Insurance industry prices warming into Hurricane Harvey cost

Because US infrastructure is not built to withstand climate change the cost of the disaster will be relatively high

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was "the first taste of a bitter cup that will be proffered to us over and over again," according to former US vice president Al Gore at the time.

Since then, Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and now Hurricane Harvey have borne out this prediction. The latest storm may turn out to be less fatal than Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people but in economic terms it may be as bad. Hurricane Katrina cost about $160bn (124bn) in economic losses in today's terms, accounting for the last decade's inflation, while Sandy wrought about $70bn in damage.

Related: A timeline of the billion-dollar weather disasters in the US over the past decade

Weather catastrophes are now six times more frequent than in 1950