Climatological assessment of recent severe weather events
- Northern Illinois Univ., DeKalb, IL (United States)
A climatological assessment of a series of exceptionally severe and damaging storms during 1991-1994 was pursued to put these events and their frequency and intensity/severity into a temporal perspective. The severe weather events were assessed according to the damage they caused. Insurance-derived measures of property and crop losses due to weather were used in this study; these measures adjust individual storm losses to changing socioeconomic conditions. Two methods were used to assess the events: (1) a comparative analysis of event frequency, losses and intensity with those in the preceding 40 years, and (2) a comparison of temporal variations of the 1949-1994 events with fluctuations in population, cyclonic activity, and temperatures. The results showed that the 1991-1994 property losses ranked high in number and amount of loss. However, storm intensity was found to be higher in the 1950s. The temporal distributions of the catastrophes and crop losses were well related to North American cyclonic activity, and when cyclonic activity, U.S. mean temperatures, and population were combined, they explained 865 of the variability found in the frequency of catastrophes during 1949-1994. The results suggest that, although the severe weather events in 1991-1994 were exceptionally high in frequency and losses, much of the loss was a result of the ever increasing target at risk. 9 refs., 7 figs., 1 tab.
- OSTI ID:
- 535506
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-970207-; TRN: 97:005076-0038
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 77. annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society, Long Beach, CA (United States), 2-7 Feb 1997; Other Information: PBD: 1997; Related Information: Is Part Of Eighth symposium on global change studies; PB: 402 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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