AIR Issues White Paper on Hurricane Info

At the midpoint of an active 2008 hurricane season, AIR Worldwide Corporation (AIR) has issued a white paper to provide an update on its original research on climatological influences on hurricane landfall risk.

The white paper explains in detail AIR’s approach to creating a climate-conditioned view of U.S. hurricane risk and outlines a robust approach to catastrophe risk assessment using multiple views of the risk.

“AIR Worldwide provides two views of U.S. hurricane risk in the form of alternative catalogs of simulated storms for its U.S. hurricane model,” said Dr. Peter Dailey, director of research in atmospheric science at AIR Worldwide. “The standard catalog reflects hurricane risk under average climate conditions, while the Warm Sea Surface Temperature (SST) catalog reflects hurricane risk under warmer-than-average ocean conditions. These catalogs incorporate the latest scientific research, which has undergone extensive peer review by leading scientists, to provide credible estimates of U.S. hurricane risk. Together, they provide the most scientifically advanced and sound approach to assessing U.S. hurricane risk available today.”

The scientific approach taken by AIR leverages the expertise of AIR’s staff of climate scientists and statisticians to advance the state of scientific knowledge on climate. This original research has been accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of the peer-reviewed, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology (published by the American Meteorological Society) and as a book chapter in Hurricanes and Climate Change (Springer). The data and methodology used by AIR is completely transparent to both the user of the model and to the wider scientific community, and is entirely reproducible.

“Findings from research undertaken by AIR scientists indicate that during years in which SSTs are warmer than the long-term average, the U.S. Gulf and East Coasts experience more frequent tropical cyclone landfalls,” continued Dr. Dailey. “The findings further indicate that tropical cyclone intensity at landfall is influenced by ocean conditions and that the effect varies by coastal region.”

In particular, the Gulf Coast is likely to experience more frequent landfalls of tropical storms and weak hurricanes. The pattern is different for the Southeast, which is likely to experience more frequent storms of hurricane and major hurricane strength. In the Northeast, the relationship between warm SSTs and hurricane landfalls is too weak to draw any firm conclusions. Overall, the difference (increase) in the mean frequency between the Warm SST catalog and AIR’s standard catalog for U.S. hurricane landfalls is between 5% and 10%.

AIR offers its Warm SST catalog as a supplement to, rather than a replacement for, its standard catalog of Atlantic hurricane activity. In providing two catalogs instead of one, AIR is promoting the use of multiple views of risk, or what is often referred to as an “ensemble approach.”

“Climatological Influences on Hurricane Activity: The AIR Warm SST Conditioned Catalog,” is available at:

http://www.air-worldwide.com/_Public/images/ pdf/AIR_WarmSST_Catalog_2008.pdf