The cost of tropical cyclones
If you’re planning to build that dream beach house along the East Coast of the United States, or would like to relocate to the Caribbean, a new study by economists and climate scientists suggests you may want to reconsider. Researchers from MIT and Yale University have found that coastal regions of North America and the Caribbean, as well as East Asia, are most at risk for hurricane damage — a finding that may not surprise residents of such hurricane-prone communities. However, the researchers say by the year 2100, two factors could more than quadruple the economic damages caused by tropical storms in such regions and around the world: growing income and global warming. In a paper published this week in Nature Climate Change, researchers developed a model to predict hurricanes around the world, looking at how hurricane...