Abstract
Weather-related disasters and affiliated losses in the USA have amplified over time. However, prior research using normalization schemes on damage tallies suggests that weather hazard losses are not necessarily rising when inflation, changes in wealth, and growth in population are accounted. This study evaluates the latter factor, assessing if population changes and a sprawling development mode have led to increasing potential for tornado disasters in the USA. Specifically, this research shows where and how quickly tornado exposure is growing by appraising spatiotemporal trends in gridded population and housing unit data for five metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). The macroscale risk to tornadoes is represented by tornado day climatology and is related to the exposure of the five MSAs, which include Atlanta, GA; Chicago, IL; Dallas/Fort Worth, TX; Oklahoma City, OK; and St. Louis, MO. Supplementing the macroscale investigation, an observationally derived, hypothetical violent tornado track is transposed on various development types in each MSA to determine the microscale changes in human and built-environment exposure. Results demonstrate increased exposure in all MSAs at both the macro- and microscale. Of the five MSAs studied, Dallas, TX, had the greatest potential for a tornado disaster due to the higher risk for tornado occurrence comingling with the amount of MSA exposure. These results reveal further that amplifying exposure is a major impetus behind intensifying severe weather impacts and losses.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson CJ, Wikle CK, Zhou Q, Royle JA (2007) Population influences on tornado reports in the United States. Weather Forecast 22:571–579
Ashley WS, Strader S, Rosencrants T, Krmenec AJ (2014) Spatiotemporal changes in tornado hazard exposure: the case of the expanding bull’s eye effect in Chicago, IL. Weather Clim Soc 6:175–193. doi: 10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00047.1
Beauregard RA (2009) Urban population loss in historical perspective: United States, 1820–2000. Environ Plan A 41(3):514–528
Borden K, Schmidtlein M, Emrich C, Piegorsch WW, Cutter SL (2007) Vulnerability of United States cities to environmental hazards. J Homel Secur Emerg Manag 4(2):1–21
Boruff BJ, Easoz JA, Jones SD, Landry HR, Mitchem JD, Cutter SL (2003) Tornado hazards in the United States. Clim Res 2:103–117
Bouwer LM (2011) Have disaster losses increased due to anthropogenic climate change? Bull Am Meteor Soc 92:39–46
Bouwer LM (2013) Projections of future extreme weather losses under changes in climate and exposure. Risk Anal 33:915–930. doi:10.1111/j.1539-6924.2012.01880.x
Brooks HE (2013) Severe thunderstorms and climate change. Atmos Res 123:129–138. doi:10.1016/j.atmosres.2012.04.002
Brooks HE, Doswell CA III (2001) Normalized damage from major tornadoes in the United States: 1890–1999. Weather Forecast 16:168–176
Brooks HE, Doswell C III, Kay M (2003) Climatological estimates of local daily tornado probability for the United States. Weather Forecast 18:626–640
Changnon SA (2003) Shifting economic impacts from weather extremes in the United States: a result of societal changes. Nat Hazards 29(2):273–290
Changnon SA (2009) Tornado Losses in the United States. Nat Hazards Rev 10(4):145–150
Changnon SA (2010) Geographical distribution of weather catastrophes in the United States. Phys Geogr 31:29–39
Changnon S, Burroughs J (2003) The tristate hailstorm: the most costly on record. Mon Weather Rev 131:1734–1739. doi:10.1175/2549.1
Changnon S, Pielke R, Changnon D, Sylves RT, Pulwarty R (2000) Human factors explain the increased losses from weather and climate extremes. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 81(3):437–442
Chicago Historical Society (2005) Englewood. http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/426.html. Accessed 12 Nov 2013
Cutter S, Boruff BJ, Shirley W (2003) Social vulnerability to environmental hazards. Soc Sci Q 84:242–261
Deichmann U, Balk D, Yetman G (2001) Transforming population data for interdisciplinary usages: from census to grid. http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/gpw-v2/GPWdocumentation.pdf. Accessed 13 Nov 2013
Diffenbaugh NS, Scherer M, Trapp RJ (2013) Robust increases in severe thunderstorm environments in response to greenhouse forcing. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. doi:10.1073/pnas.1307758110
Doswell CA, Brooks HE, Dotzek N (2009) On the implementation of the enhanced Fujita scale in the USA. Atmos Res 93:554–563
Elsner JB, Michaels LE, Scheitlin KN, Elsner IJ (2013a) The decreasing population bias in tornado reports across the central plains. Weather Clim Soc 5:221–232. doi:10.1175/WCAS-D-12-00040.1
Elsner JB, Murnane RJ, Jagger TH, Widen HM (2013b) A spatial point process model for violent tornado occurrence in the US great plains. Math Geosci 45:667–679. doi:10.1007/s11004-013-9458-1
Flanagan BE, Gregory EW, Hallisey EJ, Heitgerd JL, Lewis B (2011) A social vulnerability index for disaster management. J Homel Secur Emerg Manag 8(1):1–22
Gong H, Wheeler JO (2002) The location and suburbanization of business and professional services in the Atlanta area. Growth Chang 33(3):341–369
Greene RP, Pick JB (2012) Exploring the Urban community: A GIS Approach (2nd Edition). Prentice Hall, 432 pp
Hagedorn J, Rauch B (2007) Housing, gangs, and homicide what we can learn from Chicago. Urban Aff Rev 42(4):435–456
Hall S, Ashley W (2008) Effects of urban sprawl on the vulnerability to a significant tornado impact in northeastern Illinois. Nat Hazard Rev 9(4):209–219
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2012) Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation. Cambridge University Press
Klinenberg E (2002) Heat wave: a social autopsy of disaster in Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 320 pp
Kunkel KE, Pielke RA Jr, Changnon SA (1999) Temporal fluctuations in weather and climate extremes that cause economic and human health impacts: a review. Bull Am Meteor Soc 80:1077–1098
Kunkel KE, Karl TR, Brooks H, Kossin J, Lawrimore JH, Arndt D, Bosart L, Changnon D, Cutter SL, Doesken N, Emanuel K, Groisman PY, Katz RW, Knutson T, O’Brien J, Paciorek CJ, Peterson TC, Redmond K, Robinson D, Trapp J, Vose R, Weaver S, Wehner M, Wolter K, Wuebbles D (2012) Monitoring and understanding trends in extreme storms: state of knowledge. Bull Am Meteor Soc 94:499–514. doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00262.1
Marshall TP, Davis W, Runnels S (2012) Damage survey of the Joplin tornado: 22 May 2011. The 26th conference on severe local storms, Nashville TN, Am Meteor Soc P6.1
Morss R, Wilhelmi O, Meehl GA, Dilling L (2011) Improving societal outcomes of extreme weather in a changing climate: an integrated perspective. Ann Rev Environ Resour 36:1–25
Openshaw S (1984) The modifiable areal unit problem. Concepts Tech Mod Geogr 38:41
Paulikas M, Ashley W (2011) Thunderstorm hazard vulnerability for the Atlanta, Georgia metropolitan region. Nat Hazards 58:1077–1092
Peduzzi P, Dao H, Herold C, Mouton F (2009) Assessing global exposure and vulnerability towards natural hazards: the disaster risk index. Nat Hazards Earth Syst Sci 9:1149–1159
Peterson TC, Anderson DM, Cohen SJ, Cortez-Vázquez M, Murnane RJ, Parmesan C, Phillips D, Pulwarty RS, Stone JMR (2008) Why weather and climate extremes matter in weather and climate extremes in a changing climate. Regions of focus: North America, Hawaii, Caribbean, and US. Pacific Islands. Karl TR, Meehl GA, Miller CD, Hassol SJ, Waple AM, Murray WL (eds.). A Report by the US Climate change science program and the Subcommittee on global change research, Washington, DC
Pielke RA Jr, Gratz J, Landsea CW, Collins D, Saunders M, Musulin R (2008) Normalized hurricane damages in the United States: 1900–2005. Nat Hazards Rev 9(1):29–42. doi:10.1061/(ASCE)1527-6988(2008)9:1(29)
Schachter J, Franklin RS, Perry MJ (2003) Migration and geographic mobility in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan America, 1995–2000. US Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, US Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/censr-9.pdf. Accessed 12 Nov 2013
Schlossberg M (2003) GIS, the US census and neighbourhood scale analysis. Plan Pract Res 18:213–217
Shepherd M, Mote T, Dowd J, Roden M, Knox P, McCutcheon SC, Nelson SE (2011) An overview of synoptic and mesoscale factors contributing to the disastrous Atlanta flood of 2009. Bull Am Meteor Soc 92:861–870
Short JR (2012) Metropolitan USA: evidence from the 2010 Census. Int J Popul Res 2012:6. doi:10.1155/2012/207532
Simmons KM, Sutter D, Pielke R (2013) Normalized tornado damage in the United States: 1950–2011. Environ Hazards 12(2):132–147. doi:10.1080/17477891.2012.738642
Smith AB, Katz RW (2013) US billion-dollar weather and climate disasters: data sources, trends, accuracy and biases. Nat Hazards 67(2):387–410. doi:10.1007/s11069-013-0566-5
Suckling PW, Ashley WS (2006) Spatial and temporal characteristics of tornado path direction. Prof Geogr 58:20–38
Theobald D (2005) Landscape patterns of exurban growth in the USA from 1980 to 2020. Ecol Soc 10(1):32
Trapp RJ, Diffenbaugh NS, Brooks HE, Baldwin ME, Robinson ED, Pal JS (2007) Changes in severe thunderstorm frequency during the 21st century due to anthropogenically enhanced global radiative forcing. Proc Natl Acad Sci 104:19719–19723. doi:10.1073/pnas.0705494104
United States Census Bureau (2011) Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012, Washington, DC. http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/population.html. Accessed 12 Nov 2013
Verbout SM, Brooks HE, Leslie LM, Schultz DM (2006) Evolution of the US tornado database: 1954–2003. Weather Forecast 21:86–93
Wurman J, Robinson P, Alexander C, Richardson Y (2007) Low-level winds in tornadoes and potential catastrophic tornado impacts in Urban areas. Bull Am Meteor Soc 88:31–46
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank those anonymous reviewers who provided useful feedback, suggestions, and comments. We would also like to thank Drs. David Changnon and Andrew Krmenec (NIU) for providing comments and suggestions on early versions of this manuscript, as well as ideas and guidance throughout the entire research process. We thank Stephen Strader (NIU) for the helpful recommendations and comments during the research process. Lastly, we would like to acknowledge the NIU William Morris Davis Fund for Graduate Research which allowed for the purchase of the Woods and Poole Economics, Inc., population and household projections data.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Rosencrants, T.D., Ashley, W.S. Spatiotemporal analysis of tornado exposure in five US metropolitan areas. Nat Hazards 78, 121–140 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-015-1704-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-015-1704-z