General Insurance Article - Overall Atlantic hurricane impact may not increase

 Scientists predict that global warming is likely to lead to stronger tropical cyclones, but also that the overall global frequency of tropical storms and hurricanes is likely to decrease.

 New research from the Willis Research Network (WRN), however, indicates that the overall damage caused by the fewer, but stronger, Atlantic hurricanes of the coming century may remain similar to the damage of the more frequent, weaker storms of the 20th century.

 The WRN research uses high-resolution climate models, which run on lots of very high powered computers, to capture atmospheric phenomena and emulate the physical processes that underlie storm formation.

 These climate model projections for hurricane activity agree with other research methods, which depend upon projections about Tropical Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST).

 Although more research is needed before definitive conclusions can be drawn, the WRN research does suggest that the potential decrease in hurricane frequency may offset the increase in hurricane severity—so that the average power of Atlantic hurricanes will remain fairly stable over the coming century