Abstract
In this chapter, we demonstrate the existence of environmental signals in property damage losses from hurricanes affecting the United States. The methodology is based on a random sums model, where the number of damaging hurricane events is modeled separately from the amount of damage per event. It is shown that when the springtime north-south surface pressure gradient over the North Atlantic is weaker than normal, the Atlantic ocean is warmer than normal, there is no El Niño event, and sunspots are few, the probability of at least one loss event increases. However, given at least some losses, the magnitude of the damage per annum is correlated only to ocean temperatures in the Atlantic. The magnitude of damage losses at a return period of 50 years is largest under a scenario featuring a warm Atlantic Ocean, a weak North Atlantic surface pressure gradient, El Niño, and few sunspots.
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Acknowledgements
This research is supported by Florida State University’s Catastrophic Storm Risk Management Center, the Risk Prediction Initiative of the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Studies (RPI-08-02-002), and by the U.S. National Science Foundation (ATM-0738172). The views expressed within are those of the authors and do not reflect those of the funding agency.
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Jagger, T.H., Elsner, J.B., Burch, R.K. (2010). Environmental Signals in Property Damage Losses from Hurricanes. In: Elsner, J., Hodges, R., Malmstadt, J., Scheitlin, K. (eds) Hurricanes and Climate Change. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9510-7_6
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