In day five of this weeklong series Senior Reporter Glenn Jones explains how a changing climate could mean stronger hurricanes out of the Atlantic Ocean. He also examines what Governments around the world, big and small, are doing to be more environmentally friendly and stem the tide of global warming.Climate change means there is good news and there is bad news for Bermuda’s long term outlook on hurricanes.

And brace yourself because the bad news is downright ominous. Physicist Dr. Kerry Emanuel is a world renown voice on hurricanes in the US.

He visits Bermuda occasionally to educate insurance professionals on the risks these storms place on their industry.

When Dr. Emanuel visited last month the news was not optimistic, especially because so many Bermudians live near the shore. He said: “Hurricanes are dangerous, they’re getting more dangerous, that should make it more dangerous to live on the coast. And people should pay for the risk.”

About 50 insurance industry professionals listened to Dr. Emanuel at the Hamilton Princess Hotel on January 29th.

He was a guest of Validus Reinsurance. The company’s Chief Risk Officer Stuart Mercer explained why they invited a physicist: “The frequency and the severity of hurricanes drives a significant portion of our business and Dr. Emanuel is one of the leading people that thinks about these problems and studies them for our industry.”

Dr. Emanuel who teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology isn’t one to sugar coat his research, especially now with a warming climate, and more importantly, a warming ocean. He said: “The physics tells us so far that if you increase the temperature of the tropical oceans you expect to get more powerful hurricanes.

“Not necessarily more hurricanes, in fact, in the long run, probably fewer hurricanes globally. But the ones that occur should be more powerful. The models show that pretty convincingly.”

So while the good news is fewer hurricanes, the bad news is: when a hurricane strikes it is likely to pack a devastating punch.

Although fully confident his statement will prove true over time, Dr. Emanuel admits there are two flaws to the research.

First he believes the 150 years of historical data on hurricanes just isn’t long enough.

He explained why: “More than half all the hurricane damage has been done by eight storms. Eight, that’s it.

“There are a lot of hurricanes, but most of them don’t do very much damage - the category ones and twos -they don’t do a lot of damage.

“There are a few really big ones that dominate the records.

“In the entire United States you’re talking about 8 storms dominating the records. For a statistician that’s just too small a number.” The historical numbers are even smaller when you consider individual locales like Bermuda.

The second flaw Dr. Emanuel cited was climate change, the idea that human use of fossil fuels is polluting the air with carbon emissions and making the atmosphere warmer.

He said: “If you base future risk assessments on past climates you run the risk that the climate is changing. We think very definitely the climate is changing. So even if we had a very good handle on the past, it would not necessarily provide good guidance for the future.”

Dr. Emanuel believes it’s very dangerous trying to predict how many storms may generate through the Atlantic in the upcoming year, but his models provide enough information for him to confidently predict stronger, more intense storms up to five decades from now.

Perhaps after the lifetime of most of us, but soon enough that it’s a real concern for our children and the coastal community left in their hands.

* In tomorrow The Royal Gazette hear from students who are learning about climate change in public school

Hurricanes are sure to get stronger