A renowned hurricane forecaster is trying to enlist the powerful US insurance lobby in a battle to get more funding from Washington for leading edge hurricane research.

Calling for a review of Federal spending on climate research in favour of hurricane studies, was controversial Dr. William Gray, of Colorado State's Department of Atmospheric Science.

He was speaking at the Climate Prediction and Insurance Risk Conference at the Marriott Castle Harbour Hotel.

"I'm talking to you insurance people,'' he implored. "Talk to the Washington people. Hurricanes are important. Why can't we support this (research)?'' He termed hurricanes "the greatest natural threat'' to the US and said he couldn't see why more research was not being done.

Scientists, he said, were unable to convince Washington bureaucrats of the importance of the funding. He said that it destroyed creativity and forced scientists to turn to work they didn't want to do, to keep the money coming in.

He found support for these concerns from Professor Kerry Emanuel, of the Center for Meteorology and Physical Oceanography, who said the US Congress is proposing to shut down or sell off the one Federal laboratory devoted to research on hurricanes.

Professor Emanuel also said progress in confronting the important relationship between tropical cyclone activity and climate, cannot be made unless there are fundamental advances in understanding the basic physics of hurricanes.

He explained:"An important limitation to making such advances is social and political in nature: There are remarkably few scientists working on the problem (when compared to the numbers working on, say, earthquakes, a phenomenon of comparable social significance).

"This is a complex matter of history and of the professional tastes that guide scientists in their choice of research problems. While it is difficult to alter such matters of taste, government funding does act to encourage or discourage particular research activities.'' Reinsurers were at this conference to learn how a small, but growing group of people following a discipline in climate prediction can assist the insurance/reinsurance industry in their underwriting of future policies dealing with weather-related catastrophes.

And a hand with funding the studies, is just the prescription for the world's leading researchers in climate study.

The event was presented by the Atlantic Global Change Institute, based at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research, and sponsored by Bermuda-based property catastrophe reinsurer, Centre Cat.

Dr. Gray set the tone early for a provocative and entertaining address, by letting it be known at the start: "I'm going to say what I think and if that's not accepted, too bad!'' The theoretician was addressing an academic difference of opinion, between a school of thought he subscribes to, and that of more mainstream researchers who use climate computer models.

He made a distinction between forecasting and science and argued scientists needed to spend more time studying the atmosphere, rather than just the ocean, in looking for clues about hurricane prediction.

"The atmosphere has long term precursor signals within it. Such precursor signals may be better observable in the atmosphere, even if such signals are a product of the ocean.

"We may be able to know better what the ocean is doing by looking at the atmosphere. The ocean manifests itself in long time scales in atmospheric data. We should try to use these manifestations.'' But he said: "We are just scratching the surface in our search for global data for the prediction of climate. There are golden nuggets of information out there for the picking.'' Dr. Gray's group fairly accurately reported this year's Atlantic Ocean tropical storm frequency.

After almost 40 years in observational and theoretical aspects of tropical meteorological research, he said new ways of predicting future climate changes should be based on how the atmosphere and oceans have behaved in the past.

It is his view that this methodology offers "much more likelihood of success'' than do climate forecasts made from the current "initial value numerical model approach''.

He conceded that the numerical modelling was remarkable for five to ten day forecasting, but it loses its potency for longer periods.

frequency of hurricanes in the future.