Estimated Costs of U.S. Extreme Weather Events
Summary . Man-made greenhouse gases are increasing the worldwide long-term average temperature, leading to increasingly more numerous and more damaging extreme weather events. In the U. S. forest wildfires, pine bark beetle infestations of pine forests, droughts and river floods have become more severe in recent years. Nation-wide assessments of economic losses from any of these categories can reach many billions of dollars in a given year. Indirect effects, including deleterious societal impacts, also arise, and tend not to be accounted for in quantitative economic terms. Governmental and societal responses to extreme events are necessarily episodic and not readily planned for in advance. Introduction . Worldwide long-term average temperatures have been increasing since the industrial revolution began, becoming more pronounced since the middle of the 20 th century. This warming is correlated with humanity’s ever-increasing use of fos...