Tornado Swarms Are On the Rise—but Don’t Blame Climate Change
Global warming isn’t in doubt, but scientists are stumped about increasingly violent storms.
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Tornadoes kill more people when they occur in “outbreaks,” storm systems that spin out more than a half-dozen or so funnels in a limited time and area. Such twisters killed 49 people last year, and almost 80 percent of tornado fatalities from 1972 to 2010 occurred during these outbreaks.
That’s an increasing concern for citizens of “tornado alley” in America’s Midwest—and the insurers and reinsurers that cover them—because outbreaks in the U.S. are becoming more extreme, according to a study published on Thursday in the journal Science. The work, however, has left researchers with some unexpected questions: For one, the data are inconsistent with how global warming has been projected to change our world.