A whole bunch of data and graphs and other neat stuff on hurricanes: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/ http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/ The part I found most intere

A whole bunch of data and graphs and other neat stuff on hurricanes: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/ http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/climo/ The part I found most interesting was the points-of-origin graph, and how closely that correlates with the Tropic of Cancer. But, there's also a historical graph there for your edification. Tornadoes: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/tornadoes.html http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/tornadoes.... The historical graph here does not appear to show any upward trend 1950 to present for frequency of EF3-EF5 tornadoes; if anything, they may be becoming slightly less common. As for droughts, I will link to a report from NIPCC, who are -- to say the least -- climate change skeptics: http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2011/jul/27jul2011a2.html http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2011/jul/27jul2011a2.htm... In their report, they found no long term trend for drought conditions. I can find nothing that casts doubt on their research. If I were serious about figuring out whether the cost figures for natural disasters were attributable primarily to increased costs or primarily to increased severity of natural disasters, I'd use earthquakes as a comparison -- if it's an increase-of-cost issue, then I'd expect to see the same increase-of-cost for historical earthquakes. If the increase-of-cost for earthquakes is substantially less than of the natural disasters in this report, then I'd be inclined to attribute it to a greater frequency and severity of natural disasters.