Narrow Results

This study examines the economic impacts of US hurricanes. The major conclusions are the following: First, there are substantial vulnerabilities to intense hurricanes in the Atlantic coastal United States. Damages appear to rise with the ninth power of maximum wind speed. Second, greenhouse warming is likely to lead to stronger hurricanes, but the evidence on hurricane frequency is unclear. We estimate that the average annual US hurricane damages will increase by $10 billion at 2005 incomes (0.08 percent of GDP) due to global warming. However, this number may be underestimated by current storm models. Third, 2005 appears to have been a quadruple hurricane outlier, involving a record number of North Atlantic tropical cyclones, a large fraction of intense storms, a large fraction of the intense storms making landfall in the United States, and an intense storm hitting the most vulnerable high-value region in the country.

An article by William D. Nordhaus (2010) in this journal examined the economic impacts by hurricanes in the USA, and the potential impacts of climate change on future hurricane damages. His analyses show that hurricane damages normalized over time for changes in GDP have increased significantly since the year 1900, at a rate of about 3.1% per year. Moreover, the results of Nordhaus show that hurricane damages increase with the ninth power of maximum wind speed, which is considerably higher than findings of other studies. We perform similar statistical analyses with different data series of hurricane damage, which are more accurately corrected for changes in exposure of assets over time. Our results do not indicate an upward trend in hurricane losses since 1900, which is in line with earlier studies, and indicates that climate change has not increased hurricane damage in the past. Moreover, although the relation between damage and maximum wind speed appears to be considerably higher than assumed by other studies, this elasticity is more likely to be the eighth-power of maximum wind speed. This finding is relevant since it implies that future climate change impacts on hurricane damage may be considerably lower than Nordhaus indicates.

Understanding the feasibility and cost of adaptation is essential to management of the global climate. Unfortunately, we lack general estimates of adaptive responses to almost all climatological processes. To address this for one phenomenon, we estimate the extent of adaptation to tropical cyclones (TCs) using the global cross-section of countries. We reconstruct every TC observed during 1950–2008 to parameterize countries' TC climate and year-to-year TC exposure. We then look for evidence of adaptation by comparing deaths and damages from physically similar TC events across countries with different TC climatologies. We find that countries with more intense TC climates suffer lower marginal losses from an actual TC event, indicating that adaptation to this climatological risk occurs but that it is costly. Overall, there is strong evidence that it is both feasible and cost-effective for countries with intense TC climatologies to invest heavily in adaptation. However, marginal changes from countries' current TC climates generate persistent losses, of which only ~3% is "adapted away" in the long run.

On 6 September 2017, hurricane Irma made landfall in Sint Maarten causing extensive infrastructural damage and leaving thousands homeless in its aftermath. Despite ongoing relief efforts, the country is still facing a huge recovery task nearly one year on. Amid a new hurricane season, many questions remain about the country’s future and its state of readiness for possible future climate impacts. In response to these concerns, the government of Sint Maarten has recently spearheaded several initiatives supported by the World Bank and the Netherlands, aimed at mobilizing resources to fuel the recovery efforts and build local-level capacity to prepare for future disaster events. These initiatives include several key pieces of legislations and plans that have set out the government’s vision and priorities. For this paper, I draw on these reports along with several key informant interviews conducted in summer 2018 to offer some preliminary insights on Sint Maarten’s post-hurricane situation. More specifically, I explore how ideas around resilience and “building back better”, get mobilized and incorporated in the recovery efforts and plans following Irma, and the particular work these perform both materially and discursively. The paper also highlights the various ways the post-hurricane situation has become a highly contested and politicized post/colonial terrain, fueled largely by the ongoing tensions and power asymmetries between the Netherlands and the Sint Maarten government.

The 2017 hurricane season caused widespread devastation across Central America, the Caribbean and the South-Eastern United States. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria were among the most intense Atlantic hurricanes and the costliest for the Circum-Caribbean region. For the small islands of the Caribbean, the hurricanes highlighted the acute vulnerability to climate change. The scale of physical ruin and level of social dislocation, however, do not just reflect the outcomes of a natural hazard. Continued structural dependency and outright entanglement in colonial relationships complicated recovery and coordination of aid to affected communities across the region. We argue that the experiences and outcomes of hazards like Harvey, Irma and Maria therefore invite examinations of persisting colonial power dynamics in discussions of climate hazard. Using Foucauldian theory for such an examination, we problematize simply championing resilience, without noting the possibilities for its use as a biopolitical regime of governing life. Such an appraisal, we suggest, might clarify a path toward reparations and climate change justice.

Through warming of the oceans, human-induced climate change effects accumulate. The result is higher ocean heat content (OHC), sea levels and sea surface temperatures (SSTs). The resulting environment invigorates tropical cyclones to make them more intense, bigger and longer lasting, and greatly increases their flooding rains. Here, the focus is on Atlantic hurricanes in 2017, featuring Harvey, Irma and Maria, and the huge damage that occurred. Hurricanes keep tropical oceans cooler as a consequence of their strong winds that increase evaporation. Planning for such supercharged hurricanes (adaptation) by increasing resilience (e.g., better building codes, flood protection) and preparing for contingencies (such as evacuation routes, power cuts) is essential but not adequate in many areas, including Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico where Harvey, Irma and Maria took their toll.

Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history and one of the deadliest. In 2006, the University of Southern Mississippi established the Katrina Research Center (KRC) as an multi-disciplinary center for research and education to facilitate the gathering of information on the effects of and recovery from catastrophic natural disasters such as Katrina. The purpose of this case study is to document the creation and development of the Katrina Research Center, including its mission, vision, organizational structure, funding, collection development, community outreach, research and educational activities.

Two case histories dealing with post-disaster investigations are presented. The first one deals with evaluating possible damage to runways at the Galveston Airport on the coast of Texas after Hurricane Ike in 2008. The airport pavements were covered by 6 ft of sea water for more than a day. Continuous pavement deflection profiles measured with the Rolling Dynamic Deflectometer (RDD) were used to evaluate the pavements. The second case history involves investigating soil liquefaction and lateral spreading that occurred in residential areas during the 2010 Darfield, New Zealand Earthquake. Nonintrusive seismic testing with surface waves was used to evaluate shear wave velocity (V_s) profiles at sites of residential damage. The V_s profiles were used to perform a liquefaction triggering analysis and identify the critical soil layers involved.