Suz Tolwinski-Ward

Before the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season, we invited you to enter our hurricane contest.

Given advances in science and statistics, we set out to develop an explicitly space-time and environmentally driven representation of tropical cyclogenesis—the origin of a tropical cyclone.

While some studies have suggested that continued warming of the Earth’s surface will eventually lead to an increase in the proportion of strong tropical cyclones, considerable uncertainty in this result remains, and the impact of a clear overall warming trend on the insurance industry is also somewhat ambiguous.

My colleague Tim Doggett and I recently traveled to London to participate in a Risk Prediction Initiative 2.0 workshop on Atlantic Hurricane Volatility. Several of the leading academic scientists who study tropical cycloneswere there, as well as scientists from other catastrophe risk modeling companies and reinsurers.

In catastrophe risk management, where estimates of property losses due to hurricane activity, for example, can easily escalate into the billions, rigorous uncertainty measures are absolutely critical.