date: Thu Sep 1 11:51:47 2005 from: Phil Jones subject: Stating the obvious to: Kevin Trenberth , "David Easterling" Kevin, Dave, I sent an email to Albert and Roxana about recent extremes in Europe. They will be bringing some text to NZ. We will have to decide what to do about Katrina there as well. Situation looks very serious from here, but we'll need to distinguish the severity of the storm from the apparent unpreparedness, lack of maintenance of the levees etc. It was clearly a very large storm and the track couldn't have been much worse. I bet if there's another event this season, the exodus will be a much higher percentage. The Emmanuel and Webster et al. papers have been very timely, but once the rescue operations are over and the clean-up in earnest begins, the increasing destructiveness of such storms will again get back into the debate. The BBC site has a story about the eventual cost (guessed at 25B$). This might be more than the WTC on 9/11. Funds were diverted from levee improvement, to help finance the war and homeland security..... Cheers Phil Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090 School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784 University of East Anglia Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk NR4 7TJ UK ----------------------------------------------------------------------------