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3 ObservedandProjected Impacts fromExtremeWeatherEvents… 69
For rainfall related extremes, including droughts and river flooding, findings
regarding the detection of changes is more mixed, as is the attribution of these
changes to human greenhouse gas emissions. Forwindstorms, in the tropical and
extra-tropical regions,both thechangesand theprecisehumancontribution to these
changes are evenmore uncertain. In addition, there is an extensive literature that
has looked at how the likelihood of individual extremeweather events has possi-
bly changed due to anthropogenic forcing (see James et al. 2018). In addition to
monotonic changes from anthropogenic forcing, the role of natural variability in
shaping the impacts fromnatural disasters can be very large. This is an important
reasonwhy evenwhen trends in extremes are found, related to large decadal vari-
ability in theoccurrenceof extremes related tonatural variability, the attributionof
smaller changesover time toanthropogenic emissions.This is for instance thecase
fortropicalcyclones,wherelargenaturalvariabilitycomplicatesthedetectionofany
remaining trend (Knutsonet al. 2010).
3.3 ObservedImpactsBasedonDisasterLossRecords
3.3.1 LossDataandNormalisation
Several records are available of disaster losses. Themost notable global databases
consist of those managed by CRED (EM-DAT database,1 Munich Reinsurance
Company(NatCatSERVICEdatabase),2 andSwissReinsuranceCompany(SIGMA
database).3 Besides these global databases, several combined are available under
Desinventar.4 While these databases provide a good overall understanding of loss
frequency and trends, several other records of natural hazard impacts exist that are
moredetailed, includingnational accounts of disaster losses andnational and local
insurance records.Someof thesearealsoassessed in the studies reportedhere.
Several researchers have analysed disaster loss records, to assess the frequency
and size of impacts from these hazards. In addition, many have analysed which
drivers(hazard,exposure,orvulnerability)mayhaveledtochangesintheseimpacts
over time.Anoften-usedapproachisso-callednormalisation,whichtries toaccount
for changes in exposure over time, by applying correction factors to the observed
loss record. These factors are based on the total size of the exposed assets and
their value (see Pielke and Landsea 1998). This is also common practise in the
insuranceindustryinordertoarriveatacommonreferencebaselineofhistorical loss
events that can be compared to catastrophemodels that simulate risks for today’s
exposureandvulnerabilitiesorforaspecificbaselineyear(Pielkeetal.1999).Many
1http://www.emdat.be.
2https://www.munichre.com/en/reinsurance/business/non-life/natcatservice/index.html.
3http://institute.swissre.com/research/overview/sigma_data/.
4https://www.desinventar.org/ andhttp://www.desinventar.net/.
Loss and Damage from Climate Change
Concepts, Methods and Policy Options
- Title
- Loss and Damage from Climate Change
- Subtitle
- Concepts, Methods and Policy Options
- Authors
- Reinhard Mechler
- Laurens M. Bouwer
- Thomas Schinko
- Swenja Surminski
- JoAnne Linnerooth-Bayer
- Publisher
- Springer Open
- Date
- 2019
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-319-72026-5
- Size
- 16.0 x 24.0 cm
- Pages
- 580
- Keywords
- Environment, Climate change, Environmental law, Environmental policy, Risk management
- Categories
- International
- Naturwissenschaften Umwelt und Klima