Natural Disasters - Forecasting Hurricane Occurrence

Natural Disasters - Forecasting Hurricane Occurrence, Economic and Life Losses

The scaling behavior of hurricanes provides a basis for estimating their size and number.
Of all the natural disasters in the United States, hurricanes account for about two-thirds of the insured property losses. Results of analyses give characteristic fractal-scaling values that reveal two populations of storms: those with sustained wind speeds below about 85 knots, or tropical storms; and those with sustained wind speeds above 85 knots, or hurricanes. A scaling law can be used to make a probabilistic forecast of the frequency of hurricanes of any given size for a city or a region. A typical example is that for the region around Tampa Bay, Florida.

Above - Map showing tracks of the deadliest and costliest hurricanes that occurred in the U.S. between 1900 and 1993. (Data from NOAA). Right - The frequency of Florida hurricanes with wind wpeeds greater than or equal to 100 knots is mapped in terms of the probability of occurrence during a 10, 20, and 30 year exposure window. These probabilistic estimates (right), based on 106 years of observations, illustrate that hurricanes with 100 knot winds occur more frequently in southern Florida, and gradually decrease in frequency towards northern Florida.

[CFCG Home | Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4]

U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, Center for Coastal Geology
This page is: http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricane_forecast/barton3.html
Address questions and comments about this page to: Trent Faust - Webmaster
Updated: 02 October, 2000 @ 10:58 AM (MLM)