Editor´s letter

No specific weather event can ever be squarely attributed to climate change but Hurricane Sandy does fit a pattern. It´s exceptional in terms of its financial cost but it may be less so in the future. The cost of Sandy is yet to be counted but early estimates put it at around $60bn, so you can place it at number two on our graph below. Whatever the final cost, most of the climatechange models now predict warmer, wetter, stormier weather for many parts of the world. If those models are right, we can expect more like Sandy.