Plan now for storms in 2020

Andrew Sniderman and Jonathan Leake
The Met Office, under fire for its “barbecue summer” predictions, is setting up an early-warning system for businesses and governments on long-term changes in temperature, rainfall and storm frequency.
It already produces a range of short-term forecasts aimed at the week ahead, plus seasonal ones that predict the weather over the next few months. For the much longer term, its Hadley Centre for Climate Change in Exeter produces predictions over several decades.
The new service is designed to help businesses make decisions on infrastructure and other investments on time scales of one to ten years, and could also influence insurance rates, the location of power lines and housing design.
Matt Huddleston, principal consultant for climate change at the Met Office, said: “Lots of companies are letting long-term changes in the weather hit their bottom line. We will make forecasts relevant to most businesses’ strategic plans.”
He expects the insurance and finance industries to become big clients. Their fortunes are linked to the number and intensity of floods in Britain, winter storms on the Continent and tropical storms in America. In 2005, Lloyd’s insurers in London lost £2.9 billion in claims from the three largest storms in the Atlantic.
The Met Office hopes the purchase of new supercomputers that can generate improved climate models will put it back at the forefront of global weather and climate forecasting. It also points out that the summer of 2009 was indeed warmer than average but, annoyingly, it was also much wetter.
Vicky Pope, head of climate-change advice at the Met Office, said the global service would deal with “probabilities, not certainties”. She said: “The new service will never be able to predict the date and time of a tropical storm long in advance, but it would say whether such events were more likely.” She said the service would also be available in developing countries without advanced meteorological tools at their disposal.
Rowan Douglas at Willis Re, a re-insurance broker, said that if it proved accurate, the Met Office’s climate service could transform the insurance industry’s ability to allow for increases in weather-related claims.