Adam Smith On A Sunday (UPDATED)

It is strange the things you will come across by just doing a bit of addition. A couple of times people have "critiqued" my hurricane posts by claiming that my analysis was biased because I was looking at Atlantic storms only. The "world wide" story was different, I was assured.

The funny thing was I never saw any articles detailing what the global picture was. I never saw any data in the various stories in the MSM, or saw anything on the cable news providers. So I decided to have a look myself. Using the data collected at Unisys Weather for the six tropical storm basins (Atlantic, Eastern Pacific, Western Pacific, South Pacific, Southern Indian, Northern Indian) I found the following numbers of hurricanes/typhoons/cyclones:

1990: 57
1991: 46
1992: 59
1993: 49
1994: 52
1995: 48
1996: 59
1997: 60
1998: 50
1999: 40
2000: 46
2001: 50
2002: 42
2003: 51
2004: 51
2005: 49
2006: 46

The average for the last 17 years is 50.3 storms a year. Since 2000 we have averaged 47.9 storms a year. 7 of the last 9 years have had below average activity, and the other two years were dead on average. We haven't had an abnormally high amount of storm activity worldwide since 1997. Here are the rolling means over the time period:

1990: 57
1991: 51.5
1992: 54
1993: 52.8
1994: 52.6
1995: 51.8
1996: 52.9
1997: 53.8
1998: 53.3
1999: 52
2000: 51.5
2001: 51.3
2002: 50.6
2003: 50.6
2004: 50.7
2005: 50.7
2006: 50.3

The numbers do not lie. We are in a relatively quiet period for these types of tropical storms, if not in an absolute sense (I'll have to push the numbers back further to state that for certain,) at least in a relative sense. The period from 1990-1997 was much more active worldwide than 2000-2006. However, the press would tell us otherwise. We are told that storms are becoming more numerous because of global warming, and we are told we are in an era of drastic changes.

So why are we hearing about this now, when these storms are relatively less numerous and we didn't hear things back in the 1990's? I think part of the reason was outlined by Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments:

As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. Though our brother is on the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did, and never can, carry us beyond our own person...

Thus, while in 1997 the western Pacific was lashed by 24 typhoons, and the southern Pacific by another 13 (both the busiest since 1990), the Atlantic had only 3 hurricanes. In fact, in the four busiest years for storms (1990, 1992, 1996, 1997), the Atlantic had an average of 6 storms (its average since 1946 is 6.15 hurricanes.) To put it simply, we were not interested in these storms because it was not happening to us.

Now flash forward to 2004-05 when the United States alone is hit by 12 hurricanes, and suddenly there is a worldwide problem.

The parochial nature of it all is almost embarrassing.

UPDATE:

I've extended the data back to 1982 in the numbers below. This is about as far as I can take the Unisys data I'm afraid. Before 1982 many of the storms in the northern Indian ocean as listed as "unknown." As nothern Indian ocean storms have made up as much as 10% of world wide storms (in 1998), I felt we would lose the apples with apples comparisons if I extended earlier. If I find a better data set for the Indian ocean storms I will expand this work.

Storm numbers:

1982: 46
1983: 39
1984: 47
1985: 51
1986: 47
1987: 40
1988: 39
1989: 56
1990: 57
1991: 46
1992: 59
1993: 49
1994: 52
1995: 48
1996: 59
1997: 60
1998: 50
1999: 40
2000: 46
2001: 50
2002: 42
2003: 51
2004: 51
2005: 49
2006: 46

This makes the average 48.4 storms a year.

Rolling average:

1982: 46
1983: 42.5
1984: 44
1985: 45.8
1986: 46
1987: 45
1988: 44.1
1989: 45.6
1990: 46.9
1991: 46.8
1992: 47.9
1993: 48
1994: 48.3
1995: 48.3
1996: 49
1997: 49.1
1998: 49.1
1999: 48.6
2000: 48.5
2001: 48.6
2002: 48.2
2003: 48.4
2004: 48.5
2005: 48.5
2006: 48.4

Dividing the range in half we get the following averages:

1982-1994 (13 years): 48.3
1994-2006 (13 years): 49.5

That represents a gain of 2.48% since 1994.

However if you look at:

1999-2006 (8 years) : 46.9

That represents a decrease of 2.90% from the 1994 average.