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2013 will prove to be one of the most expensive years for weather-related damage with over $174 million of insured costs arising from weather-related events.
“Last year was one of the most costly years for weather losses since the Insurance Council started tracking these losses on a regular basis back in 1968, the year of the Wahine disaster,” said Mr Tim Grafton, Chief Executive of the Insurance Council of New Zealand.
“This further reinforces the value of insurance in safeguarding New Zealand by being able to meet costs of this scale,” he said.
The cost of insured damage in 2013 was exceeded only by 2004 when there was $181 million worth of insured damage (inflation adjusted as at 2011).
1984 was another expensive year with $155 million worth of insured damage.
The storm that wreaked the most havoc in 2013 was the one that hit 11-12 September with $74.5 million of insured losses making that alone the third most expensive storm event in the past 45 years. This was the storm that saw considerable damage to irrigators in Canterbury.
Not surprisingly commercial losses from that storm were significant with $42 million damage to commercial property and a further $3.1 million in business interruption payments.
Domestic-related losses amounted to $ 18 million and damage to motor vehicles amounted to $9.5 million.
Other damaging storms occurred in April 2013 when $46.2 million of insured damage was done and in June when $39.3 million worth of insured losses.
“The Insurance Council’s members’ losses for 2013 stands at $174 million, but we are still awaiting final figures for the 14-16 October storm where losses provisionally stand at $10.2 million,” said Mr Grafton.
“Climate change scenarios point to higher levels of rain in parts of the country already prone to flooding and for stronger winds from the west. This underlines the need for New Zealand to focus on pre-disaster mitigation and adaptation strategies to minimise economic losses and social disruption,” he said.
17 Comments
Since climate change has been mentioned I think it is appropriate to supple this breaking news story.
http://www.principia-scientific.org/breaking-new-climate-data-rigging-s…
Yes I know there is some controversy on Steve Goddard. However sea ice has hit records which I would have thought suggests cooling not warming.
I do not expect there to be much interest by MSM in Steve Goddards findings.
The Russians are predicting cooling and their information has at least caught the attention of Forbes magazine.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/05/26/to-the-horror-of-gl…
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/17470-nasa-data-glo…
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=82160
So you are saying that because the sun's output drops for a short time, thus masking the AGW caused rise for a period , so AGW is no problem?
isnt that a little bit duh?
When the sun goes back to "normal" then the rise will be significant. if it doesnt, well all it does is step down, it doesnt change the trend, the trend still continues upward.
Sea ice in the antartic isnt the issue, its the land ice in the antartic thats the issue, or its loss of.
For sea ice the warming in the artic is the issue.
Really, listening/reading libertarian/right wing web sites might be comforting for you but its la la land stuff.
Or maybe try reading actual sites,
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/01/global-temperatur…
"The global temperature data for 2013 are now published. 2010 and 2005 remain the warmest years since records began in the 19th Century. 1998 ranks third in two records, and in the analysis of Cowtan & Way, which interpolates the data-poor region in the Arctic with a better method, 2013 is warmer than 1998 (even though 1998 was a record El Nino year, and 2013 was neutral)"
trend upwards...
PS
1998 was an el nino which pumped it up, yet 2013 matched 198 but wasnt el nino influenced,so,
"What will happen to global warming when we get the next big El Niño?
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2014/jan/23/climate-ch…
or,
"In 134 years of records, NOAA says nine of the 10 warmest years have all happened since the turn of the century – with 1998 the exception. There has not been a single year in the last 37 that's been cooler than the long-term average."
Got to wonder really.....I mean no matter the evidence you and other fundies deny AGW...
"If you add the ongoing global warming that pushes up temperature extremes anyway, then future El Niños will be phenomenally costly to society."
Think crop damage if not destruction, lower output....think farmers un-insurable for such events....think farmer bankruptcy. Think hunger for ppl as basic grain crops get expensive....the old supply and demand.
regards
I think I said back in April, when that article first began doing the rounds, I wish people would go back to the original source and actually look at it. In the actual Russian article Yuri Nagovitsyn said right at the outset of the article that Sunspot activitiy accounted for not more than 20% of climate change. Of that 20% we get to the bit that everyone quotes that 200 year cycles are causing 50% of the change (of the 20% that sunspot activity causes).
But even if we did go into a Maunder Minimum (still considered unlikely) that was an average 0.6 degree temperature drop on the temperature of the surrounding period. From today, that would be the effect of taking temperature rises back to what they were in around 1968 (or 1930 as there was aflat period between the two).
http://reallysciency.blogspot.co.nz/p/who-is-steven-goddard.html
"........."I have a Bachelor of Science in Geology and a Masters In Electrical Engineering”
So academically he is about as qualified as myself and about as qualified as my cat to post his own analysis’s climate change."....."
Astro-turf?
and,
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Watts-Up-With-That-ignorance-regarding-…
so credible?
no....
regards
I don't actually have a problem with people fronting up with their analyses and showing their reasoning. In fact I'd heartily encourage it. But if someone has been spectacularly wrong in the past in their use of figures, I'd give people a few days to check his work before making too much of a blog post.
And maybe Steven you should have read the comments from your first linking article above on reallyscience.
Old One responded:
"While you are correct that the trend of SL increased over the entire Envisat record, that is not what Goddard claimed, so you are making a moot point.
His 1st claim was that SL has been declining for several years. Now, plot a trend line for the last 6 years(beginning of 2006). Trend is negative. Since 2007? Negative. Since 2008? Negative. Four, five & six years certainly meet the criteria of "several", so Goddard was correct in his statement.
Goddard's second claim was that SL IS lower NOW than it was in 2003. The only 2003 data point was 0.488. The date of the SPPI paper is 4 Jan 2012. The most recent data point prior to that was the last data point of 2011 which was 0.484. That IS lower that the only 2003 data in the record in question, so Goddard was correct in his statement."
And further Old One posts in response to Lazarus
"First, you say you've checked and there is still an upward trend using 2006-2011 data. That is not correct. Just like you, I imported the data into Excel & the trend using all the data from the first 2006 data point thru to the end of the record at the end of 2011, Excel calculates a negative trend of -0.012/century. Small yes, but negative nevertheless. And the more recent trends are even more negative; -0.063/century for 2007 to present, -0.169/century for 2008 to present, & -0.341/century for 2009 to present. Perhaps you are using a different dataset. I'm using the unadjusted sea level data upon which Goddard made his claims.
Second, your statement that Goddard "cherry picked - to support a viewpoint while ignoring almost all the available data."
As we just saw, the negative trend from the beginning of 2006 used 75% of the available data. That is not ignoring almost all the available data.
Third, is your assertion that Goddard 'cherry picked' data to support his viewpoint that "SL has been declining for several years"
Using all the data from a previous point to the present is the only way to make a claim over the period of your claim and is not cherry picking. If you believe it is, then perhaps you should criticize those who believe that the recent warming is alarming based on their use of ~1880 as their starting point, when in fact if they used the MWP or Holecene Optimum, the trends would be reversed.
Fourth, as to your "even finer piece of cherry picking to say that NOW is lower than some other point".
I would agree w/you if Goddard had chosen a mid-year low point in the annual cyclical SL data, but he was comparing the 2003 end-of-year high point with the 2011 end-of-year high point, an apples-to-apples comparison.
Fifth, I find your claim "He did not make any claim about a declining trend but specifically that sea level had been declining for several years" to be specious.
While Goddard didn't explicitly use the word trend, how do you quantify if sea level has been declining if not using a trend? While LSR trends should not be used to project into the future, they are a legitimate method of determining the direction of past events. He also didn't specify a specific number of years, but said several."
And then further down the posts it seems the writer of the information you are using has used the wrong data GIA when Goddard used NoGIA.
Well it appears that the writer of the article Lazarus hasn't quite got things correct. More appalling is the tantrums he has had through his blogg when other information and data sets challenged his own.
15 years of warming from 1975 was long enough for hansen et al to go all chicken little. Now we have 17 years of no warming and it isn't long enough... even though there was a v. similar period of warming from 1910. At least some people are now beginning to admit it is not as well understood as first thought.
Well we do have warming, simple.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/01/global-temperatur…
The recent slower warming is mainly explained by the fact that in recent years the La Niña state in the tropical Pacific prevailed, in which the eastern Pacific is cold and the ocean stores more heat (2). This is due to an increase in the trade winds that push water westward across the tropical Pacific, while in the east cold water from the depths comes to the surface (see last graph here). In addition, radiative forcing has recently increased more slowly (more on this in the analysis of Hansen et al. – definitely worth a read).
0.04 C/dec. Hardly scary stuff. 1/5 of what was predicted and pretty much expected in an interglacial. Difficult to get funding if you predicted everything was going to be normal 17 years ago.
Nature is a tad more balanced than an activist website like Realclimate.
http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing-heat-…
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