Why Hurricanes Are Causing More Damage EVERY YEAR
A few months ago, Hurricane Laura — one of the strongest hurricanes in recent history and the first major hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season — ravaged the Caribbean and the U.S. Gulf Coast. It caused several billion dollars’ worth of damage, and it comes on the heels of a long list of hurricanes, including Harvey, Irma, Maria, Florence, Michael, and Dorian, which are happening more frequently. In all of the 1980s, the total cost of damage caused by hurricane disasters (of which there were six) was $38.2 billion. By comparison, in the past three years alone, the total cost of damages caused by hurricane disasters (of which there were seven) totaled $335 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). All figures are adjusted for the cost of living. This drastic and blatantly obvious increase in the cost of hurricane damages begs the question: What is causing this increase in the cost of damages?
In the 1980s and 1990s, the average was just two. Scientists generally agree that the 50% increase in major hurricanes per year since then is a result of a combination of human-caused climate change and natural warming and cooling cycles that happen every 25–30 years. While they disagree on just how big a part each of those factors plays, the fact of the matter is that both cause rising temperatures in the Northern Atlantic, which in turn create the perfect conditions for hurricanes. When it comes to what is causing the costs of damages to rise, however, there’s more at play than meteorology. As Mark Bove, a meteorologist at the insurance firmMunich Re U.S. put it, people continue to build “stuff in the way” of major hurricanes. And at the same time, the values of all those properties “in the way” are going up. On top of the rising property values, federal disaster policy and flood insurance subsidies encourage people to keep building in risky areas, causing seaside communities to “rise from the ashes” without any sort of new resilience against future storms. An increase in major storm activity without an increase in building storm-resistant communities means a continual increase in costs. The storms most likely aren’t going to stop anytime soon, so instead communities will need to figure out how to withstand them.
Part of the answer is simple — hurricanes are occurring more frequently. The Atlantic currently averages around three major hurricanes per year.
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