Saturday, September 03, 2005
Magazine - Why Weather is Getting Deadlier�and Costlier - FORTUNE - Page
To some researchers, Katrina looks like a harbinger of much more catastrophic weather to come.
By David Stipp
Friday, September 2, 2005
To New Orleans residents, Hurricane Katrina must seem like an incredibly bad piece of meteorological luck that could only happen once in a lifetime. But to many climate researchers, it looks like a harbinger of things to come—with catastrophic regularity—as the world's atmosphere heats up.
In fact, less than a month before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Kerry Emanuel published a portentous paper in the journal Nature that illustrated how hurricanes' destructive potential has risen dramatically over the past few decades, in tandem with global warming. And a few weeks before Emanuel's paper, the Association of British Insurers issued an equally ominous report on the growing financial risks posed by extreme weather events due to global warming. It predicted that the U.S. may suffer losses from single hurricanes of up to $150 billion. (To put that in perspective, Hurricane Andrew racked up losses of about $30 billion when it slammed Florida and Louisiana in 1992.)
By David Stipp
Friday, September 2, 2005
To New Orleans residents, Hurricane Katrina must seem like an incredibly bad piece of meteorological luck that could only happen once in a lifetime. But to many climate researchers, it looks like a harbinger of things to come—with catastrophic regularity—as the world's atmosphere heats up.
In fact, less than a month before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Kerry Emanuel published a portentous paper in the journal Nature that illustrated how hurricanes' destructive potential has risen dramatically over the past few decades, in tandem with global warming. And a few weeks before Emanuel's paper, the Association of British Insurers issued an equally ominous report on the growing financial risks posed by extreme weather events due to global warming. It predicted that the U.S. may suffer losses from single hurricanes of up to $150 billion. (To put that in perspective, Hurricane Andrew racked up losses of about $30 billion when it slammed Florida and Louisiana in 1992.)
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