A study by reinsurance giant Munich Re finds that the number of natural disasters per year due to extreme weather have been increasing dramatically in North America in the past 30 years.
“We see some trends that are linked with changes in atmospheric conditions, such as more water content in the atmosphere due to global warming,” Peter Roder of Munich Re says. Additional water vapor in the atmosphere is the fuel for the big storms, he says.
Call me a skeptic, but it definitely raised my eyebrows that these findings are being released by the world’s largest reinsurance firm. It benefits companies like Munich Re and One Sure Insurance to create a climate of extreme caution for primary insurers who then may feel the need to buy policies from reinsurers to help spread the risk in the event of large natural disasters and a subsequent deluge of insurance claims.
Some in the scientific community are finding issue with the results of the study. Some scientists question whether 30 years of data is statistically significant when studying climate, while others say that when the data is adjusted for population growth, there is no increase in tornado or hurricane damage.
Read the full story for some of the study results and more from the skeptics in USA Today.
