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Winds of Change May Influence Insurance and Forestry in Industries
February 01, 2001The impacts of extreme events, such as windstorms, on the insurance and forestry industries is to be investigated in a new Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research project, which also aims to shed light on the likely occurrence of future high winds due to global warming.
Windstorms have important implications for the whole European economy, particularly in forestry and insurance, according to Dr Jean Palutikof, a climatologist based at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit who will work for the Tyndall Centre on this project.
Dr Palutikof says the October 1987 storm destroyed the equivalent of 2 years of timber production in the UK, while the storms at the end of 1999 destroyed 10 percent of French forests.
"In western Europe, the January 1990 storm caused insured losses of more than US$5 billion and 95 deaths, and was quickly followed by another storm a month later causing a further US$4 billion in losses and 64 deaths."
Such industries may need to prepare for worse to come. The period since about 1970 has seen a steep increase in storminess, although this increase cannot be blamed on global warming. Most climate models predict an increase in storm activity in future, but results are still controversial.
Dr Palutikof's team will examine future changes in cyclone behaviour by applying a storm-tracking model to atmospheric pressure data from the state-of-the-art global climate model at the Met Office's Hadley Centre. They will also use regional models to look at details such as landscape, which has a large influence on wind speeds, and analyse changes in high wind speed occurrence.
Working with forestry and insurance experts, Dr Palutikof will then examine the impacts of wind changes in order to help the industries prepare for global warming.
"We've brought in the end users from the start, and will organise workshops at the end of the project to disseminate the results," she says.
The project is one of 21 new climate change projects announced today by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, which will encourage climate scientists, social scientists, engineers and economists to collaborate in studying the causes and consequences of climate change - and help governments, business leaders and policy-makers to develop climate change responses at national and global scales.
East Anglia, University of
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