his prompt response.
He confirmed that the discrepancy between the fatality numbers for 2005 from the 2007 and 2011 versions of the NHC fatalities data is due to a reevaluation of the older data. [I had feared it might be due to a typo.]
Based on this information, I have revised the earlier figure that Anthony published on WUWT. The updated figure follows.
Figure 1: U.S. hurricane deaths and death rates per year, 1900–2010. Death rates are estimated per 100 million population. Sources: Updated from Goklany (2009), using USBC (2011) and Blake et al. (2011).
References
Blake ES, Rappaport EN, Landsea CW. 2007. The Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Hurricanes from 1851 to 2006 (and other Frequently Requested Hurricane Facts), Apr 15, 2007. Available at www.nhc.noaa.gov/Deadliest_Costliest.shtml. Accessed Sep 26, 2009.
Blake ES, Landsea CW, Gibney, E.J. 2011. The Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Hurricanes from 1851 to 2010 (and other Frequently Requested Hurricane Facts), August, 2011. Available at http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/nws-nhc-6.pdf. Accessed 22 August, 2011.
Goklany, IM. 2009. Deaths and Death Rates from Extreme Weather Events: 1900-2008. Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 14: 102-09.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. 2011. Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2011, visited 14 August 2011.
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In 1900,the population of the US was just over 76,000,000 or about a quarter of today’s estimate, and the graph shows a significantly decreasing death toll despite the population growth figure. That would lead me to think that Humanity has shown the resilience to cope with the worst Mother Nature can throw at us.
Don’t bore us with the trivial details & reality, this is a sensational story, lets double the number & add a nought, it will look great in the headlines!!!!! :-)) “OVER 800 DIE IN HURRICANE IRENE DISASTER!” Much better than “Thankfully, only just over 40 deaths caused by floods from tropical storm Irene!”
Give it a few days & we’ll be hearing the usual drone of “whilst no particular weather event can be specifically attributed to Climate Change, this is what computer models have predicted will occurr as a result!” A’la Met Office “some areas will have more floods, some areas will have less floods. Some areas will have more drought, some area will have less drought. Some areas will have more rainfall, some areas will have less rainfall!” Keep covering ALL the bases fellas, then you know you’ll be right. Sarc off! This prediction lark is childs play, literally!
Minus 100? Is it raining babies?
Well it’s obvious that, in the modern era, death rates have gone up, even with modern warning systems. But what does it mean and what is the cause?
It seems to me that the values for 1900 – 1909 should be a lot higher. The estimated number of deathes from the Great Galveston Hurricane on September 8, 1900 range from 6,000 – 8,000. Shouldn’t both the number of deaths and the death rate be increased?
Just to mention something else the green shirts hate: automobiles.
Automobiles provide a way to evacuate large areas quickly and save lives.
Mass transit can’t do that! (Of course automobiles also use less energy that transit buses per passenger-mile, therefore transit DOES NOT SAVE ENERGY OR REDUCE CO2 – but that is a whole other area of greenshirt deception and propaganda.)
Thanks
JK
I think that the cost of climate catastrophe must be corrected for the increase of both population, and wealth. A possible way of doing that is to compare with the cost of earthquakes, that are not supposed to be dependent on climate change (although.. who knows !). But the 2007 AR4 evaluation was dominated by the high cost of 2005 hurricanes. The recent occurrence of powerful and deadly earthquakes (Haiti, Chile, Japan) will for sure considerably impact the “correction factor”. Let’s see if the IPCC will keep the same way of counting the costs of meteorological events ….
I love the Y axis. It starts at -100! So what would constitute a negative death rate? People staying home with no Radio or TV, perhaps?
Aside from that, without the obvious outlier of 1900 – 1910, there would be no trend. If you start in 1940, the trend is up slightly.
How does the total number of deaths also compare to the number of tropicals (unless this graph. Is solely bases on Cat 1 – Cat 5 hurricanes) that have made landfall in the US?
More people, and more people along the coasts, yet fewer deaths. Obviously we’re doing something right. Just think what those numbers would be like if there was a 50-mile “no build” zone along the coasts.
(“Shhh… H.R.! Don’t even think that! Some do-gooder in Washington might think it’s a great idea.”)
Also, I think perhaps later numbers may be inflated as the earlier numbers probably counted only drowned and/or mangled bodies while newer numbers include some such as a 104-years old lady dying because the oxygen pump went out when hurricane interrupted electricity.
It’s probably “better than we thought.”
A great graph — I’ll use it in a talk
I anticipate we are in for a stormy decade. Not because of global warming, but because of imbalances in the system as the ocean cools due to the sleepy sun.
I wonder how many people were killed through jaywalking over the same period?
H.R. says:
September 1, 2011 at 3:06 amAlso, I think perhaps later numbers may be inflated as the earlier numbers probably counted only drowned and/or mangled bodies while newer numbers include some such as a 104-years old lady dying because the oxygen pump went out when hurricane interrupted electricity.
Don’t forget, these “good guys” will use every available statistic they can to boost disaster. remember that here in the UK, as it may well have been in the USA, the medical profession et al boosted “premature deaths” from active & passive smoking by including people dying in their 70s & 80s!!!!!!!
It seems, despite their best efforts to inflate the numbers the “death toll” angle just isn’t working for the CAGW cult and MSM. Diane Sawyer’s recent prattling about “the body bags” was sheer idiocy, as well as a blatant attempt at sensationalism.
So now, their main focus will apparently be the number of “billion-dollar” disasters. For that scheme, they play a little shell game, purporting to show that those billion dollars have been inflation-adjusted. To do that, they add all the figures together for a previous period, the 70’s, say, then do the same for the most recent decade, and inflation-adjust the earlier decade. Fine and dandy. Voila, the numbers go up because population centers have gotten bigger, and people are building more in flood-prone areas. Who’d have thought? Now for the shell game. They count the number of billion-dollar+ disasters from both periods, but do they inflation-adjust those billion dollars? No. The goal is to show that the number of billion-dollar disasters has increased, and surprise, surprise, they have.
Why is the death rate normalized by US population? Surely it should be calculated in terms of the population in the affected areas only, namely Gulf Coast & East Coast.
It should be noted that the deaths in the chart are in thousands. Confused me at first until I looked at the paper.
Brilliant
A linear curve fit to something that obviosly is not linear.
Well done!
Tallbloke September 1, 2011 at 4:01 am
Well done in getting that in before AGW provides the stormy decade!
The Y axis should be logarithmic. We are dealing with extreme values that can never be negative. The distribution should not be expected to be linear and the linear trend is meaningless.
Does anybody have any data on whether hurricanes might actually “save” lives in the sense that there is less driving, less in public drinking, less crime, etc.? Katrina obviously is an outlier.
H.R. I have a sneaking suspicion that your guess about inflated numbers is dead on. The other thing I can think of is… increasing American stupidity (people not getting the French out) aka Those Stupid Surfers Effect… all the people who didn’t evacuate during Katrina… in other words, back when people actually listened to things like “Mandatory Evacuation”.
Why is the last column for 2000-2010 and not 2000- 2009 as all the other results are?
I understand there were deaths on the roads of people following evacuation orders.
Are those deaths blamed on tropical storm Irene?
@Mikea The problems with the deaths isn’t because of “global warming” or “climate change”- it’s up to the people to take appropriate actions- take for example the stage collapse a few weeks back- a severe t-storm watch was issued for the region hours before this happened- severe t-storm warnings were issued west of the region and as this moved east there was lightning in the area, severe t-storm warnings were issued the idiots in charge didn’t shutdown the program, the people refused to leave even when there was lightning in the area and an omminous sky loomed over the region- look what happened-the stage collapsed- deaths that SHOULD have been prevented
A plot of the logs of death rate gives an R^2 of 0.618.