Hurricanes, Tornadoes and Climate Change

Partnering with the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI) will inspire you to open an avenue for North Carolina students to learn about statistics in memorable and meaningful ways.

Hurricanes and tornadoes are two examples of extreme weather events, which certainly have an impact on the citizens of North Carolina. But is there any real evidence that they are increasing because of climate change? In the case of tornadoes, most experts answer no – whatever trends might be seen in observed data are as likely due to change in observing patterns as to any real physically induced climate change. For hurricanes, the evidence is stronger that there has been an increase in hurricane counts in parallel with increases in the global temperature record, but the evidence is complicated because of other factors that influence hurricanes, such as El Niño events or even (in the opinion of some researchers) sunspots.

Both these issues are potentially amenable to statistical analysis – there is abundant data out there, and a study of how the different datasets are related to each other carries important lessons not only about climate change itself, but also broad issues of how datasets are created, what biases they may contain, and how different statistical methods may lead to different scientific conclusions. The intent of this project is that the Fellow will explore both different datasets and different statistical methods, and develop lesson plans that are designed to inform students of these important issues and their impact on society.