Identifying United States Hurricane Risk With Changing Climate

This study develops a geographic and simulation-based hurricane risk index for the United States to evaluate long-term risks for coastal communities. Wind speed intensity, storm frequency, precipitation measurement, and population affected are incorporated into our yearly hurricane risk index (HRI) on a county and state level. Tropical cyclone (TC) parameters (intensity, frequency, and precipitation) are derived from observed HURDAT2 track data and GFDL’s HiFLOR through historical and RCP4.5 future simulations. The population parameter is obtained from the countywide and statewide decennial US census, and is combined with TC parameters with GIS software. For each year of the observation and model simulation, a county-specific and state-specific HRI is computed. Annual HRIs are being computed to assess how demographic changes, interannual TC variability, and long-term TC variability influences HRI over time and how HRI is expected to change with increasing anthropogenic climate change. Results will depend on model biases in assessing interannual and multidecadal variability in the North Atlantic Ocean.