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Correspondence

Nature 400, 13 (1 July 1999) | doi:10.1038/21758

Weathering a storm of global statistics

Kelly Sponberg1

  1. Office of Global Programs, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 1100 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1210, Silver Spring, Maryland 20910, USA

Another El Niño 'event of the century' has come and gone, and with it a wide variety of estimates of how much damage the world has incurred, ranging from US$14 billion to $69 billion1, 2, 3. Damage from all natural disasters in 1998 alone is believed to have cost some $93 billion4.