Cost of Arctic methane release could be ‘size of global economy’ warn experts

University of Cambridge Research News: Economic modelling shows that the possible methane emissions caused by shrinking sea ice from just one area of the Arctic could come with a global price tag of 60 trillion dollars - the size of the world economy in 2012.

As the Arctic warms and sea ice melts at an unprecedented rate, hitting a record low last summer, the thawing of offshore ‘permafrost’ - frozen soil - in the region is releasing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

Scientists have previously warned that there are vast reservoirs of methane in the Arctic, hundreds of billions of tonnes of a gas many times worse than carbon dioxide for global warming - of which only a fraction needs releasing into the atmosphere to trigger possibly catastrophic climate change.

Now, researchers from Cambridge and Rotterdam have for the first time calculated the potential economic impact of a scenario some scientists consider increasingly likely: that the methane below the East Siberian Sea will be emitted, either steadily over the next 30 years or in one giant “burp”.

Writing in the journal Nature, the academics say that just this area’s methane alone - some 50 billion tonnes, or 50 gigatonnes - would have a mean global impact of 60 trillion dollars, an amount very similar to the size of the entire global economy last year. Current US national debt stands at a mere 16 trillion dollars in comparison.

The economic impact modelled was only for the methane existing on the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, and “the total price of Arctic change will be much higher,” they warn...

“Arctic science is a strategic asset for human economies because the region drives critical effects in our biophysical, political and economic systems,” write the academics, who say that world leaders will “miss the bigger picture” without factoring in Arctic methane projections - as neither the World Economic Forum or the International Monetary Fund currently recognise the economic danger of Arctic change...

Lama Lake on the Putorana Plateau in Siberia, shot by Vitaly Repin, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

The sense of an ending--a Carbon Based original

    It's December 22, the snow is falling, and I'm basking in relief that Mayan apocalypse fizzled.   A 5,125-year cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar ended yesterday -- December 21, 2012.  Some New Age thinkers claimed that this date heralded a major spiritual transformation, the beginning of a new era, or the end of the earth in a collision with a planet or a black hole.

    Historians of Mayan culture scoffed at these internet-stoked rumors and theories, doubting that any authentic sources supported such a gaudy Hollywood interpretation. Astronomers were derisive about talk of black holes or planetary collisions. 

    These party poopers didn't stop hundreds of credulous souls from flocking to Merida in the Yucatan, near the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza, and to Tikal in Guatemala. The photos look festive.

    There were casualties. In Sergeyev Posad, a village near Moscow, police blamed a retiree's suicidal leap from her apartment window on her Mayan-based fears. And Chinese authorities arrested around 1,000 members of the Church of the Almighty God for spreading tales about the supposed end times.

    Not for the first time, a calendar served as a screen for some people to project their fears of mortality.  The projection plays into our hardwired narrative bias -- we love stories with a beginning, middle and end.  The Mayan curtain rings down with a bang, and the story's ridiculous falsity didn't make it any less satisfying.

    By coincidence, last night I went to the documentary Chasing Ice, director Jeff Orlowski's chronicle of one photographer's attempt to grapple with a single aspect of a real catastrophe.  It's also one that doesn't lend itself readily to a simple narrative.

    The project began in 2005: The National Geographic sent photographer James Balog to document the impacts of climate change in Iceland.  Dubious about climate change before this trip, he saw enough to change his mind and to give him a mission:  He founded the Extreme Ice Survey to systematically photograph the disappearance of a number of Arctic glaciers using an array of time-lapse cameras.  His goal was to provide visual evidence to the world of the reality of climate change. 

    He surely succeeds. We witness two large calving events, in which a large chunk of the glacier face breaks off and floats away.   In Alaska, Greenland, and Iceland, we see moulins with melt water coursing away, and time-lapse sequences showing vast ice fields dwindling and slipping away.

    Another satisfaction to Orlowski's documentary lies in the courage and persistence of Balog and his crew.  They wrangle their cameras into the best position for their shots, or deal with technical failures in the harsh polar landscape.   They even have to redesign and replace the timing mechanism for many dozens of cameras, which costs them months of work.

    Balog rightly describes the images the Survey has collected as beautiful and horrifying. Of course, the visual evidence probably resonates most with those who already believe in climate change. It's unclear whether it will convince any denialists.  A YouTube video showed one self-described Fox News viewer declaring that she now believed in global warming as she left a showing of Chasing Ice, shaken by what she saw. But it's unclear whether the change of heart has lasted, and whether many others will follow her.  Certainly the most recently polling data shows that a sizeable minority of Americans continue to believe that climate change is a fraud, or at worst an overhyped issue.

    Climate change believers who aren't scientists probably exceed the numbers of those who believed in the Mayan apocalypse. Even so, along with evolution and reproductive health, climatology has been plunged into the cauldron where conservatives boil the science they hate.

    We suffer from cultural insanity when a New Age trifle like the Mayan apocalypse can command hours of airtime, while the screaming emergency created by greenhouse gas emissions scarcely rates a fraction of the sustained focus that it needs. As Balog points out, as a result of our own greenhouse gas emissions, we are approaching the end of a relatively benign and hospitable period for human habitation.  The stormy, wet, unstable future we are creating will contain threats whose contours are just coming into view.

    With his narrow focus, Balog attempts to counter the tide of denial and the unshapely vastness of climate change as a whole.  A dying glacier has a definite end point, and our love of story is mobilized when watching its death throes.  Struggling with climate change will be the work of centuries, and it will probably take forms we don't anticipate. It won't be a story with a satisfying arc, or even an ending.

A Mayan zodiac circle, shot by theilr, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Dust Bowl reflections-- a Carbon Based original

One way to address climate change today is to fully appreciate yesterday's climate disasters. The recent broadcast of Ken Burns' documentary on the Dust Bowl is a starting point, if an often annoying one. Plaintive violins and banjos keep the nostalgia turned up high.  The personality-focused style of these shows often blunts general insights and muffle the sharp points that need to be kept in mind.   But at least the talking heads in "The Dust Bowl" were explicit in stating that the catastrophe was manmade, like today's climate change woes.

The story is a familiar blend of fragile prospertiy, delusional hope and harsh comeuppance. The Homestead Act after the Civil War lured growing numbers of farmers onto semiarid grasslands, with few trees and little water.  A period of higher than normal rainfall masked the consequences of this influx for a while.  Many Plains dwellers believed that the wetter weather was permanent. 

Policy choices played a destructive role in adding to the risks. "Rain follows the plow" was the dunderheaded motto used to promote the settlement.  Free or cheap land and price supports for wheat during World War I led to good years that attracted more immigrants. By this time, most residents were deeply attached to the land.

During these fat years, deep plowing destroyed the millions of acres of grasses that held the soil in place, and brought marginal land under cultivation. Fields were often left bare, without cover cropping despite the constant winds.  Topsoils dried up even before the drought returned, which was the prelude to the apocalyptic dust storms of the 1930s.

When the rain stopped and the dust storms came, most people in the area underestimated the dangers.  They said, "We've seen droughts before, we've seen dust storms before," even though the storms of the 1930s were larger and longer lasting. Moving away seemed unthinkable.   As the market for wheat collapsed and the drought worsened, most farmers were loath to see their own part in fomenting the disaster.  Just leave us alone, they said, and the rains will come back, and things will return to normal. 

But the drought got worse. One farmer lamented, "One of those years, we put our entire wheat crop in one wagon."  Children and the elderly sickened and died from "dust pneumonia."

The exodus from the Dust Bowl eventually picked up after more than five years of no money and no crops.  "A migration of the defeated," the narrator intoned, it dwarfed the 19th century US migrations, but it's largely gone from public notice. 

Several of witnesses summoned by Burns showed some insight into the problem. Bernard Lewis, a child at the time, said, "We always had hope that next year was going to be better... we learned slowly." These hopes were cruelly shredded in the years of depression and dust, only to return in a blink when conditions improved.

In the last few minutes of part two of the "The Dust Bowl," various interviewees acknowledged the need for humility and for staying mindful of the land's limits and needs.  But the script did little to explain the predictable market failures that  worsened tolerable natural cycles into outright catastrophe.

The government's response was a mixed bag. Short-term, the Works Progress Administration in 1935 launched projects that, though they were condemned as make work, nevertheless brought labor to the region and helped busted farmers. More scientific agriculture was brought to bear on the problem, with contour plowing and better erosion control replacing destructive land use habits of yore.  But the improvements were modest, and the government did little to slow down the the reintroduction of the same detrimental practices once the rains returned.   In the 1940s, overplanting and developing marginal land resumed quickly. Smaller dust storms returned in the 1950s, held somewhat in check by the new methods.

Roosevelt may have brought hope to the region, but the political calculus left no room for the most sustainable measure in the long term -- leave the land alone, and avoid development where there isn't the water to support it.  We see a similar pattern happening today in the planting of crops for biofuel, and in the Great Plains today, in pumping ancient groundwater from the Ogallala Aquifer. One of the speakers estimates that only twenty years of water remain -- and then it's back to the drought cycle.

After the Dot Com bust after 2000, the Onion ran a headline:  "Americans angrily demand new bubble to invest in."   Maybe it's human nature. But it's worth resisting. The bad ecological outcomes of climate change that threaten us today are potentially much worse than the Dust Bowl.

FSA; Dust Storm; "Farmer and sons walking in the face of a dust storm"; Cimarron County, Oklahoma. Shot by Arthur Rothstein in 1936. This image gets a few minutes of its own in the Ken Burns documentary

"Doomsday clock" moves one minute closer to midnight

Environment News Service: "Inadequate progress on nuclear weapons reduction and proliferation, and continuing inaction on climate change," prompted the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists today to push the hands of the Doomsday Clock one minute closer to midnight.

"It is five minutes to midnight," said the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists group, announcing their decision at a news conference in Washington. "Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed. For that reason, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is moving the clock hand one minute closer to midnight, back to its time in 2007."

...The Doomsday Clock expresses how close this group of scientists belives humanity is to catastrophic destruction, symbolized by midnight on the clock. The group monitors the means humankind could use to obliterate itself. First and foremost, these include nuclear weapons, but they also encompass climate-changing technologies and new developments in the life sciences that could inflict irrevocable harm.

..."As we see it," he told reporters, "the major challenge at the heart of humanity's survival in the 21st century is how to meet energy needs for economic growth in developing and industrial countries without further damaging the climate, exposing people to loss of health and community, and without risking further spread of nuclear weapons, and in fact setting the stage for global reductions. Even though climate change is happening and is getting more urgent as we speak," warned Krauss, "no comprehensive global action is happening."

..."The global community may be near a point of no return in efforts to prevent catastrophe from changes in Earth's atmosphere," warned Allison Macfarlane, who chairs the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board and is a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission on American's Nuclear Future, and an associate professor with George Mason University...

Mideast and North Africa at risk of natural disasters

Yosra Shohayeb in the Daily News (Egypt): By 2050, the number of people exposed to storms and earthquakes, particularly in coastal areas, could more than double to 1.5 billion, a report said. This is also true for the Middle East and North Africa region, with its rapidly growing cities exposed to many hazards, particularly in coastal areas.

The report titled “Natural Hazards, and Unnatural Hazards Disasters: the Economics of Effective Prevention,” said that in the coming years the region will become more vulnerable to floods, earthquakes, droughts, landslides and other natural disasters that can impede development, unless effective risk management is applied...

...“The findings of this report are indeed timely and important to the Arab region,” Secretary General of the Arab League Nabil El-Araby, said. “While water scarcity is becoming a major threat, climate change is undoubtedly aggravating the situation,” he added.

He explained that these findings must be put on the region’s development agenda, as they provide guidelines for regional efforts aiming at reducing vulnerabilities and risks induced by natural hazards. “By 2020, more than 66 percent of the Arab population will be living in cities that face several hazards and stressed resources,” Head of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) Regional Office for Arab States, Amjad Abbashar, said.

...The report shows that taking preventive measures against natural disasters do not require the government to spend more, but spend better. “Institution building, double-duty infrastructure and sharing data are all key to preventing disasters,” Acting Vice President for the Middle East and North Africa region in the World Bank, Lazlo Lovei, said. “Even modest increases, and greater sharing of data internationally, can have enormous benefits,” the report said.

Sanghi highlighted the importance of infrastructure, by giving an example on Kuala Lumpur's storm water management and road tunnel infrastructure and mobility, saying that it succeeded in March 2008 to build a tunnel diverting 1.2 million cubic meters of water. “When prevention is done right, even poor countries in harm's way manages to protect their population over time,” he said....

Ageba in Matrouh, Egypt, shot by Muhammad khamis

Insurance industry grapples with impact of climate change

Janet Whitman in CNBC writes about the pressure on insurance company profits, in a story that illustrates why the insurance business is so unforgiving. A company can write policies that look profitable year after year, only to have all those profits and more vanish in a big loss year like this one. Or, as an investment banker once told me, insurance companies are really hedge funds with an unfortunate addiction to writing insurance: As a surge in catastrophic weather events leads to billions of dollars in claims, climate change may pose the insurance industry’s biggest problem — and profit potential. An unusual onslaught of floods in Mississippi, tornadoes in the Midwest, drought and wildfires in Texas and earthquakes abroad has wiped out hope of much profit for many insurance and reinsurance companies this year.

Natural disasters, including Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, have left the industry on the hook for $60 billion in the first six months of this year alone, according to data from reinsurance giant Munich Re. That’s nearly five times the first-half average since 2001, and the oftentimes costly hurricane season is just getting underway.

Although the damage has been worse than expected, the industry has plenty of capital set aside to weather the losses — barring the occurrence of more off-the-charts disasters, which insurers and reinsurers say may or may not be linked to global warming.

“Many companies that write large catastrophe risks, primarily reinsurance companies, are getting paid money in many years when nothing happens,” says Matthew Rohrmann, an insurance industry analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. “There really haven’t been that many devastating hurricanes over the past few years, for example, and reinsurers and insurers are still getting paid premiums. They may lose a lot of money in one year, but their pricing is based on many years.”...

Turner's "Shipwreck of the Minotaur", oil on canvas, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon

Natural catastrophes lead to losses at reinsurer

My former employer, Swiss Re, reports a loss partly related to extreme weather: Swiss Re reports a net loss of USD 665 million for the first quarter of 2011, compared to a profit of USD 158 million in the same period of 2010. Property & Casualty was impacted by a very high level of natural catastrophe claims, including the earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand and the floods in Australia.

…Property & Casualty reported an operating loss of USD 1.2 billion, compared to an operating income of USD 259 million in the first quarter of 2010. This result was largely driven by natural catastrophe pre-tax losses of USD 2.3 billion. The combined ratio for Property & Casualty rose to 163.7% in the first quarter of 2011, compared to 109.4% in the prior-year period. The net impact from natural catastrophes on the combined ratio was 89.4 percentage points, which was 79.8 percentage points above the expected level.

…Historically, large losses from natural disasters have been followed by price increases and stronger demand in the Property & Casualty market. Swiss Re believes the combination of the recent natural catastrophes, very low interest rates, and years of price declines are likely to bring forward the turn in the cycle….

Modelling dam breaks, tsunamis and other geophysical events

CSIRO (Australia): CSIRO mathematicians are creating computational models of events like floods, dam breaks and tsunamis to aid understanding and planning for these phenomena. Catastrophic events like floods, dam breaks, tsunamis, storm surges, volcanic eruptions, and mud slides involve large-scale movement of fluids and solids. They can have serious economic, environmental and humanitarian effects.

These geophysical flow events are difficult to observe and measure. They are also very complex to model because they involve:

• movement of solids and fluids in large volumes over large areas
• many kinds of physical processes
• events occurring over an expanse of time and space.

New geophysical flow modelling techniques developed by CSIRO can be used to assist at-risk regions and nations by accurately visualising potential disaster scenarios to allow evidence-based decision making for emergency services management.

CSIRO has been developing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods, specifically particle-based smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code and granular flow (GF) code, to accurately model events like dam breaks and tsunamis using real three-dimensional (3D) topography obtained from digital terrain models. Using real topographic information means the results can be directly compared with disaster scenarios. Particle-based methods for modelling geophysical flows have numerous advantages over traditional grid or mesh-based continuum methods....Projects currently being undertaking using these methods include:

• refining a 3D simulation of the 1928 St Francis Dam break in California. Results from the computer simulation agree closely with historical data about damage from the real event.
• modelling the hypothetical collapse of China's Geheyan Dam, one of the world's largest dams. This project is a collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping.
• simulating a hypothetical flood of the Bellinger River in NSW, due to a storm surge
• predicting areas affected by a hypothetical tsunami inundating the Californian coastline
• dynamic prediction of flooding in several Australian cities due to dam breaks, tsunamis, floods and other disasters….

The St. Francis dam before it was destroyed in 1928

California 'other big one' occupies planners

US Geological Survey: For emergency planning purposes, scientists unveiled a hypothetical California scenario that describes a storm that could produce up to 10 feet of rain, cause extensive flooding (in many cases overwhelming the state’s flood-protection system) and result in more than $300 billion in damage.

The "ARkStorm Scenario," prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey and released at the ARkStorm Summit in Sacramento on Jan. 13 – 14, combines prehistoric geologic flood history in California with modern flood mapping and climate-change projections to produce a hypothetical, but plausible, scenario aimed at preparing the emergency response community for this type of hazard.

The USGS, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the California Emergency Management Agency convened the two-day summit to engage stakeholders from across California to take action as a result of the scenario's findings, which were developed over the last two years by more than 100 scientists and experts.

"The ARkStorm scenario is a complete picture of what that storm would do to the social and economic systems of California," said Lucy Jones, chief scientist of the USGS Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project and architect of ARkStorm. "We think this event happens once every 100 or 200 years or so, which puts it in the same category as our big San Andreas earthquakes. The ARkStorm is essentially two historic storms (January 1969 and February 1986) put back to back in a scientifically plausible way. The model is not an extremely extreme event." Jones noted that the largest damages would come from flooding — the models estimate that almost one-fourth of the houses in California would experience some flood damage from this storm.

"The time to begin taking action is now, before a devastating natural hazard event occurs," said USGS Director, Marcia McNutt. "This scenario demonstrates firsthand how science can be the foundation to help build safer communities. The ARkStorm scenario is a scientifically vetted tool that emergency responders, elected officials and the general public can use to plan for a major catastrophic event to help prevent a hazard from becoming a disaster."…

January 15, 2005 -- The Ventura County Fire Department Urban Search and Rescue team captain Larry Brister surveys the USAR team as they stabilize a structure in La Conchita, California where winter storms caused fatal landslides that damaged homes and roads. Photo by John Shea / FEMA News Photo

Natural disasters 'killed 295,000 in 2010'

AFP: Haiti earthquake and floods in Pakistan and China helped make 2010 an exceptional year for natural disasters, killing 295,000 and costing $130 billion, the world's top reinsurer said Monday. "The high number of weather-related natural catastrophes and record temperatures both globally and in different regions of the world provide further indications of advancing climate change," said Munich Re in a report.

The last time so many people died in natural disasters was in 1983, when 300,000 people died, mainly due to famine in Ethiopia, spokesman Gerd Henghuber told AFP. A total of 950 natural disasters were recorded last year, making 2010 the second worst year since 1980. The average number of events over the past 10 years was 785.

And in terms of economic cost, insured losses amounted to approximately $37 billion, putting 2010 among the six most loss-intensive years for the insurance industry since 1980. "2010 showed the major risks we have to cope with. There were a number of severe earthquakes. The hurricane season was also eventful," said Torsten Jeworrek, the firm's chief executive.

…The American continent suffered the most disasters -- 365 in total -- with 310 in Asia. A total of 120 natural disasters were recorded in Europe, 90 in Africa and 65 in Australia and Oceania. In 2009, considered a "benign" year due to the absence of major catastrophes and a less severe than usual hurricane season in the North Atlantic, there were 900 "destructive natural hazard events", costing some 60 billion dollars….

A composite image of the 2010 hurricane season

Up to six more months of Pakistan flood water

AFP: A senior EU aid official warned Friday that flood waters could linger up to another six months in Pakistan, where he said the magnitude of the crisis meant people were still going without aid. "There is nearly water everywhere," Peter Zangl, the director general of the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO), told a news conference in Islamabad after a five-day visit to Pakistan.

Unprecedented monsoon rains triggered catastrophic flooding across Pakistan in July and August, ravaging an area roughly the size of England and affecting 21 million people in the poverty-stricken country's worst natural disaster.

Parts of Sindh province remain under water in southern Pakistan, where people are still camping on roadsides after the floods washed away their homes and swallowed up rice and wheat fields. "The only perspective of getting rid of the water is evaporation. Depending on depth and climate conditions, this will take between two and six months," Zangl told reporters.

The displaced "need everything to survive and to live with minimum respectability and this situation will continue for several months," he said. UN and Western officials have described the floods as the biggest natural disaster to face the international aid community and Zangl said the magnitude of the crisis was "tremendous"….

US Navy photo of Pakistan flooding in September

'Natural disasters to cost $185 billion yearly by end of century'

The Economic Times (India): Annual global losses from natural disasters could triple to a whopping USD 185 billion by the end of this century, according to a new report. Climate change could add another USD 28-68 billion more in damages per year from tropical cyclones alone, said the report released today jointly by the World Bank and the United Nations .

The 250-page report tilted 'Natural Hazards, UnNatural Disasters: The Economics of Effective Prevention' also said that the number of people exposed to storms and earthquakes in large cities could double to 1.5 billion by 2050. Targeted directly at the world's finance ministers, it stresses that "prevention pays but you do not always have to pay more for prevention".

It outlined a number of measures to prevent death and destruction from natural hazards such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and flooding. These measures are almost stunning in their simplicity and common-sense approach. For example, governments can make information about hazards and risks easily accessible.

It said: "Providing land titles reduces the possibility of eviction or demolition, and encourages individuals to invest in safer structures. Removing rent controls restores incentives for landlords to maintain buildings. And, reorienting existing public spending to prioritise day-to-day operations and maintenance -- mending pot-holes, painting steel bridges, keeping drains clear -- would increase prevention." …

Leonardo da Vinci sketch of a natural disaster

Experts see green shoots in Myanmar's disaster preparation efforts

Than Htike Oo in the Myanmar Times: Cyclones, droughts, earthquakes, fires that destroy forests and homes, floods, landslides, storm surges and tsunamis: All pose a threat to lives and property in Myanmar, international disaster assistance professionals say.

Myanmar’s vulnerability to natural disaster was brought into sharp relief by Cyclone Nargis in 2008, which killed at least 138,000 people and caused more than US$4 billion worth of damage. But since then, experts say, progress has been made in preparing for disasters that should help increase the level of protection provided.

Much of the threat is caused or compounded by climate change, to which Myanmar has contributed very little. But according to the Climate Change Vulnerability Index, released by the global risks advisory firm Maplecroft, Myanmar ranks 10th globally in terms of the countries most vulnerable to extreme weather-related events thought to be caused by climate change.

According to the Hazard Profile of Myanmar, a book compiled by the government, Myanmar Engineering Society (MES), Myanmar Geosciences Society (MGS), Myanmar Information Management Unit and the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC), fire is the most devastating disaster, accounting for 70 percent of annual destruction. Flooding comes second at 11pc, affecting two million people each year.

Mr Bishow Parajuli, the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Myanmar, told The Myanmar Times in a recent interview that Myanmar was better prepared for cyclones now that the government, the UN and NGOs were working together more closely on disaster risk reduction….

Five-year roadmap to cope with weather-related hazards in Asia

Prevention Web: Fifty Asian and Pacific region governments have agreed to make risk reduction part of their national climate change adaptation policies to cope with the increase in more frequent and severe weather-related events. The calls come just as Indonesia was hit by a double disaster, a tsunami and volcanic eruption, which together have killed hundreds of people and caused thousands to flee their homes and as cyclone Giri caused heavy flooding in Myanmar and Thailand.

Officials meeting at the Fourth Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction have approved a five-year regional roadmap to establish climate resilient disaster risk management systems by 2015 that will contribute to sustainable development at the regional, national and community levels.

“This is the first time that governments agree at a regional level to recognize disaster risk reduction as a main tool to adapt to climate change and adopt a common regional climate risk management approach to reduce weather-related disaster impacts,” said Margareta Wahlström, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction.

The roadmap, known as Incheon REMAP, focuses on three main themes: raising awareness and building capacities of communities so they can better cope with more weather-related hazards; sharing information through new technologies and sound practices in climate and disaster risk management so decision-makers can be better informed; and promoting integration of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation as part of sustainable development policies.

“I believe that the REMAP can become a guideline for all nations in the region and beyond to follow as a way to contribute to effective disaster reduction and climate change adaptation,” said M. Park Yeon-soo, Administrator of Korea’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), which hosted the Fourth Ministerial Conference….

Lightning in Australia, shot by Bidgee, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution 3.0 Unported license

Munich Re highlights climate change link to extreme weather events

ClaimsJournal.com: A bulletin from Munich Re underlines the "exceptionally high" incidence of "weather-related natural catastrophe losses in the first nine months of 2010," both in "number and scale." The floods in central Europe, wildfires in Russia and widespread flooding in Pakistan headed the list.

The timely roundup coincides with the approaching World Climate Summit scheduled for November 29 to December 10 in Cancún, Mexico. Munich Re said that it "emphasizes the probability of a link between the increasing number of weather extremes and climate change." In the run-up to the summit, Munich Re will focus attention on this issue with a series of communications on natural catastrophes, climate change and potential solutions.

In addition Munich Re pointed out that "globally, 2010 has been the warmest year since records began over 130 years ago, the ten warmest during that period all falling within the last 12 years. The warmer atmosphere and higher sea temperatures are having significant effects."

Prof. Peter Höppe, Head of Munich Re's Geo Risks Research/Corporate Climate Centre stated: "It's as if the weather machine had changed up a gear. Unless binding carbon reduction targets stay on the agenda, future generations will bear the consequences."

Munich Re recorded a total of 725 weather-related natural hazard events with significant losses from January to September 2010, the second-highest figure recorded for the first nine months of the year since 1980. Some 21,000 people lost their lives, 1,760 in Pakistan alone, up to one-fifth of which was flooded for several weeks. Overall losses due to weather-related natural catastrophes from January to September came to more than $65 billion and insured losses to $18 billion….

2010 catastrophes cause insured losses of $18 billion

P&C National Underwriter: A total of 725 weather events between January and September this year have caused insured losses of $18 billion and indicate a probable link between the increasing weather extremes and climate change, Munich Re said. The global reinsurer said weather-related natural catastrophes from January to September have caused total losses of more than $65 billion and have taken around 21,000 lives.

Munich Re said its natural catastrophe database shows a “marked increase” in the number of weather-related events. “For instance, globally there has been a more than threefold increase in loss-related floods since 1980 and more than double the number of windstorm natural catastrophes, with particularly heavy losses as a result of Atlantic hurricanes,” Munich Re said.

Last month, a report by Laurens M. Bouwer, from the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, indicated that increases in economic and insured losses in recent decades can be tied to increasing exposures and value of capital at risk, rather than climate change.

Munich Re acknowledged as much in its statement, noting that the rise in natural catastrophe losses “is primarily due to socio-economic factors.” The reinsurer said that populations are rising, more people are moving to exposed areas, and greater prosperity is leading to higher property values.

“Nevertheless,” Munich Re said, “it would seem that the only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change. The view that weather extremes are more frequent and intense due to global warming coincides with the current state of scientific knowledge as set out in the Fourth IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] Assessment Report.”

While Munich Re said there is, at present, insufficient data on many weather risks and regions to allow “statistically backed assertions” regarding the link with climate change, the reinsurer said “there is evidence that, as a result of warming, events associated with severe windstorms—such as thunderstorms, hail and cloudbursts—have become more frequent in parts of the USA, southwest Germany and other regions.”…

Typhoon Fanapi on September 17, 2010, from NASA

Haiti and Mozambique most vulnerable to economic losses from natural disasters

Katherine Blackler in the Post Online (UK): Italy, Japan, China, USA, Spain and France also rated “high risk” on The Natural Disasters Economic Loss Index (NDELI), released by risk intelligence and ratings company, Maplecroft. New research identifying Haiti and Mozambique as the countries most vulnerable to economic losses from natural disasters also classifies a number of industrialised economies, including Italy, Japan, China, USA, Spain and France, as "high risk" environments for investors, insurers and business.

Seven countries are rated at "extreme risk" in the high frequency index, with Haiti (1), Mozambique (2), Honduras (3), Vanuatu (4), Zimbabwe (5), El Salvador (6) and Nicaragua (7) topping the ranking. However, the industrialised economies of Italy (18), Japan (23), China (25), USA (29), Spain (37) and France (48) are all in the "high risk" category, whilst India (51), UK (53), Germany (54) and Canada (55) are rated "medium risk."

"When economic losses are taken as absolute figures, it is predominantly the industrialised countries, such as USA and China, that shoulder the greatest costs," explained Maplecroft environmental analyst, Dr Anna Moss. "However, when losses are calculated as a percentage of GDP, it is developing countries that are most exposed. For example, the USA's losses from the 1997-1998 El Niño were $ 1.96bn, or 0.03 percent of GDP, whereas in Ecuador, economic losses were $ 2.9bn, or 14.6 percent of GDP."…

Tropical Cyclone Jaya came ashore in northern Madagascar in the morning of April 2, 2007. From NASA

Willis Research Network says managing extreme risks is key to sustainability, financial security and poverty reduction

MarketWatch via Business Wire: The scientific models used by the insurance industry to assess the financial risks of extreme weather events could help governments and aid agencies develop new approaches for sustainable development and poverty alleviation, according to Rowan Douglas, Chairman of the Willis Research Network.

Addressing delegates at the World Bank's inaugural Understanding Risk conference, held June 1-4 in Washington, D.C., Mr. Douglas said that the methods employed by insurers to model extreme risks could be the key to helping the world's most vulnerable communities cope with the social and economic impacts of floods, droughts and other climate-related threats.

"We tend to manage for normality, but it is the extreme events that often matter most," said Mr. Douglas. "Whether it's in our financial institutions, societies or environment, sustainability is achieved by avoiding or managing the impacts of undesirable extremes within tolerable parameters. Therefore, we are proposing a new lens through which we look at the issue of sustainability, one which repositions the fundamental concepts and roles of insurance at the heart of delivering sustainability, financial security and poverty reduction," said Mr. Douglas.

During his closing keynote speech, Mr. Douglas illustrated how the tools, models and techniques used to help insurance companies sustain 1-in-200-year shocks could help deliver sustainability and financial security, and combat poverty in those regions most at risk to extreme weather. The idea of extending insurance concepts of extreme risk modeling and risk sharing across finance, development and other sectors comes at a time when the world's leading development and aid organizations are searching for new solutions to prepare poor nations and emerging economies for future catastrophes….

This image is here purely for aesthetic reasons. Roof of the tomb of Persian poet Hafez at Shiraz, Iran, Province of Fars. Shot by Pentocelo, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Medvedev urges global eco-disaster fund

Yahoo News via Agence France-Presse: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday called for a global fund to fight ecological catastrophes like the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, as he sought to burnish his credentials as a green leader. Admitting that Russia itself was lagging behind other countries in its standards of environmental protection, he also said Russians should feel free to protest against the authorities on environmental issues.

Medvedev said that the oil spill from the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico -- the worst in US history -- had showed that the world had been unable to imagine the scale of such catastrophes. He said a global fund was needed to insure and reinsure against the risk of such disasters "as in some cases the richest companies and even the big countries" would not have sufficient funds to fight their consequences.

World powers would put money into the global fund, he said in the statement, published via his video blog. "I am proposing that Russia could put forward a corresponding initiative," Medvedev said. "I will raise the issue at the G20 summit" to be held in Canada later this month….

What, don't you recognize the coat of arms of the Russian Federation?

Natural catastrophes and man-made disasters in 2009: catastrophes claim fewer victims, insured losses fall

Swiss Re: On a worldwide basis, natural catastrophes cost insurers USD 22 billion in 2009, while man-made disasters cost an additional USD 4 billion. Insured losses were highest in North America, where they cost insurers over USD 12.7 billion. The death toll was the highest in Asia, where nearly 9 400 of the world’s 15 000 catastrophe victims lived. Insured losses in the region were approximately USD 2.4 billion.

Compared to previous years, 2009 was a low loss year. According to Swiss Re’s latest sigma study, “Natural catastrophes and man-made disasters in 2009”, 133 natural catastrophes and 155 man-made disasters occurred in 2009. Six events each triggered insured losses in excess of USD 1 billion. The costliest event was the European winter storm Klaus, which struck France and Spain in January, and led to insured losses of EUR 2.35 billion (nearly USD 3.4 billion).

Historically, catastrophe losses have been highly volatile, with a strong upward trend. In US dollars, the historic upward trend for global insured losses is around 10%, and is driven by higher income, increasing wealth, a higher value concentration of wealth in loss prone regions and a trend towards more insurance coverage. Global warming and the related higher risk of extreme weather conditions also contribute to the trend.

Thomas Hess, Chief Economist of Swiss Re, commented: “The probability that we see natcat losses as low as those in 2009 is less than 35%. We have already seen significant events in 2010 with winter storm Xynthia in Europe or the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti. The industry is therefore well advised to prepare for much higher losses. Given their high volatility, losses could easily be three to five times what they were in 2009. In 2005, insured losses set a record when they soared to USD 120 billion. I would not be surprised if this record is broken in the not too distant future.“

Most of the attention in recent years has been mainly focused on the primary perils – ie earthquakes, hurricanes and winter storms. However, many other natural phenomena, referred to as secondary or other perils, can also cause widespread damage to property. The most prominent secondary perils are flooding, landslides, hail storms, tornadoes, winter storms outside Europe, snow and ice storms, droughts and bush fires. In 2009, more than half of the natural catastrophe loss burden was caused by secondary perils…..