🧵 @MunichRe today published their estimates for natural disaster losses in 2021, allowing me to update the time series of global disaster losses as a proportion of global GDP
This thread reports and discusses this update
TL;DR --> Figure below
Munich Re reports ~$270B in total weather and climate disasters losses for 2021, which is 0.28% global GDP
And here is an update of North American losses as a pct of GDP based on an estimate of 2021 from Munich Re
Note: 2020 and 2021 losses were about the same in dollars, but decreased as a pct GDP because GDP increased 2020 to 2021
Methodological note:
Reporting of insured losses are largely consistent across companies, for regulatory reasons
Reporting of total losses are not consistent
eg.
Swiss Re reports $233B in total wx/cx losses for 2021 & Munich Re reports $270B
These numbers are much squishier
Elephant in the room:
Reinsurance companies have incentives to over-report total losses (i.e., not insured) because that supports their business aims -- the different between insured and total is called the "insurance gap" & explains why the world needs to buy more insurance
I discussed some of the methodological shenanigans in disaster loss accounting here: forbes.com/sites/rogerpie…
In general @MunichRe@SwissRe have done a good job in reporting disaster losses over decades, but it is probably time for independent evaluation of their proprietary data
Here is a time series of insured vs total losses from @SwissRe suggesting that the "insurance gap" has been slowly closing
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"Spotting is an influential form of wildfire spread whereby firebrands (i.e. burning pieces of vegetation or other combustible materials) are blown into unburnt fuels and ignite separate new ‘spot fire'"
Storey et al. 2020 publish.csiro.au/WF/pdf/WF19124
Albini, F. A. (1983). Potential spotting distance from wind-driven surface fires (Vol. 309). US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. frames.gov/documents/beha…
This is an incredibly interesting paper:
Pitts, W. M. (1991). Wind effects on fires. Progress in Energy and Combustion Science, 17(2), 83-134. doi.org/10.1016/0360-1…
I'm see frequent claims by scientists that Colorado Marshall fire can be attributed to human-caused climate change but little data/analysis
I'm looking at actual data to try to understand such claims
Here is Dec precip in Boulder 1893 to 2021
No long-term trend, increase >1990
Grasses, such as those of the Marshall Mesa open space are what are called "one hour fuels" meaning that "Fuel moisture in these fuels can change within one hour according to factors such as temperature, rain, humidity and shade" noble.org/news/publicati…
To attribute fire in Boulder to human-caused climate change requires
(a) establishing trend in conditions of "one-hour fuels" leading to greater flammability on climate time scales (>30yrs)
(b) attributing that trend to human-caused CC
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Sitting White House official edits a paper for PNAS
Paper is used by that official to advocate policy b4 Congress
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