An international team of climatologists yesterday ended a three-day hurricane risk conference at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research.

Scientists from the United States and Canada -- all funded by BBSR's groundbreaking Risk Prevention Initiative -- were brought to the Island to meet with reinsurance excutives and to give their counterparts in the the risk management industry first-hand access to the most current research models and data sets.

The Risk Prediction Iniative (RPI), now in its fifth year, is a unique partnership between science and business. Founded by Drs. Tony Knap and Anthony Michaels, the programme brings frontline hurricane researchers -- and their data -- into the boardrooms of participating reinsurers.

Presently 20 of the world's leading climatologists and ten re-insurers -- eight of those Island based -- are participating in the initiative.

Professor Tom Webb, of Rhode Island's Brown University, said the link-up with insurance firms was "unique in the world:'' "This concept is fairly new -- insurance companies and scientists working together so that the scientists can provide scientifically reliable, validated data that the insurance companies can use.

"And at the same time, the insurance companies can provide a certain amount of help for the scientists to do their work.

"It provides a very good structure for the funding and also for the dissemination of knowledge.'' Prof. Webb, of the university's geological science department, studies coastal layers of sand and mud to discover the historical frequency of hurricanes.

The written record, he explained, can only provide information about the last 100 years of storm activity; geological research allows one to look even further back and provides data on hurricane frequency that can be measured in the hundreds of years. Because weather studies and forecasts became widespread in the modern era, the RPI scientists draw upon "observational data'' to retroactively chart the frequency of intense storms.

Another top researcher, Kam-Biu Liu, of Louisiana State University, also studies centuries-old sedimentary layers in coastal lakes. He added: "The underlying assumption is that when an intense hurricane hits, then the sea will rise. This is called storm surge.'' The surges shift sand from the shoreline and into coastal lakes, he added.

Researchers studying the overflows take samples of mud and sand found on lake bottoms. "The lakes act as nature's archive for us to reconstruct a record of prehistoric hurricanes,'' said Prof. Liu. "We can extend this record back a hundred, even a thousand years.'' It's that `big-picture' which is proving to be of particular interest to those in the industry of underwriting catastrophe risk.

Christopher Landsea, of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says the science is solid and proven, but cautions that data sets based on cored samples provide only science's best guess: "They're always issued with a fair degree of uncertainty because the methods we use are statistical models,'' he said.

"We put in a few variables, get an answer out, and adjust that with some intuition about what's going on in the atmosphere.

"For example, this year our assessment is that it will be an average year, but it's issued with a fair amount of uncertainty because of this El Nino character that you may have heard about.

"If it hangs around, it really suppresses the season. We think it may be gone by the time August comes around,'' he said.

As Bermuda and the rest of the mid-Atlantic countdown to the June 1 kick-off of hurricane season, Prof Liu notes initiatives such as RPI become more relevant and provide a wonderful opportunity to bring scientists -- and their most up-to-date prognostications -- together: "We're all in different locations; it's really coming here that gets us together and talking...'' And RPI science liaison officer, Susan Howard, said with concern mounting over global warming and its (unknown) effects on world weather patterns, programmes such as RPI provide an important first window on what the future may hold, especially for those living in hurricane hot spots: "The project goes on a year by year basis but we've been going for five years now,'' she said.

LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE -- Pictured, from left, are scientists Kam-biu Liu, Tom Webb, Christopher Landsea and Colorado State University professor of atmospheric science William Gray.

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