Chart of the Week: A Storm by Any Other Name
IMF Blog, June 19, 2017
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- Chart of the Week: A Storm by Any Other Name
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: The Editors
- Published: June 19, 2017
Hurricane season and vulnerability
- Hurricane season officially began June 1.
- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s outlook predicts a busy Atlantic hurricane season.
- Hurricanes are the leading cause of natural disasters in the Caribbean, making the region one of the most vulnerable in the world.
- Only 62 percent of disasters caused by hurricanes have recorded data on economic damages.
Relationship between wind speed and damages
- A recent paper examines the relationship between maximum wind speeds and hurricane damages, with the goal of estimating missing damage data for the Caribbean and calculating potential climate change costs.
- The analysis finds that damages in percent of GDP increase by about 3 percent with an increase in wind speed of 1 percent.
- Hurricanes that do not make landfall also leave a trail of damage in the Caribbean economies.
Underreporting of damages
- The new data set shows hurricane damages are considerably underreported, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s.
- Average damages may be three times as large as the reported average of 1.6 percent of GDP per year.
Climate change projections
- Climate change is expected to increase hurricane intensity because warmer sea surface temperatures create favorable conditions for large storms to form and strengthen.
- The data shows average annual hurricane damages in the Caribbean will increase between 22 and 77 percent by the year 2100, in a global warming scenario of high CO2 concentrations and high global temperatures.
2017 seasonal note
- Named storms to watch in 2017 include Hurricanes Arlene, Gert, Franklin, and Ophelia; their potential damage will weigh on people and their countries’ economies.
Source: Chart of the Week: A Storm by Any Other Name (The Editors, June 19, 2017).
Content in this bundle
- Gone with the Wind: Estimating Hurricane and Climate Change Costs in the Caribbean
