February 21, 2020
Losses from storms Ciara and Dennis, which brought strong winds, torrential rain and widespread flooding to the UK, will increase pressure on UK household insurers’ profits in 2020, said Fitch Ratings. While the claims are unlikely to exceed £500 million …
February 14, 2020
Australia’s central bank chief Philip Lowe warned of wide-ranging economic and financial impacts from climate change, after his drought-stricken nation suffered some of its worst wildfires ever. Speaking on a panel with his Canadian counterpart, Lowe pointed out that drought …
February 12, 2020
Climate change is spurring a new, deep dive into a complex, little-studied weather system blamed for creating billions of dollars in flood damage across the western U.S. Atmospheric rivers are narrow ribbons of concentrated moisture that originate in the Pacific …
February 6, 2020
Rice University engineers have created a deep learning computer system that taught itself to accurately predict extreme weather events, like heat waves, up to five days in advance using minimal information about current weather conditions. Ironically, Rice’s self-learning “capsule neural …
January 17, 2020
Japanese companies have contingency plans for the floods that increasingly drench this island nation, but most have done little to fortify facilities, relying instead on insurance and securing alternative supply sources, a Reuters poll found. Japanese have long been conditioned …
January 3, 2020
The U.K. endured more high-temperature records during the 2010s than any decade over the last century, according to the nation’s weather service, attributing the trend to climate change. Four of the eight high-temperate extremes from the last decade occurred in …
December 31, 2019
Over the last decade, scientists learned a great deal about the climate, much of it concerning the connection between global warming and extreme events — heat waves, hurricanes, floods, droughts and wildfires. There has been, for many years, an understanding …
November 25, 2019
In the hills of northern Greece, peach farmer Makis Antoniadis is sweating in unseasonably warm November weather as he toils with his most recent harvest. It might be one of his last. Already grappling with the effects of climate change, …
June 17, 2019
In 2008, the year the stock market crashed and Barack Obama won the presidency, the U.S. was hit with a weather phenomenon little noted by anyone beyond the insurance industry. The country’s losses from hail breached $19 billion in inflation-adjusted …
April 9, 2019
Some of the world’s largest insurers are eagerly pitching cities, states and even school districts on policies designed to pay out quickly with few questions in the event of extreme weather. The catch: Even a hurricane might not be extreme …