Climate Change

In November 2013, Super Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines with the strongest winds the country had ever seen, but the substantial storm surge generated proved even more deadly.

The fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was released on November 1. It is a formal synthesis of findings from various working groups and previously published special reports—some of which have been available for more than a year.

You can’t ignore it. Whatever your thoughts on causes and effects, the world’s climate is changing—and this has far-reaching implications for the insurance industry both now and in the future. That’s because changes in the climate and weather patterns have the potential to affect extreme weather events.

Late last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its Fifth Assessment Report on climate change and earlier this month, the U.S. Global Change Research Program released its third national assessment of Climate Change Impacts in the United States. Both reports highlight the increased certainty with which climate change has been occurring, its anthropogenic (resulting from the influence of human beings on nature) cause, and its expected continuation.