Weather fatalities in one chart
Hurricane Sandy has claimed casualties across the Eastern seaboard, with a death toll of at least 33 at last count. This, sadly, is part of a broader trend of increasing weather-related fatalities since the 1980s. While traditional weather-related dangers, such as lightning, have decreased in salience, heat waves and hurricanes are inflicting heavy casualties.
As Wonkblog’s Brad Plumer explained in a Monday post, it’s hard to attribute single weather events to climate change. But clearly something is causing the across-the-board rise in weather-related deaths, and global climate change, which worsens hurricanes and promotes heat waves and tornadoes, may be a prime culprit.