Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- The significance of weather and climate extremes to society: an introduction
- I Defining and modeling the nature of weather and climate extremes
- II Impacts of weather and climate extremes
- 8 Extreme climatic events and their impacts: examples from the Swiss Alps
- 9 The impact of weather and climate extremes on coral growth
- 10 Forecasting US insured hurricane losses
- 11 Integrating hurricane loss models with climate models
- 12 An exploration of trends in normalized weather-related catastrophe losses
- 13 An overview of the impact of climate change on the insurance industry
- 14 Toward a comprehensive loss inventory of weather and climate hazards
- 15 The catastrophe modeling response to Hurricane Katrina
- 16 The Risk Prediction Initiative: a successful science–business partnership for analyzing natural hazard risk
- Index
- Plate section
- References
13 - An overview of the impact of climate change on the insurance industry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 September 2009
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- The significance of weather and climate extremes to society: an introduction
- I Defining and modeling the nature of weather and climate extremes
- II Impacts of weather and climate extremes
- 8 Extreme climatic events and their impacts: examples from the Swiss Alps
- 9 The impact of weather and climate extremes on coral growth
- 10 Forecasting US insured hurricane losses
- 11 Integrating hurricane loss models with climate models
- 12 An exploration of trends in normalized weather-related catastrophe losses
- 13 An overview of the impact of climate change on the insurance industry
- 14 Toward a comprehensive loss inventory of weather and climate hazards
- 15 The catastrophe modeling response to Hurricane Katrina
- 16 The Risk Prediction Initiative: a successful science–business partnership for analyzing natural hazard risk
- Index
- Plate section
- References
Summary
Condensed summary
This chapter focuses on the types of extreme weather and climate events that are important to property insurers, and it considers evidence on how those risks have been changing and how they might change in the future with climate change. Some evidence is drawn from the United Kingdom, which has wide insurance coverage for weather perils and much familiarity with international catastrophe insurance. The author believes there is good ground to argue that climate change is already affecting the risks, although it is not the only factor that has caused change. Further, the risks of extremes may be changing very rapidly.
Introduction
The insurance industry is affected by climate change in a number of ways, although the effects may vary greatly between jurisdictions, owing to industry structure and practice as well as to climatic and geographical differences. Insurers are already encountering aggravated claims for insured property damage in extreme events, particularly floods, storms, and droughts. As yet, the main causes of the trend of rising property claims in recent decades are socioeconomic rather than climatic; however, the contribution of climatic change could rise quickly, owing to the strongly nonlinear relationship between climatic variables and damage, and the fact that a small shift in mean conditions can create a large change in extremes. The pace of change regarding weather extremes is fast.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Climate Extremes and Society , pp. 248 - 278Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
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