HIstoric Cyclones

From the Weather Underground, via Planet Gore.  Please forward this to Al so he can stop embarassing himself.  The twenty deadliest cyclones (that we know about):

Rank:	Name / Areas of Largest Loss:	Year:	Ocean Area:	Deaths:
1	Great Bhola Cyclone, Bangladesh	1970	Bay of Bengal	550,000
2	Hooghly River Cyclone, India and Bangladesh	1737	Bay of Bengal	350,000
3	Haiphong Typhoon, Vietnam	1881	West Pacific	300,000
3	Coringa, India	1839	Bay of Bengal	300,000
5	Backerganj Cyclone, Bangladesh	1584	Bay of Bengal	200,000
6	Great Backerganj Cyclone, Bangladesh	1876	Bay of Bengal	200,000
7	Chittagong, Bangladesh	1897	Bay of Bengal	175,000
8	Super Typhoon Nina, China	1975	West Pacific	171,000
9	Cyclone 02B, Bangladesh	1991	Bay of Bengal	140,000
10	Great Bombay Cyclone, India	1882	Arabian Sea	100,000
11	Hakata Bay Typhoon, Japan	1281	West Pacific	65,000
12	Calcutta, India	1864	Bay of Bengal	60,000
13	Swatlow, China	1922	West Pacific	60,000
14	Barisal, Bangladesh	1822	Bay of Bengal	50,000
15	Sunderbans coast, Bangladesh	1699	Bay of Bengal	50,000
16	Bengal Cyclone, Calcutta, India	1942	Bay of Bengal	40,000
17	Canton, China	1862	West Pacific	37,000
18	Backerganj (Barisal), Bangladesh	1767	Bay of Bengal	30,000
19	Barisal, Bangladesh	1831	Bay of Bengal	22,000
20	Great Hurricane, Lesser Antilles Islands	1780	Atlantic	22,000
21	Devi Taluk, SE India	1977	Bay of Bengal	20,000
21	Great Coringa Cyclone, India	1789	Bay of Bengal	20,000

Oddly uncorrelated with atmospheric temperature or CO2, huh?  In fact, three of the four most recent occured in the seventies, a time known for its cooling.  Two of the top five occured around the period of the little ice age.

One other thought.  I have often asked, vis a vis climate, the question "What is Normal?"  Because of the quality of observation by sattelites, we tend to define normal by what we have observed since about 1979, when the first satellites began gathering relevent global climate data.  For example, when news stories last year said the Arctic sea ice was at "an all time low," they actually meant the lowest point since satellites began observing the ice c.1979.  "All time" meant the last 30 years.  Note that only one of these 22 storms occured in the last 30 years.  By defining "normal" as the last 30 years, we would in this case miss over 95% of the severest storms.  Even defining "noral" as the time since 1900 would cause us to miss 7 of the top 10 storms.

Spot the correlation:  Do you see a correlation in this list?  How about with poverty?  When cyclones hit US low-lying coastal areas and drive flooding up river valleys and deltas (think Katrina) we get a few hundred or at most a couple of thousand deaths, at most.   A tragedy for sure, but Katrina did not even kill 10% of the people killed by the bottom storm on this list.  What is the difference?  Poverty.  From this data table, which option makes more sense:

1. Reduce CO2 and perhaps ocean temperatures by a few tenths of a degree, in the process limiting economic growth and increasing poverty.
2. Burn all the fossil fuels we can on the path to helping people in Bangladesh and China and India become wealthier.

I am sure I know which would save more lives.

Comments

[David Boycott]

Worth bearing in mind as well that the world population is now much higher than in previous years, so it is even more notable that cyclones in the modern era have been comparatively less deadly than in the past.