Study: Climate change adding billions to U.S. hurricane costs

Doyle Rice | USA TODAY

The cost of U.S. hurricane damage has increased dramatically from 1900 to 2005 as a result of man-made climate change, an economic study released Monday concludes.

"The rise in losses is consistent with an influence of global warming on the number and intensity of hurricanes, an influence which may have accounted for 2% to 12% of the U.S. hurricane losses in 2005," according to the study, which was published in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature Geoscience.

In 2005 alone, climate change was likely responsible for close to $14 billion of additional damage, including devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.

The study claims that the extra costs in recent decades do not just stem from more homes, businesses and infrastructure that have been built near the coastlines. "Increases in wealth and population alone cannot account for the observed trend in hurricane losses," according to the study, whose lead author is Francisco Estrada, an economist at Mexico's National Autonomous University.

Estrada and two colleagues from Europe said that this unexplained increase in economic losses over time is consistent with a climate change signal.

One scientist who has written extensively about U.S. costs from weather damage said the study is flawed.



University of Colorado's Roger Pielke, who was not involved in the study, said it should have included hurricane damage data from just the past 10 years (2006-2015), which have been quiet for hurricane activity. He said it's "misleading" to end an analysis with the "exceptional" hurricane year of 2005.



"The period 2006-2015 has been well below average in terms of damage and U.S. hurricanes,” Pielke said in an email to USA TODAY. “It is shocking that they did not include this further data."

He also said that U.S. hurricanes have not become more common or more intense, based on long-term data from 1900 to the present.

Another expert, meteorologist Steve Bowen of global reinsurance firm Aon Benfield, said "the study seems to use a reasonable approach to determine the results."

Since 1960, Bowen said, economic losses from natural disasters as a percentage of the U.S. economy have largely been flat.

"From my perspective," he added, "it is always healthy for there to be robust conversation within the scientific research community to challenge conventional thinking to better understand any trends that we’re seeing."