Participants Introduction Significant potential exists for society to benefit in tangible ways from improvements in the specificity, reliability, verification, and usefulness of weather forecasts on time scales of minutes to days. The table summarizes data presented at the meeting on the direct impacts of recent extreme events in the United States as measured by loss of life and current dollar losses. There was general agreement among participants that the relatively poor quality of available data on impacts limits conclusive findings.
Several points stand out.
First, it may come as a surprise that the largest loss of life in recent years has been associated with extreme temperatures. Second, among the first four phenomena listed in the box, floods result in the most deaths, followed by winter storms and tornadoes, and finally hurricanes. Lightning has perennially been associated with a large loss of life. The number is conservative because it neglects the effects of inflation, covers only the direct impacts of extreme events, and leaves out the costs associated with extreme temperatures, which are certainly significant. The actual total economic impacts associated with extreme weather events is likely to be several times that estimated here.