Bermuda may have natural protection from what is expected to be a future of fiercer, more damaging storms facing the United States, according to a speaker at a conference on insurance-linked securities.

Walker Ashley, a storm chaser and professor in the department of earth, atmosphere and environment at Northern Illinois University, had a frightening warning for US coastal communities, while addressing the Bermuda ILS 2023 Convergence Conference at the Hamilton Princess & Beach Club.

He predicted: “Superstorms are going to become more common place in the United States. There will be longer-lived and more damaging events as we move into the 21st century.”

He said variability will become much more commonplace: “Variability is the hallmark of climate change.”

However, he told The Royal Gazette that the Gulf Stream would act as a buffer for Bermuda from some of the weather changes in the United States.

“These supercells are more of a continental thing,” he said. “The implications for Bermuda would be more subdued. Whatever your extremes are will be more commonplace. That standard of deviation will get bigger and bigger. The Gulf Stream changes the climate here.”

In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey dropped more than 60 inches of rain on parts of Texas, making it one of the wettest Atlantic hurricanes on record.

Climate change may account for up to half of that wetness, according to climate expert Suzana Camargo.

Also speaking at the conference, Dr Camargo is the Marie Tharp Lamont research professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York.

She said: “We are no longer saying whether individual hurricanes were caused by climate change. We are focusing on how climate change has modified the characteristics of that storm.”

She said intensity and rainfall amounts seem to be most impacted by climate change.

There is also evidence that there have been fewer tropical cyclones in the last 30 years, globally, although the hurricanes we have had are trending towards greater intensity.

“We are also seeing more short-lived storms,” she said.

While she confirmed the worrying research that suggests more storms are reaching their maximum intensity near coastal areas, she concedes the reasons behind that are unclear.

“We need to explore that more,” Dr Camargo said.

One of the challenges for climate scientists is the history of the data collection. Surprisingly, she says some researchers are mistrustful of the quality of data collected before 1992.

There is also mistrust of early information from satellites. The technology has come so far that experts are no longer sure if differences they are seeing are due to climate change, or drastic technological improvements in the satellites themselves.

Dr Camargo said they are looking at not just the role of greenhouse gases in climate change, but also aerosols.

“When we think about what has been happening, especially in the Atlantic, the role of aerosols is very important,” Dr Camargo said.

Laura Brewington, research professor at Arizona State University spoke about the role that invasive species played in the recent wildfires in Maui.

She said that grass planted by ranchers in recent times, provided fuel for the fire in August that killed at least 115 people.

Authorities on the Hawaiian island, she said, had been warned about the grass, previously.