A California modeling firm said today that the risk of hurricanes making U.S. landfall in many coastal regions is 40 percent higher than normal over the next five years.

Newark, Calif.-based Risk Management Solutions today said that projection is reaffirmation of its medium-term five-year view of the landfalling hurricane risk for the period of 2007-2011.

The company is projecting modeled annualized insurance losses for the Gulf Coast, Florida, and the Southeast that are 40 percent higher, on average, than losses derived using long-term 1900-2006 historical average hurricane frequencies. For the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast coastal regions, the percentage increase 25 to 30 percent relative to the longer term averages.

RMS first released this view of risk before the 2006 hurricane season, for the five-year period of 2006-2010.

Joshua Darr, director of model management at RMS, said in doing an annual review of medium-term landfall frequency in the Atlantic, the company presented a range of statistical models to a panel of seven leading hurricane scientists.

"This expert panel concluded that the forthcoming five-year period of hurricane landfall frequency would be very similar to our original five-year projection established last year," Mr. Darr said.

A key driver of the view of that risk of hurricanes making landfall is elevated is an increase of more than 30 percent in the modeled frequency of major (Saffir-Simpson Category 3-5) hurricanes making landfall in the United States, RMS said.

The company said current elevated levels of hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin are expected to persist for at least the next five years.

Increased frequency and intensity of hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean Basin, as observed since 1995, are driven by higher sea surface temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic and by associated changes in atmospheric circulation, RMS explained.

Mr. Darr added that the experts also reaffirmed that the "increase in activity of the most severe Category 3-5 hurricanes will be higher than the increase in Category 1-2 storms, based on the high likelihood of warmer than normal sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic."

This outlook, RMS said, was implemented in its United States and Caribbean Hurricane models as part of the May 2006 release of the RiskLink and RiskBrowser 6.0 catastrophe modeling platforms.

While the forward-looking view of hurricane risk will not need to be changed in the spring 2007 release of RiskLink and RiskBrowser 7.0, there will be additional incremental updates for residual demand surge effects, continued advancements to storm surge modeling, and additional vulnerability classes, RMS said.

The company said it will continue to monitor, publish, and apply the five-year forward-looking view of activity rates, while meeting annually with a panel of leading hurricane climatologists.

Special Reports /

U.S. Hurricane Risk Still Seen Above Normal: RMS

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