Hurricanes are fed by warm ocean waters, so it’s expected that we’ll see larger, more dangerous storms as the planet continues to heat up due to climate change. These storms also have a major economic impact—Katrina is thought to have knocked a full percentage off the US’ GDP in 2005. As such, we might expect to see hurricane-driven economic damages to be increasing over time.

But there’s a lot of statistical noise in that system. Many storms miss the US entirely, and others miss the major urban centers and damage sparsely populated areas. The growth of wealth over time, as well as things like changing business codes, also complicate the analysis. As a result, detecting any change in damages is extremely difficult, and studies have come to very different conclusions about whether there’s a trend or not.

But a new study suggests that the most powerful storms are in fact increasing. And perhaps just as significantly, its findings are consistent with a study of natural disasters published just a month ago, even though the two used very different methods.