ONE of the world's leading hurricane experts has made a timely visit to Bermuda this week to brief insurers on methods of predicting the frequency and severity of major storms.

Dr. Isaac Ginis, a professor of oceanography from Rhode Island University, was one of a team of natural disaster experts who are presenting a catastrophe modellers' course at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS).

"It is all about predicting the risk of natural disasters through understanding the physics behind these phenomena, understanding their frequency and severity and quantifying that risk," Dr. Ginis said.

The sold-out course was geared towards Bermuda's burgeoning reinsurance industry, as part of the Risk Prediction Initiative (RPI), a science-business partnership based at BIOS.

Dr. Ginis said yesterday that insurance company staff appeared to be taking on board much of the complex science associated with hurricanes that he was teaching them.

"I find the people in insurance are very bright and ask very good questions," Dr. Ginis said. "I aim to explain to them a way of doing a better job of how to quantify risk and generally, I think they do a pretty good job.

"My focus is on what happens when the hurricane makes landfall. There is a significant change when it hits land as the hurricane reacts with the topography. It will behave very differently depending on whether it is over an urban area, a forest or a lake.

"That is the time that is most important for insurers to know about."

Other speakers on the course are earthquake expert David Jackson, from UCLA's Department of Earth and Space Sciences, Professor Erik VanMarcke, from Princeton University's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Dr. Emil Simiu from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The 2006 hurricane season has so far produced less severe storms than had been predicted and many less than 2005.

Dr. Ginis, who has developed a hurricane prediction model which is used by the US National Weather Service, explained some of the complexities of forecasting.

"Some factors affecting hurricanes develop over a few months, others over 150 years," he said. "And forecasting long-term risk is now becoming more difficult because of climate change.

"The major energy source for a hurricane is heat from the ocean, so we always watch ocean temperatures very closely. The ocean is warmer than it has been climatically."

There were negative as well as positive factors to look at when predicting the likelihood of a hurricane, Dr. Ginis explained, for example wind shear, a change in wind direction and speed between slightly different altitudes.

"Wind shear has been stronger than usual at this time of year and that could explain why the season has not been as active as expected," he said.

"This year there has also been an unusual influx of dry air from Africa into the eastern Atlantic and hurricanes don't like dry air. So far it's all speculation and only when we have all the data at the end of the season will we be able to make an accurate assessment.

"Of course, hurricane season is not over and I still believe we could see a few more."

Dr. Ginis said he had been impressed with the way that Bermuda had survived the category three Hurricane Fabian in 2003, adding that he level of destruction had been low, considering the strength of the storm.