The human ecology of climate change - Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects - page 412

The greater activity largely results from increases in sea-surface temperature that,
the researchers note, has associated costs in terms of human well-being and property
damage.
In 2008 Richard Allan and Brian J. Soden used satellite observations and model
simulations to examine the response of tropical precipitation events to naturally driven
changes in surface temperature and atmospheric moisture content. These observations
revealed a distinct link between rainfall extremes and temperature, with heavy rain
events increasing during warm periods and decreasing during cold periods. Indeed, the
observed amplification of rainfall extremes was found to be larger than that predicted
by models, implying that projections of future changes in rainfall extremes in response
to anthropogenic global warming may have been underestimated previously.
The annual cost (in 1999) for the USA from cyclone damage was of the order of
US$5 billion, but this is expected to rise in future years with increased population
and wealth. It has been estimated that if the hurricanes of 1925 had happened in the
wealthier and more populous 1990s, instead of a few billion dollars, the cost would
have been some $75 billion after adjustment for inflation. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch
killed at least 10 000 people in Central America, while the average economic loss
in the Philippines was estimated at some 5% of gross national product (Bengtsson,
2001).
Floods have taken place throughout human history. Noah's flood and similar stories
that might date from prehistory appear to relate to the flooding of the Black Sea,
which itself arose due to sea-level rise following the last glacial maximum (LGM)
and the onset of the current Holocene interglacial. Furthermore, there has always
been tension between the human desire to exploit the fertility of the floodplains of
the world's greatest rivers and the fact that floodplains (by definition) flood.
In the late 20th century the floods of the upper Mississippi in the summer of 1993,
the winter floods in December 1993 and January 1995 of the Rhine and Bangladesh's
chronic flood problem all served to illustrate the material costs and costs to human
well-being. The 1993 Mississippi flood had an estimated cost of $15 billion but only a
small death toll, of 48 people. Following that flood there was concern expressed over
the way the river watershed was managed and the flood-control measures that were in
place, but irrespectively that flood was due to an extreme weather event following a
season of exceptional snow in Iowa and the 1993 precipitation record was the greatest
since records began in 1895. Both the 1993 and 1995 floods of the Rhine were also
due to extreme weather events and parts of the region in 1993 had three times the
average rainfall in December. The cost of the flood in Germany alone was around
US$850 million in the money of the day. However, in 1993 lessons were learned so
when in 1995 there were floods again, the damage costs were halved. Even so, there
was disruption and in The Netherlands some 200 000 people were evacuated from
their homes for safety. In England and Wales instrumental measurements have shown
that between 1765 and 1995 there was a slight decrease in the intensity of winter
drought years accompanied by a similar increase in the intensity of years with high
winter rainfall, with average rainfall also increasing by about 17% (Osborn et al.,
2000). This trend is what is expected in that region with climatic warming. However,
in the case of Bangladesh there is no historic meteorological evidence of increased
rainfall (although future projections tell a different story) but deforestation in the