Projections made about natural disaster insurance and how the weather will be in the future.
A world renowned climate scientist, Professor Gordon McBean, from the University of Western Ontario, in Canada, has made projections regarding the future of the weather across the country, and the impact that it will have on the insurance industry.
Many feel that, based on Professor McBean’s forecasts, natural disaster insurance will become vitally important.
He has predicted that the summer months will experience notably warmer temperatures and that in some regions, the impact of this will be a higher instance of droughts, more wildfires, greater density of lightning flashes, a higher risk of hail storms, and greater scarcity of water. Some parts of Canada will also experience winter storms with greater intensity, more precipitation and freezing rain, and a notable increase of erosion along the coast associated with a shrinking of sea ice cover.
The research conducted by Professor McBean and the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction. It was commissioned by the Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) and its results were published within a report called “Telling the Weather Story: Can Canada Manage the Storms Ahead?”.
Within the report, Professor McBean explained that “Both the historical and projected trends shown in the research point to the need for Canada to adapt now in order to minimize social and economic costs in the future.”
The IBC’s senior vice president of policy and chief economist, Gregor Robinson, explained that the organization is hoping that the study will help to encourage governments, individuals, their communities, and industry to take a closer look at the risks that are currently being faced, as well as those that are coming in the near future.
He also stated that it is important for the insurance industry to recognize the financial impacts that increasingly severe weather will have, and that Canadians should start to review their natural disaster insurance and make certain that they have the coverage that they need to protect their assets. According to Robinson, the country’s residents are only now just seeing the beginning of the changes in the severity of weather, as there is an increase in the number of injuries and deaths, displaced families, and whole towns facing devastation.
