I’ll be giving a lecture on March 15, 2006 at 5:30 PM in the Baird Auditorium of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, details here. The lecture is the Annual Roger Revelle Commemorative Lecture sponsored by the National Research Council’s Ocean Studies Board. Please come out and do introduce yourself if you are a Prometheus reader. The title of my lecture is “Disasters, Death, and Destruction: Accounting for Recent Calamities.” Here is the abstract:

The recent devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, the Indian Ocean tsunami, and South Asian earthquake has kept natural disasters at the focus of our attention. The past decades have seen a spectacular series of catastrophes around the world with ever increasing economic losses and horrific loss of life. The recent spate of disasters has created two common perceptions among decision makers and the general public.

First, there is a sense that the economic impacts associated with extreme events have increased in recent years. Second, given that a human influence on the climate system has been well established, a perception exists that the recent increase in weather-related disasters like floods and hurricanes is in some way related to changes in climate.

These perceptions beg two questions:

Have loss of life and damages associated with extreme weather events actually increased in recent years?

What factors account for observed trends in the impacts of weather on society?

The answers to these questions are more than simply idle speculations — they underlie policy decisions with important social, economic, and political ramifications, such as disaster preparations, insurance, international climate change negotiations, and policies for scientific research. Because policy is based in part on the perceptions that policy makers hold about weather and climate, it is worth determining the answers to the two questions in a scientifically rigorous manner. This lecture discusses trends in loss of life and damages associated with disasters with a focus on extreme weather events. It also discusses factors which account for the observed trends and the state of our knowledge in this area. It concludes with a discussion of implications for policy and research related natural hazards and global climate change.