RWM Template


	From NOAA document - Billion Dollar U.S. Weather/Climate Disasters
	This table shows that the number of events each year trends up.

	The U.S. has sustained 114 weather/climate disasters over the past 31+ years in which overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion. The total standardized losses for the 114 events exceed $800 billion. May I ask you to keep this visual in mind as we go to the next one.

	As apparent, there is wide variation from year-to-year, but the trend shows an increase in the number of events. The problem is that there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the changes we will see in the future. The regional climate models predict changes in precipitation, temperature, etc., but in some cases there will be increases, in other cases there will be decreases, and in yet other cases it could go either way. At the end of the day they are models and they are estimations. Making decisions around estimations is risky. At this point we know that changes in precipitation aren’t going to be uniform across the country, so our response must not be uniform either. It’s this uncertainty that makes it very difficult decide who should do what. That said, there are some aspects of the changes that we know and can help shape our actions… [next slide on impacts].

	Source - http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/