Numerous sizeable hurricanes have struck the US in recent years, including Hurricane Ian in Florida in September. Guy Carpenter’s Kieran Bhatia, Vice President, Climate Change Perils Advisory, appeared with Dr. Marshall Shepherd of the University of Georgia on Weather Geeks, a podcast that examines meteorological trends.
While many people are connecting climate change with increasing frequency and severity of hurricanes, Kieran has dedicated much of his research toward understanding hurricane rapid intensification (defined as an increase of 35 mph within 24 hours). During the podcast, he discussed his recently published paper in Nature Communications.
"On average, we are seeing [an increase in the proportion of 24-hour intensity changes] that rapidly intensify and ... when you have that agreement with multiple datasets ... it starts to bring more confidence in the result," he said.
Kieran continued by mentioning that as models improve, they will answer more questions.
“With time, as our resolution of our models gets better and better, that will give us an opportunity for insights on how the strongest storms are going to be affected,” he said. “With hurricanes, and climate change in general, it matters by region, it matters by peril, it matters by sub-peril.”