A panel study of 254 Texas counties over 50 years linked reconstructed tropical cyclone wind exposure to county-month all-cause mortality, stratified by social vulnerability. High-vulnerability counties showed a positive and significant mortality response to cyclone exposure; lower-vulnerability counties did not. The mortality burden from repeated cyclone exposure concentrated where physical hazard intensity overlapped with social vulnerability.
Why it is interesting: Demonstrates that disaster mortality depends on population capacity to recover, not exposure alone; a finding relevant to how societies prepare for and absorb climate shocks.