In 2021, there were 68 fatalities due to hurricanes reported in the United States. Since the beginning of the century, the highest number of fatalities was recorded in 2005, when four major hurricanes – including Hurricane Katrina – resulted in 1,518 deaths.
The worst hurricanes in U.S. history
Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall in August 2005, ranked as the third deadliest hurricane in the U.S. since records began. Affecting mainly the city of New Orleans and its surroundings, the category 3 hurricane caused an estimated 1,500 fatalities. Katrina was also the costliest tropical cyclone to hit the U.S. in the past seven decades, with damages amounting to roughly 186 billion U.S. dollars. Hurricanes Harvey and Maria, both of which made landfall in 2017, ranked second and third, resulting in damage costs of 149 and 107 billion dollars, respectively.
How are hurricanes classified?
According to the Saffir-Simpson scale, hurricanes can be classified into five categories, depending on their maximum sustained wind speed. Most of the hurricanes that have made landfall in the U.S. since 1851 are category 1, the mildest of the five. Hurricanes rated category 3 or above are considered major hurricanes and can cause devastating damage. In 2021, there were 38 hurricanes recorded across the globe, of which 17 were major hurricanes.
Hurricane Katrina, which hit Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi in 2005, was the deadliest hurricane recorded in mainland United States since 1951. It had a death toll of nearly 1,400 fatalities. Meanwhile, hurricane Helene, which hit the Southeastern United States in September 2024, was the second deadliest to make landfall in the continental U.S. this century.
In 2023, storms caused nearly 15,000 deaths across the globe. the third-largest figure recorded since 1990. In the past three decades, the highest annual deathtoll due to storms was registered in 1991, when storm events were responsible for the death of more than 146 thousand people worldwide. That year, a massive cyclone hit Bangladesh, becoming one of the deadliest storms of the century. The death count due to storms was also remarkably high in 2008, mainly associated with a cyclone which hit Myanmar in May.
During the start of the current decade, the number of reported deaths due to tropical cyclones worldwide amounted to 2,670. The 10-year period with the highest recorded figures was between 2000 and 2009, where 167,300 deaths were reported due to tropical cyclones. Since 1970, almost 800 thousand deaths due to cyclones have been registered across the globe. Meanwhile, the number of tropical cyclones globally has increased continuously in the past half a century.
The category 4 hurricane that made landfall in Galveston, Texas in 1900 was the deadliest to hit the United States, with a death toll estimated between 8,000 and 12,000. Since 1970, only one U.S. hurricane – namely Katrina, which hit in 2005 – made the ranking, with about 1,200 deaths.
On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico, leaving widespread destruction in its path. The official death count for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria was 64 excess deaths, but that controversial death toll has been debated by a number of academic and independent researcher journalists. With the loss of electrical power and telecommunication systems for much of the island, it was unclear how many deaths in Puerto Rico were an immediate result of Hurricane Maria's destruction as opposed to the access to care conditions that prolonged. Santos-Burgoa et al. applied a time-series analysis of the Puerto Rico Vital Statistics data to estimate the death count over time. To consider how many people died as opposed to emigrated away from Puerto Rico, two counterfactual assumptions were used, a Census-based scenario and a Displacement-based scenario for expected population change. Under the Census scenario and the Displacement scenario, the estimated death counts in Puerto Rico was approximately 1200 deaths and 3000 deaths, respectively, where the Displacement scenario was acclaimed as the preferred model.
Due to copy-right issues, the article and supplementary materials should be accessed at the source website. Please use the following reference citation and doi to redirect there: Santos-Burgoa C, Sandberg J, Suárez E, Goldman-Hawes A, Zeger S, Garcia-Meza A, Pérez CM, Estrada-Merly N, Colón-Ramos U, Nazario CM, Andrade E. Differential and persistent risk of excess mortality from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico: a time-series analysis. The Lancet Planetary Health. 2018 Nov 1;2(11):e478-88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(18)30209-2
In 2023, there were 45 hurricanes registered worldwide, up from 45 hurricanes a year earlier. This was nevertheless below the average of 47 hurricanes per year registered from 1990 to 2022. The years of 1992 and 2018 tied as the most active in the indicated period, each with 59 hurricanes recorded. The Pacific Northwest basin recorded the largest number of hurricanes in 2023.
Most exposed countries to hurricanes With the Pacific Northwest basin being one of the most active for hurricanes in the world , there is perhaps no surprise that Japan was the country most exposed to tropical cyclones in 2023. It was followed by the Philippines, also a West Pacific nation. Meanwhile, the Bahamas was the most exposed country in the Atlantic Ocean and ranked third most exposed worldwide during the same year.
Effects of tropical cyclones From 1970 to 2019, almost 800,000 deaths due to tropical cyclones have been reported worldwide. In the past decade, the number of such casualties stood at some 19,600, the lowest decadal figure in the last half-century . In contrast to the lower number of deaths, economic losses caused by tropical cyclones has continuously grown since 1970, reaching a record high of more than 570 billion U.S. dollars from 2010 to 2019.
https://doi.org/10.4121/resource:terms_of_usehttps://doi.org/10.4121/resource:terms_of_use
In order to analyse the causes and circumstances of the fatalities due to hurricane Harvey (2017), a database of reported fatalities was compiled. Information about the victim (age, gender) and the circumstances of death (location, date, cause and circumstances of death) were included. The database is limited to fatalities that occurred within the first two weeks after landfall in Texas (August 25 - September 8, 2017) and that were directly relatable to hurricane Harvey. The dataset was compiled using both official government sources and media sources.
BACKGROUND: This descriptive finding examines excess deaths following Hurricane María, in Puerto Rico for September and October 2017. OBJECTIVE: We seek to determine the degree of excess deaths in Puerto Rico based on historical patterns of variability in deaths by month for the 2010-2016 period and using estimation techniques. METHODS: Data for this study come from death records from the Puerto Rico Vital Statistics system. We aggregated data by month and year (2010-2016) and produced means (expected deaths) and 95% confidence intervals (C.I., or patterns of variability) for each month. Using public statements from the Puerto Rico Department of Public Safety, we estimate the number of deaths for September and October 2017 and compare it to the level of expected deaths considering the pattern of variability. RESULTS: Expected deaths for September and October were 2,383 (95% C.I. 2,296-2,469) and 2,428 (95% C.I. 2,380 - 2,476), respectively. Estimates for total deaths, for September and October 2017 were 2,987 (95% CI 2,900-3,074) and 3,043 (95% C.I. 2,995-3,091), respectively. The difference between our estimates and the upper 95% CI for the average deaths is 518 deaths for September and 567 deaths for October. CONCLUSIONS: The mortality burden may higher than official counts, and may exceed the current official death toll by a factor of 10 or more.
The Global Cyclone Mortality Risks and Distribution is a 2.5 minute grid of global cyclone mortality risks. Gridded Population of the World, Version 3 (GPWv3) data provide a baseline estimation of population per grid cell from which to estimate potential mortality loss. Mortality loss estimates per hazard event are calculated using regional, hazard-specific mortality records of the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) that span the 20 years between 1981 and 2000. Data regarding the frequency and distribution of cyclone hazard are obtained from the Global Cyclone Hazard Frequency and Distribution data set. In order to more accurately reflect the confidence associated with the data and procedures, the potential mortality estimate range is classified into deciles, 10 classes of an approximately equal number of grid cells, providing a relative estimate of cyclone-based mortality risks. This data set is the result of collaboration among the Columbia University Center for Hazards and Risk Research (CHRR), International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank, and Columbia University Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN).
Wind disturbance profoundly shapes temperate forests but few studies have evaluated patterns and mechanisms of long-term forest dynamics following major windthrows. In 1990, we initiated a large hurricane simulation experiment in a 0.8 ha manipulation (pulldown) and 0.6 ha control area of a maturing Quercus rubra-Acer rubrum forest in New England. We toppled 276 trees in the pulldown, using a winch and cable, in the northwesterly direction of natural treefall from major hurricanes. Eighty percent of canopy trees and two-thirds of all trees greater than 5 cm dbh suffered direct and indirect damage. We used twenty years of measurements to evaluate the trajectory and mechanisms of forest response after intense disturbance. Based on the patch size and disturbance magnitude, we expected pioneer tree and understory species to drive succession. The first decade of analyses emphasized tree seedling establishment and sprouting by damaged trees as the dominant mechanisms of forest recovery in this extensive damaged area. However, despite 80% canopy damage and 8000 m2 patch size, surviving overstory and advance regeneration controlled longer-term forest development. Residual oaks make up 42% of stand basal area after 20 years. The new cohort of trees, dominated by black birch advance regeneration, contributes 30% of stand basal area. There were shifts in understory vegetation composition and cover, but few species were gained or lost after 20 years. Stand productivity rebounded quickly (litterfall recovered to pre-disturbance levels in six years), but we predict that basal area in the pulldown will lag behind the control (which gained 6 m2/ha over 20 years) for decades to come. This controlled experiment showed that although the scale and intensity of damage were great, abundant advance regeneration, understory vegetation, and damaged trees remained, allowing the forest to resist changes in ecosystem processes and invasion by new species.
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Dataset of tweets about Hurricane Sandy which was the most destructive hurricane in United States history with more than 230 deaths and 75 billion of damages. This dataset were collected from 29th October 2012 to 31st October 2012 using the 3 keywords: “sandy”, “hurricane” and “storm”.This is a cleaned version of the former dataset (sandy_full) in which we filtered through a classification algorithm non-topically related tweets as explained in our paper.In accordance with Twitter's Terms of Service, we only provide identifiers of tweets. In order to "hydrate" those tweet identifiers, or in other words, to collect the actual tweets, you could use our Tweeset tool.https://bitbucket.org/amjedbj/tweeset.If you would like to use this dataset, please cite our paper:Lynda Tamine, Laure Soulier, Lamjed Ben Jabeur, Frederic Amblard, Chihab Hanachi, Gilles Hubert, and Camille Roth. 2016. Social Media-Based Collaborative Information Access: Analysis of Online Crisis-Related Twitter Conversations. In Proceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (HT '16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 159-168. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2914586.2914589
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By December 2017, the official death toll in Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria was set at 64 excess deaths. To verify the validity of this death count, a study by Kishore et al used a community-based survey sampling method to compute an empirical measurement of the death count. The study sampled from approximately 3000 households, then compared the estimated deaths with the vital statistics data from 2016 through the end of December 2017. The study method estimated 4645 excess deaths with a 95% confidence interval from 793 to 8498 potential excess deaths. These estimated excess mortality shows a markedly high estimate with a wide confidence interval, but despite these issues the estimates do indicate that the official death tool is a significantly underestimate of the realistic excess deaths in the population.
Due to copy-right permissions, the article should be accessed at the source website. Please use the following reference citation and doi to redirect there: Kishore N, Marqués D, Mahmud A, Kiang MV, Rodriguez I, Fuller A, Ebner P, Sorensen C, Racy F, Lemery J, Maas L. Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. New England journal of medicine. 2018 Jul 12;379(2):162-70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsa1803972
In 2024, there were roughly 18,100 reported fatalities caused by natural disaster events worldwide. This was well below the 21st-century average and significantly lower than the fatalities recorded in 2023, which were driven by the earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria on February and became the deadliest catastrophes in 2023, with nearly 60,000 reported deaths. Economic losses due to natural disasters The economic losses due to natural disaster events worldwide amounted to about 368 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. Although figures in recent years have remained mostly stable, 2011 remains the costliest year to date. Among the different types of natural disaster events, tropical cyclones caused the largest economic losses across the globe in 2024. What does a natural disaster cost? Hurricane Katrina has been one of the costliest disasters in the world, costing the insurance industry some 102 billion U.S. dollars. The resilience of societies against catastrophes have been boosted by insurance industry payouts. Nevertheless, insurance payouts are primarily garnered by industrialized countries. In emerging and developing regions, disaster insurance coverage is still limited, despite the need for improved risk management and resilience as a method to mitigate the impact of disasters and to promote sustainable growth.
Recurrent tropical cyclones frequently influence warm temperate forests in many coastal regions. If resistance to high winds (cyclone survival) and resilience in altered environments (post-cyclone recruitment) vary with cyclone intensity, then differences in composition, arboreal structure and dynamics of forests should occur in these forests. We hypothesized that major tropical cyclones should produce large, stratum-dependent effects that result in large environmental changes. We anticipate direct regeneration, with post-cyclone forests resembling pre-cyclone forests in composition, but potentially shifting to long-transient alternate states that do not readily or necessarily return to pre-cyclone states. Using a long-term, plot-based study, we explored direct effects of major Hurricane Katrina (sustained winds >50m/sec), as well as initial post-hurricane changes in overstory and understory trees in oak-dominated bottomland and cypress/tupelo-dominated swamp forests within the Missi...
https://www.bco-dmo.org/dataset/750060/licensehttps://www.bco-dmo.org/dataset/750060/license
These files contain data that support an analysis of the effects of two major hurricanes on coral reefs that have been extensively studied for more than three decades. Major tropical storms are destructive phenomena with large effects on the community dynamics of multiple biomes. On coral reefs, their impacts have been described for decades, leading to the expectation that future storms should have effects similar to those recorded in the past. This expectation relies on the assumption that storm intensities will remain unchanged, and the impacted coral reef communities are similar to those of the recent past; neither assumption is correct. These data support a study quantifying the effects of two category five hurricanes on the reefs of St. John, US Virgin Islands, where 31 y of time-series analyses reveal chronic coral mortality, increasing macroalgal abundance, and five major hurricanes that caused acute coral mortality. Contextualized by these trends, the effects of the most recent storms, Hurricanes Irma and Maria (September 2017), on coral cover were modest. While mean absolute coral cover declined 1\u20134% depending on site, these effects were not statistically discernable. Following decades of increasing abundance of macroalgae, this functional group responded to the recent hurricanes with large increases in abundance on both absolute and relative scales. Decades of chronic mortality have changed the coral assemblages of St. John to create degraded communities that are resistant to severe storms. access_formats=.htmlTable,.csv,.json,.mat,.nc,.tsv acquisition_description=Photoquadrats at Yawzi Point and Tektite were recorded using cameras attached to a framer that held them perpendicular to the reef. A Nikonos V (35-mm format) was used from 1987-1999, and digital cameras thereafter, with 3.3 MP resolution from 2000\u20132006, 6.1 MP from 2006\u20132010, 12.1 MP in 2011, 16.2 from 2012\u20132015, and 36.3 MP from 2016\u2013present. Cameras were fitted with a strobe (Nikonos SB 105) and the images resolved objects \u2265 1-cm diameter.
The analyses at Yawzi Point and Tektite were augmented in 1992 with six additional sites that were selected using random coordinates constrained to hard substrata. This sampling focused on a habitat where boulders and cliffs of igneous rock are common, mean coral cover has remained < 5%, and\u00a0Orbicella annularis\u00a0has not been common since at least 1992. Five sites are at 9-m depth, with one at 7-m depth (RS9), and they have been recorded annually. These sites serve as replicates of reefs between Cabritte Horn and White Point, and are analyzed as the pooled random sites (PRS). Results from 1995 (May) and 1996 (May) are used to evaluate the effects of Hurricanes Luis and Marilyn, and from 2017 (July and November) to evaluate the effects of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Each site consists of a permanently marked transect at a constant depth that was 20-m long from 1992\u20131999 (n ~ 18 photoquadrats site-1), but was extended to 40 m in 2000 when digital photography was implemented (n ~ 40 photoquadrats site-1). Photoquadrats (0.5 \u00d7 0.5 m) were recorded at random positions along each transect (and re- randomized annually) using cameras (as described above) attached to a framer that held them perpendicular to the reef. Cameras were attached to two strobes (Nikonos SB 105), and resolved objects to at least 5-mm diameter.
Photoquadrats were analyzed by overlaying them with a grid of 200 randomly- located dots and identifying the substratum beneath each dot. Images were analyzed manually prior to 2005, from 2005\u20132011 using CPCe software, and from 2012 to present, using CoralNet software with manual annotations. With this approach, the abundance of each substratum type is defined by the total number of dots that occur on top of it in each image, and when expressed as a percentage of the dot population on each image, provides a measure of percentage cover (hereafter \u201ccover\u201d) (Menge 1976). Two resolutions were applied to the analyses, first to resolve three functional groups (FG), coral (combined cover of scleractinians), macroalgae (algae \u2265 1-cm high, mostly\u00a0Halimeda, Lobophora, Padina, and\u00a0Dictyota), and a combined category of crustose coralline algae, algal turf, and bare space (CTB). Second, scleractinians were resolved to the lowest taxonomic level possible, which was genera at Yawzi Point and Tektite, and a combination of species and genera at the PRS.
In addition to the hurricanes described herein, St. John also was impacted by Hurricane Lenny on 17 November 1999 (Table S1). However, underwater damage attributed to this storm was minor, probably due to the modest local wind speeds (150 km h-1), and propagation of damaging waves east and south that reduced their impacts on the southern shore of St. John. The effects of Hurricane Lenny are not considered in the present analysis. Given the vagaries of fieldwork extending over 31 Years, it was not possible to standardize the timing of sampling that took place before and after each storm episode. Sampling took place 6 weeks after Hurricane Hugo, 8 months after Hurricane Luis, and 9 weeks after Hurricane Maria. Sampling after the two most recent storms was comparable to sampling after Hurricane Hugo with regards to the delay following the storms and, therefore, probably quantified mostly coral mortality directly attributable to physical damage, and blooms of macroalgae commensurate with the growth that is possible in two autumn months. The longer delay in sampling after Hurricanes Marilyn and Luis probably resulted in measurements of coral mortality that was caused both by direct physical damage and delayed-onset disease, as well as blooms of macroalgae that can grow over 8 months extending from autumn to spring. awards_0_award_nid=55191 awards_0_award_number=DEB-0841441 awards_0_data_url=http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0841441&HistoricalAwards=false awards_0_funder_name=National Science Foundation awards_0_funding_acronym=NSF awards_0_funding_source_nid=350 awards_0_program_manager=Saran Twombly awards_0_program_manager_nid=51702 awards_1_award_nid=55194 awards_1_award_number=DEB-0343570 awards_1_data_url=http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0343570&HistoricalAwards=false awards_1_funder_name=National Science Foundation awards_1_funding_acronym=NSF awards_1_funding_source_nid=350 awards_1_program_manager=Saran Twombly awards_1_program_manager_nid=51702 awards_2_award_nid=562593 awards_2_award_number=DEB-1350146 awards_2_data_url=http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1350146 awards_2_funder_name=NSF Division of Environmental Biology awards_2_funding_acronym=NSF DEB awards_2_funding_source_nid=550432 awards_2_program_manager=Betsy Von Holle awards_2_program_manager_nid=701685 awards_3_award_nid=722162 awards_3_award_number=OCE-1801335 awards_3_data_url=http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=1801335 awards_3_funder_name=NSF Division of Ocean Sciences awards_3_funding_acronym=NSF OCE awards_3_funding_source_nid=355 awards_3_program_manager=Daniel Thornhill awards_3_program_manager_nid=722161 cdm_data_type=Other comment=Coral community structure at Yawazi Point and Tektite in St. John before and after five hurricanes from 1988-2017 PI: Peter J. Edmunds Version: 2018-11-26 Conventions=COARDS, CF-1.6, ACDD-1.3 data_source=extract_data_as_tsv version 2.3 19 Dec 2019 defaultDataQuery=&time<now doi=10.1575/1912/bco-dmo.750060.1 infoUrl=https://www.bco-dmo.org/dataset/750060 institution=BCO-DMO instruments_0_acronym=camera instruments_0_dataset_instrument_description=Photoquadrats at Yawzi Point and Tektite were recorded using cameras attached to a framer that held them perpendicular to the reef. instruments_0_dataset_instrument_nid=750065 instruments_0_description=All types of photographic equipment including stills, video, film and digital systems. instruments_0_instrument_external_identifier=https://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/collection/L05/current/311/ instruments_0_instrument_name=Camera instruments_0_instrument_nid=520 instruments_0_supplied_name=cameras metadata_source=https://www.bco-dmo.org/api/dataset/750060 param_mapping={'750060': {}} parameter_source=https://www.bco-dmo.org/mapserver/dataset/750060/parameters people_0_affiliation=California State University Northridge people_0_affiliation_acronym=CSU-Northridge people_0_person_name=Peter J. Edmunds people_0_person_nid=51536 people_0_role=Principal Investigator people_0_role_type=originator people_1_affiliation=Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution people_1_affiliation_acronym=WHOI BCO-DMO people_1_person_name=Mathew Biddle people_1_person_nid=708682 people_1_role=BCO-DMO Data Manager people_1_role_type=related project=RUI-LTREB projects_0_acronym=RUI-LTREB projects_0_description=Describing how ecosystems like coral reefs are changing is at the forefront of efforts to evaluate the biological consequences of global climate change and ocean acidification. Coral reefs have become the poster child of these efforts. Amid concern that they could become ecologically extinct within a century, describing what has been lost, what is left, and what is at risk, is of paramount importance. This project exploits an unrivalled legacy of information beginning in 1987 to evaluate the form in which reefs will persist, and the extent to which they will be able to resist further onslaughts of environmental challenges. This long-term project continues a 27-year study of Caribbean coral reefs. The diverse data collected will allow the investigators to determine the roles of local and global disturbances in reef degradation. The data will also reveal the structure and function of reefs in a future with more human disturbances, when corals may no longer dominate tropical reefs. The broad societal impacts of this project include advancing understanding of an ecosystem that has long been held emblematic of
Extreme heat was the deadliest weather condition in the United States in 2023, resulting in a total of 207 lives lost that year. This was followed by fire weather, having caused 103 fatalities. On the other side of the spectrum, only one life was lost due to ice in the North American country that year.
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This photo collection is also available as a spatial layer. This photo collection includes 563 photos, 457 of which have been geotagged, and is available for download as a zip file.Hurricane Irma was a Category 5 hurricane that caused extensive damage across the Caribbean and in Florida, among other places. The hurrican formed August 30, 2017, and dissipated September 14, 2017. The hurricane caused at least 134 deaths and caused $77 billions USD in damage.
This statistic shows the ten natural disasters that resulted in the most fatalities in the United States from 1900 and 2016. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina (listed as storm) caused 1,833 fatalities in the United States.
The LTERN Tropical Rainforest Plot Network Rainforest Tree Demographic Data contains stem measurement data for 1 of 20, 0.5 ha (100 m x 50 m) permanent rainforest plots in Northern Queensland, Australia from 2011 to 2013. This is part of a much larger dataset that spans from 1971 to 2013 that is managed by CSIRO. This data publication refers specifically to observations made at Plot EP43, and this data is accessible as a composite data package at the following location: Metcalfe, D; Murphy, H; Bradford, M; Hogan, D; Ford, A (2014): Tropical Rainforest Plot Network: Rainforest Tree Demographic Data, Northern Queensland, Australia, 2011–2013. Long Term Ecological Research Network. http://www.ltern.org.au/knb/metacat/ltern2.90.42/html The CSIRO permanent rainforest plots are located within 60 km of the north Queensland coast between Mackay (21.5ºS, 149ºE) and the Iron Range on Cape York Peninsula (12.5ºS, 143ºE). The plots have a rainfall range of 1200 to 3500 mm, represent eleven vegetation types, six parent materials, and range from 15 m to 1200 m above sea level. Except for minor disturbances associated with selective logging on two plots, the plots were established in old growth forest and– all plots have thereafter been protected. Plots were regularly censused and at each census the diameter at breast height (DBH) of all stems ≥10 cm DBH is recorded. Due to the wide geographical range of the plots, no species dominate, although the families Lauraceae, Rutaceae and Myrtaceae contribute a large number of species. The data collected from the 20 plots provides an insight into the floristical composition, structure and long term forest dynamics of Australian tropical rainforests and allows direct comparisons to be made with long-term monitoring plots at a global scale (Bradford, M.G., Murphy, H.T., Ford, A.J., Hogan, D. and Metcalfe, D.J. (2014). Long term stem inventory data from tropical rainforest plots in Australia. Ecology 95:2362. http://www.rainforest-crc.jcu.edu.au/publications/permanent_plots1.pdf. This is part of a much larger dataset that spans from 2004 to 2014; a synopsis of related data packages which have been collected as part of the Tropical Rainforest Plot Network’s full program is provided at http://www.ltern.org.au/index.php/ltern-plot-networks/tropical-rainforest.
In 2021, there were 68 fatalities due to hurricanes reported in the United States. Since the beginning of the century, the highest number of fatalities was recorded in 2005, when four major hurricanes – including Hurricane Katrina – resulted in 1,518 deaths.
The worst hurricanes in U.S. history
Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall in August 2005, ranked as the third deadliest hurricane in the U.S. since records began. Affecting mainly the city of New Orleans and its surroundings, the category 3 hurricane caused an estimated 1,500 fatalities. Katrina was also the costliest tropical cyclone to hit the U.S. in the past seven decades, with damages amounting to roughly 186 billion U.S. dollars. Hurricanes Harvey and Maria, both of which made landfall in 2017, ranked second and third, resulting in damage costs of 149 and 107 billion dollars, respectively.
How are hurricanes classified?
According to the Saffir-Simpson scale, hurricanes can be classified into five categories, depending on their maximum sustained wind speed. Most of the hurricanes that have made landfall in the U.S. since 1851 are category 1, the mildest of the five. Hurricanes rated category 3 or above are considered major hurricanes and can cause devastating damage. In 2021, there were 38 hurricanes recorded across the globe, of which 17 were major hurricanes.