Hurricane modelers in predicting hurricane landfall activity need to look at conditions over the long term, experts at Boston-based AIR Worldwide Corporation said.
Discussing the results of the modeling firm's latest research, Peter Dailey, director of research in atmospheric science at AIR Worldwide, explained that to better understand hurricane activity, underwriters cannot rely upon the most recent storm pattern as a predictor of future risk.
"When it comes to uncertain things, it is human tendency to revert to what is most comfortable and what is most familiar and most recent," said Mr. Dailey. "Risk cannot be predicted based on activity in a couple of seasons."
However, he added, "the risk has not gone away."
The point of the latest research, he said, is that Atlantic storm season activity does not predict the number and intensity of storms that will make landfall during hurricane season. Where those storms have their genesis is a better indicator of what storms will reach landfall, he explained. Understanding those patterns, and their changes from year to year, can help lead to better understanding of why some seasons produce a higher proportion of hurricanes making landfall, he said.
For instance, storms that originate off the coast of Africa have a far lesser chance of making landfall than storms that originate in the Gulf of Mexico.
The record shows that a warmer Atlantic Ocean produces more tropical storms on average, which has been the case since 1995, he said.
However, that above-average number of tropical storms does not necessarily translate into increased hurricane activity or hurricane landfall activity, he said.
Mr. Dailey said the forecast community has gotten very good at predicting the number of tropical storms within a season, but predicting the number of hurricanes and their propensity to make landfall remains very difficult.
Science has gotten very good at understanding the factors that lead to the development of a particular storm, he said. The difficulty remains in identifying those factors beforehand and coming up with an accurate long-term hurricane forecast.
Mr. Dailey emphasized that AIR's analysis is not an attempt to forecast future hurricane activity. Instead, its aim is to help the underwriting community to improve its actuarial estimates and management of risk over the long term depending upon its point of origination and its historical impact.
(This story was updated on Jan. 9 at 3:20 p.m.)
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