Journal article
Exploring the impact mechanisms of tropical cyclone losses: a global analysis integrating hazard, exposure, and vulnerability (1990–2019)
npj Natural Hazards, Vol.Advanced access
20-Jul-2026
Abstract
Tropical cyclones (TCs) have caused substantial mortality and economic losses worldwide, yet existing studies have primarily focused on individual risk components, specific regions, or single loss types. It therefore remains unclear whether TC-related mortality and direct economic losses are shaped by the same or different combinations of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability, and how these mechanisms vary across regions and income groups. This study develops an integrated assessment framework to quantify the relative contributions of these three factors to short-term directly recorded TC-related mortality and direct economic losses from 1990 to 2019. The results show that TC impacts are highly concentrated in a few countries and unevenly distributed across income groups: low- and lower-middle-income countries, including Bangladesh, Myanmar, and the Philippines, accounted for over 80% of TC-related mortality, whereas high- and upper-middle-income countries, including the United States, Japan, and China, bore 77% of direct economic losses. During the study period, TC hazard intensity increased, while both population exposure and GDP exposure exhibited pronounced upward trends, while vulnerability declined overall but remained high in many low-income countries. Attribution analysis indicates that GDP exposure is the dominant driver of global economic losses, with a 192.82% increase per 100% rise, whereas population vulnerability is the primary determinant of TC-related mortality, with a 63.58% increase per 100% rise. The dominant drivers also differ across regions and income groups. These findings provide quantifiable evidence for designing differentiated TC risk-reduction strategies based on exposure, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity.
Details
- Title
- Exploring the impact mechanisms of tropical cyclone losses: a global analysis integrating hazard, exposure, and vulnerability (1990–2019)
- Authors
- Chengcheng Wan - Henan Academy of SciencesLuna Zhao - Shanghai Normal UniversityChengming Jin - Shanghai Normal UniversityJianli Liu - University of the Sunshine CoastTongfei Tian - University of the Sunshine CoastYinwei Tian (Corresponding Author) - Shanghai Normal UniversityJiahong Wen (Corresponding Author) - Shanghai Normal University
- Publication details
- npj Natural Hazards, Vol.Advanced access
- Publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- DOI
- 10.1038/s44304-026-00248-x
- ISSN
- 2948-2100
- Copyright note
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
- Grant note
- This work was supported by Henan Academy of Sciences (Grant No. 20251825001) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 42171080, 42105125).
- Organisation Unit
- School of Science, Technology and Engineering
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991251395402621
- Output Type
- Journal article
Metrics
1 Record Views