coastal flooding by tropical cyclones and sea-level rise

Jonathan Woodruff, Jennifer Irish, and Suzana Camargo

Nature; Vol 504; December 5, 2013

…the Western North Pacific has been the most prolific tropical cyclone basin over the instrumental record, both in terms of the overall number of tropical cyclones (30% of global activity) and peak tropical cyclone wind intensities (Fig. 1). However, in recent decades this basin accounted for neither the majority of economic nor human losses from tropical cyclones. These records have been held by two of the least active tropical cyclone basins, the North Atlantic (10% of global tropical cyclone activity) and North Indian Ocean (5% of global tropical cyclone activity), respectively. Since 1970, around 65% of all lives lost as a result of tropical cyclones occurred within the North Indian Ocean — equivalent to more than half a million deaths³. Over this same period, more than 60% of all economic losses from tropical cyclones took place in the North Atlantic — amounting to around US$400 billion³.