The Flawed ICAT Hurricane Loss Dataset: A Call for Scientific Integrity in Climate Research
16 hours ago Charles Rotter
In a compelling study published in the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology (April 2025), Roger Pielke Jr., previously a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and now a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and professor emeritus, exposes critical flaws in a widely used dataset of U.S. hurricane losses, known as the ICAT dataset. This dataset, originally derived from Pielke’s own peer-reviewed work, was modified without documentation by an insurance company, leading to biased results in peer-reviewed studies and major climate assessments. Pielke’s paper, titled “Do Not Use the ICAT Hurricane Loss ‘Dataset’: An Opportunity for Course Correction in Climate Science,” is a clarion call for the climate science community to uphold rigorous standards and correct these errors.
A fatally flawed time series of U.S. hurricane losses assembled by an insurance company almost a decade ago has found its way into analyses published in the peer-reviewed literature. The flawed time series is based on undocumented modifications to a research-quality dataset that I and my colleagues published almost two decades ago.
Pielke’s study meticulously documents how the ICAT dataset, initially based on his team’s carefully curated hurricane loss data (Pielke et al. 2008; Weinkle et al. 2018), was altered by International Catastrophe Insurance Managers, LLC (ICAT) after a corporate acquisition. These changes, made without transparency or scientific rigor, introduced significant biases, particularly inflating post-1980 loss estimates. The result is a “Frankenstein dataset” that combines incompatible methodologies, rendering it unsuitable for research.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/04/25/the-flawed-icat-hurricane-loss-dataset-a-call-for-scientific-integrity-in-climate-research/
