Rabett Does Hurricanes

Trends in hurricane damage are a sore spot hereabouts.  The problem is three fold, first the absolute damage varies wildly from storm to storm.  Second, the most studied storms are the ones that make landfall in the US, which are thankfully few and far between.  Third, there is no good way of accounting for many things that would mitigate damage such as early warning of storms from satellites, evacuation measures, higher standards for construction and more.

These thoughts were reinforced a couple of weeks ago talking to Eli Lehrer from R Street at a debate held in DC between Lehrer and Bob Inglis on one side and James Taylor (Heartland) and David Kreutzer,(Heritage) about how to deal with climate change.  As promised, more about that later.  Lehrer said that it was not possible to tease any meaningful trend out of his database for hurricanes.

Ethon has been thinking about this for a while, and it finally occurred to him that there was one unfortunate place in hurricane alley that might provide enough data, Hispanola, a large island in the Caribbean with two countries, the Dominican Republic and Haiti (bunnies might also toss in Cuba on one side and Puerto Rico on the other).  The NOAA historical hurricane track site can be used to see where hurricanes and tropical storms have passed

And population and GDP information is available from the Maddison Historical Statistics website.  Part of the reason for looking at Hispanola is that population in the DR and Haiti are about equal over the 1950-2012 time period while GDP per capita in the DR has steadily grown from $1400 (constant 1990 $) to about $5500 in 2011, in Haiti, per capita GDP remained constant  at about $1000 till ~1990, and since then has declined to  about $700.

Eli is but a poor bunny, and all he could do is troll the Wikipedia for the number of storm deaths.

Storm	Year	Hati	DR
Hazel	1954	400	0
Kati	1955	7	0
Ella	1958	30	0
Flora	1963	5000	400
Cleo	1964	192	7
Inez	1966	750	100
Beulah	1967		2
David	1979	0	2000
Allen	1980	220	7
Emily	1987	5	3
Gilbert	1988	30	5
Gordon	1994	1122	5
Hortense	1996		39
Georges	1998	209	380
Lili	2002	4	0
Odette	2003		8
Jeanne	2004	3006	18
Alpha	2005	17	9
Wilma	2005	12	0
Ernesto	2006	5	0
Noel	2007	73	87
Olga	2007	2	37
Dean	2007	9	6
Gustav	2008	77	8
Hanna	2008	529	1
Ike	2008	74	2
Thomas	2010	21	0
Sandy	2012	52	2
Isaac	2012	24	5
Irene	2011	6	9
1950-2011		11876	3140
2011-2000		3911	192
2005-1995		4358	459
2000-1990		1331	424

If the Rabett looks at the number of killer storms per decade 

1950-59	3
1960-69	4
1970-79	1
1980-89	3
1990-99	3
2000-09	12
2010-12	3

Suggestive that something is going on in hurricane alley.

What this needs, of course, is a serious study with more information about $ damages, numbers of houses destroyed, evacuations and storm tracks.  Including eastern Cuba and Puerto Rico would help as can be seen from the graph showing GDPs below.

To be honest, and Eli is always honest, all this is suggestive that more work might be worthwhile.

Volunteers?