Interactions Between the Atmospheric Sciences and Insurers in the United States

Insurance and insurers are directly affected and concerned about climate fluctuations in the United States. Growing losses in the 1990s awakened many in the insurance business to the enormity of weather-related problems they faced and a need for better information about climate and its fluctuations including a new potential problem, climate change. This paper presents the views of experts from the crop insurance sector, the property-casualty insurance sector, and from the atmospheric sciences sector based on atmospheric research accomplished for the insurance industry for decades. The paper addresses how climatologists and insurers can and need to work together to effectively bring understanding and wise consideration of climate conditions and their future fluctuations and extremes to insurers. Considerable climatological analyses have been employed in the past by the crop insurance industry, but less by property insurers. Insurers can adjust to a change in climate but to do so will require clear evidence, which does not exist now for the United States, and an understanding as well as wide acceptance of the on-going change by regulators and the buying public. Atmospheric scientists can help insurers to mitigate weather losses, to assess risks, to measure critical perils, to educate about risks, and to learn about critical issues like climate change and long-range forecasts.