Tropical Cyclone Histories and Society, Testing Two Hypotheses

Keywords: hurricanes, typhoon, climate and society, historical climatology
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 16

Abstract

This paper assesses long-term relationships between tropical cyclone variability and societal hypotheses of climate lessening and catastrophe. The lessening hypothesis states that society can lessen minor climate stress through time but increased technology and social organization raise catastrophe probability (Bowden et al. 1981). This study focuses on 4 areas where continuous robust historical tropical cyclone reconstructions extend over 250 years ago: South Carolina, Louisiana, Southern New England, and Hong Kong. Historical tropical cyclone reconstructions are based on primary data from thousands of storm accounts, mostly at detailed hourly resolution. They were extracted from plantation/personal diaries, newspapers, ship logbooks, and old weather maps. Storms were classified broadly into categories of major hurricane, category 1-2 hurricanes, and tropical storms. Fatalities were tabulated on individual storms with prominent societal impact as a basic indicator of storm impact through time. Results reveal that lessening is strongly evident in the Hong Kong record, and less evident in the South Carolina and Louisiana records. The catastrophe aspect is evident in the Hong Kong and Louisiana records. The New England record does not have any evident signal of catastrophe or lessening, likely due to its infrequent impacts from major hurricanes. This long-term approach offers a useful means to broadly assess long-term hurricane and society relationships, but should be conducted similar to other regions with continuous historical records (e.g. Jamaica), as well as incorporate other paleotempestology proxies, to reach more comprehensive insight on how the relationships vary between different regions.