Specific Weather Conditions

This past Sunday, The New York Times covered the engineering impact of climate change.  The article was by Elisabeth Rosenthal - - Huff and Puff and Blow Your House Down. 

The main questions raised in the article - - what happens when 100-year storms are seen every 10 years, and 10-year storms become regular events?  How many structures will reach their limits?

Rosenthal writes the following:

Engineers and insurers are already facing these questions.  Munich Re, one of the world's largest insurance companies, says climate-related events serious enough to cause property damage have risen significantly since 1980: extreme floods tripled and extreme windstorms nearly so. (The number of damaging earthquakes - - which are not thought to be influenced by climate change - - have remained stable.)  Statistics show that the frequency of days with heavy precipitation is up in South America, North America and parts of Europe.

"Your own perception that there are more storms and more flooding causing damage - - that is extremely well documented," said Peter Hoeppe, a meteorologist who is the head of Munich Re's Corporate Climate Center.  "There is definitely a plausible link to climate change."

For insurers, the challenge has been how to insure structures against the vicissitudes of increasingly extreme and severe weather.  For engineers, new weather raises difficult questions about what kinds of safety factors should be built into designs and whether old structures need retrofitting and reinforcing.

The issue boils down to a very fundamental concern for engineers and policy makers to consider - - what specific weather conditions are we designing for and building to?