“Abrupt climate change,” or “flipping,” featured in Benfield, Partner Re report

Reinsurance and risk intermediary Benfield and reinsurer Partner Re have collaborated to produce the Hazard & Risk Science Review 2007, which summarizes research findings and conclusions of hazard and risk science papers published in the last 12 months that are most relevant to the insurance and resinsurance markets.The summarized findings are organized into four broad categories climate change, atmospheric hazards, geological hazards and hydrological hazards.Among the many debates cited in the review, one that comes up many times is flipping or abrupt climate change. The terms refer to the potentially threatening effects on our climate caused by the melting polar ice sheets. The review notes research published in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which reports that best-estimate temperature changes for a high-emissions scenario would be a 4 C increase by 2100. Research on the effects of the melting polar ice caps, however, suggests IPCC estimates may be too conservative, the Review notes. The IPCC reports do not address certain critical issues, most notably the future behaviour of the polar ice sheets, which present the threat of catastrophic melting contributing to substantial and rapid sea-level rises in this century, the Review notes.According to research cited in the Review, seawaters generated by the melting polar ice caps could in turn lead to a rapid flipping of the Earths climate from one state to another.This is in part, the Review notes, because sea level rises in the past were at least partly driven by meltwater facilitating ice sheet break-up by lubricating ice sheet motion, a mechanism that seems to be driving the current rapid acceleration of [melting] polar glaciers The Review notes research on flipping has been contested, but nevertheless appeared to be a focus of researchers in 2007.A full copy of the report is posted on Benfields Web site.