el nino

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s confirmed yesterday that El Niño threshold levels have been reached in the tropical Pacific ocean for the first time since March 2010 and that it foresees a “substantial” event, which will likely impact insurance and reinsurance players.

As the impacts of global warming and climate change continue to cause debate and uncertainty, the possible effect that changing weather patterns have on La Nina and El Nino events has been the research of certain scientists for some time now.

Bermuda based insurance and reinsurance services firm Kalista Global which has a focus on the insurance-linked securities, catastrophe bond, parametric re/insurance and alternative reinsurance sectors, has launched a new product offering which it is calling ENSO-based Parametric Cover (EPC for short). The parametric product utilises sea surface temperature readings to create an index which is […]

Reinsurance broker Aon Benfield published their review of the 2011 global catastrophes and re/insured losses that resulted from them yesterday. We’ve covered this in detail in recent weeks (here, here and here) so won’t go into the loss experience of 2011 again. The report does contain one very interesting piece of information on the correlation […]

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has published its latest update on the El Niño & La Niña weather phenomena in the Pacific ocean which have wide ranging effects on the global climate and weather patterns. The most likely scenarios are for the continuation of near neutral conditions or the formation of a weak La Niña […]

The financial services sector, especially insurers and the commodity markets, can make better risk decisions thanks to increased scientific knowledge about the climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, according to a new research report commissioned from the Met Office by the Lighthill Risk Network.

The U.S. Climate Prediction Center has issued an update on their El Niño and La Niña forecast. We’ve been experiencing La Niña conditions around the world for a few months and these conditions affect weather patterns, rainfall and hurricanes or storms around the world.

Some are seeing the El Nino that is brewing the pacific ocean as an opportunity to make money on the commodity markets it seems (according to this article in the Telegraph newspaper). The El Nino phenomenon causes fluctuations in weather patterns across the southern hemisphere such as delays to the Indian monsoon and increased dryness […]