Twelve months at 1.5 °C signals earlier than expected breach of Paris Agreement threshold - Nature Climate Change The 12 months before July 2024 were more than 1.5 °C warmer than the pre-industrial baseline. Using climate models, the author shows that the first year that exceeds 1.5 °C of warming most probably al...

An interesting analysis of last year's temperature record. Like many other groups, in our 2024 nat cat review we said exceedinging 1.5C last year doesn't mean we breachd the Paris agreement. But this paper definitely makes you think again (if you trust the models). www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Also this report is great, which Simon was also involved with. Talks about the need to assess risks in relation to objectives or interests, like heat stress to people or crop production. www.csap.cam.ac.uk/projects/cli...

Love this concept - in insurance we refer to it as normative risk management or reverse stress testing. Decide what constitutes intolerable risk and back into changes that would get you there bsky.app/profile/kell...

Yes, exactly. I was just coming to comment that Simon Sharp was the inspiration for our paper on normative scenarios for insurers. We reference Simon's boiling frog paper in our article.

Recent global temperature surge intensified by record-low planetary albedo In 2023, the global mean temperature soared to almost 1.5K above the pre-industrial level, surpassing the previous record by about 0.17K. Previous best-guess estimates of known drivers including anthr...

We have a new paper out in @science.org today, led by Helge Goessling from #AWI:

The recent global temperature surge in 2023 was intensified by a record-low planetary #albedo

👉 doi.org/10.1126/scie... @thomasjung.bsky.social @ecmwf.bsky.social

This is what we found (🧵1/8)

Obviously there are the big events like AGU and EGU, but what about smaller, focused events. For example, there's a regular Worksop on European windstorms that both academics and industry people attend. Is there anything similar for earthquakes?

As someone that spends a lot of time attending academic/industry events related to extreme weather, I'm not so familiar with what's going on in the Earth sciences world. Do any earthquake people have any recommendations for events to attend?

I was trying to find people to follow yesterday, searching for things like "catastrophe risk" and "climate risk" under people, but didn't find that many. It seems like there aren't many industry people here yet, or maybe I'm using the wrong search terms!

@jessboyd.bsky.social and I have written about a new NOAA-led study on increasing North Atlantic hurricane variability and its implications for insurance cat model adjustments. Co-author Sang-Ki shared our article below—also check out his first post for the original paper!

Projected increase in the frequency of extremely active Atlantic hurricane seasons: 🌊🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Thanks for posting! :)

Observation of large scale precursor correlations between cosmic rays and earthquakes with a periodicity similar to the solar cycle The search for correlations between secondary cosmic ray detection rates and seismic effects has long been a subject of investigation motivated by the…

Where do cosmic rays sit in all of this? Real or junk? I was quite skeptical about this paper, but it's peer reviewed so 🤷 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Hello, I'm new here! I'm a natural hazard researcher at WTW Research Network working to better understand and quantify present-day and future natural catastrophe risk for the (re)insurance industry.

The "shape" of the 2024 hurricane season is a funny one. It got off to a spectacular start, had a sleepy middle, and then it was a sprint to the finish line. This plot shows the difference between the cumulative ACE index (a measure of hurricane activity) for 2024 compared to the 1991-2020 average.

Beyond our imagination: How Generative AI promises to reshape scenario analysis in the insurance industry How are recent advances in Gen AI reshaping scenario analysis in the (re) insurance industry?

And here's our article from April: www.wtwco.com/en-gb/insigh...

Earlier this year, we wrote about using Large Language Models for reinsurance scenario narratives. We predicted AI may soon be able generate synthetic hazard data too. With OpenAI's new o1-preview model released yesterday, we're getting closer! It produce this scenario for Miami.

That also applies to the near-term risk insurers are trying to model. For example, regulatory capital is often calculated based on the modelled 1-in-200 year loss. For many perils we don't have observations in the tail to constrain models, just like we don't have observations of climate in 2100.

Risk should ideally be objective, but isn't it hard to achieve this in practice? Subjective judgements are made by model builders and model evaluators/end users.

Yes, I totally agree. Maybe my point came across wrong. Open modelling needs to be the future of our industry and will allow for more informed decision making. Maybe what I should have said is how models are used/evaluated/understood by end users is equally important as their openness.

Openness is important, but it's only one part of the challenge when it comes to making decisions with nat cat models.

Even if all models were open and built using the latest best-in-class methods, there would still be differences in 1-in-100 year risk estimates. You may trust one model, but another scientist or decision maker may trust an equally valid different model that produces the opposite result.

WTW Research Network announces new mathematical modelling collaboration with the London Mathematical Laboratory New agreement will inform the use of mathematical modelling for insurance, to help mitigate natural catastrophe risk

We’ve been sitting on this news for sometime, so I’m so excited WTW has announced our new research partnership with Prof Erica Thompson!

‘Escape From Model Land’ is such a great book and I can’t wait to learn from Erica as she turns her attention to Cat Models! www.wtwco.com/en-gb/news/2...