Some comments on the reliability of NOAA's Storm Events Database

TL;DR

This paper critically examines NOAA's Storm Events Database, revealing significant issues with data completeness and consistency, which impact its reliability for research and decision-making.

Contribution

The study provides an exploratory analysis highlighting the database's data gaps and inconsistencies, emphasizing the need for cautious use and further validation.

Findings

Damage reports missing in over half of the records

Damage values are sometimes incorrect

Non-standard event type names are present in the database

Abstract

Storms and other severe weather events can result in fatalities, injuries, and property damage. Therefore, preventing such outcomes to the extent possible is a key concern, and the scientific community faces an increasing demand for regularly updated appraisals of evolving climate conditions and extreme weather. NOAA's Storm Events Database is undoubtedly an invaluable resource to the general public, to the professional, and to the researcher. Due to such importance, the primary objective of this study was to explore this database and get clues about its reliability. A complete investigation of the damage estimates, injuries or fatalities figures is unfeasible due to the extension of the database. However, an exploratory data analysis with the resources of the R statistical data analysis language found that damage reports are missing in more than half of the records, that part of the damage values are incorrect, and that, despite all efforts of standardizations, non-standard event type names are still finding their way into the database. These few results are enough to demonstrate that the database suffers from incompleteness and inconsistencies and should not be used without taking reservations and appropriate precautions before advancing any inferences from the data.