There’s a new essay from Indur Goklany
in response to a recent Reuters news article.
Yesterday Reuters reported on a study which claimed that
heat is the deadliest form of natural hazard for the United
States. However, this result is based on questionable data.
The study used results for mortality from extreme heat and
cold that can be traced to the National Climatic Data Center.
But these data are substantially different from mortality
data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) based on the
Compressed Mortality File for the United States. The latter
uses death certificate records, which provide the cause of
each recorded death (based on medical opinion). It is reasonable
to believe that regarding the cause of death, particularly
for extreme cold and heat, medical opinion as captured in
death certificate records is more reliable than determinations
made by the meteorologists in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration’s NCDC (even if they have Ph.Ds.).
The essay draws on data from the CDC database of mortality
in the USA. See this table:
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
Combining data from the CDC database for extreme cold and
extreme heat, and various arms of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration for floods, lightning, hurricanes,
and tornadoes, Goklany has shown that extreme cold, rather
than heat, is the deadliest form of extreme weather event.
In fact, from 1979-2002, extreme cold was responsible for
53 percent of deaths due to all these categories of extreme
weather, while extreme heat contributes slightly more than
half that (28%). For more, see The Deadliest U.S. Natural
Hazard: Extreme Cold.
Of course we all know that the human race has historically
done better during warm periods. While we’ve seen a
sloght warming in the last century, we’ve also seen
a worldwide improvement in the human condition.
