Hurricane perception: hurricanes may be worse, but experience, gender, and politics determine if you believe it.

• Author: Emery, Chris
• Position: The Environment

OBJECTIVE measurements of storm intensity show that hurricanes have grown more destructive in recent decades, but coastal residents' views on the matter depend less on scientific fact and more on their gender, belief in climate change, and recent experience with hurricanes, according to a study by researchers at Princeton, Auburn, Louisiana State, and Texas A&M universities.

The researchers plumbed data from a survey of Gulf Coast residents and found that the severity of the most-recent storm a person weathered tended to play the largest role in determining whether he or she believes that storms are getting worse over time, relates a study published in the International Journal of Climatology.

Respondents' opinions also strongly differ depending on whether they are male or female, believe in climate change, and are a Democrat or Republican. For instance, people who believe in climate change are far more likely to perceive the increasing violence of storms than those who do not. The researchers note that, because climate change has become a politically polarizing issue, party affiliation also was an indicator of belief in strengthening storms.

Research found that people's view of future storm threats is based on their hurricane experience, gender, and political affiliation, despite ample evidence that Atlantic hurricanes are getting stronger. This could affect how policymakers and scientists communicate the increasing deadliness of hurricanes as a result of climate change.

"Understanding how people in coastal regions perceive the threat is important because it influences whether they will take the necessary actions to address that threat," notes Ning Lin, senior researcher on the study and an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton.

Adds Siyuan Xian, a doctoral candidate in Lin's lab and colead author of the paper. "What you see is that there is often a gap between the reality of the storm trends and how people interpret those trends."

While scientists continue to debate the impact of climate change on the frequency and strength of hurricanes, numerous studies of objective measures--such as wind speed, storm-surge height, and economic damage--show that hurricanes are stronger than they were even a few decades ago.

For instance, eight of the 10 most economically damaging hurricanes since 1980 have occurred since 2004, points out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In constant dollars, Hurricane...