When the insurance industry models potential loss from tropical cyclones, the probabilities of landfall are crucial. Certainly it is important to generate accurate scenarios, but estimating probabilities of landfall seems to be more difficult. We are encouraged that the paleoclimatic research may provide a substantial improvement in these estimates.
Probabilistic hurricane modeling involves simulating a large number of hypothetical events.
These events should portray a full array of possible storms, each assigned a probability of occurrence. Currently, the source of these probabilities is the storm track data from the past 100 years or so. This data is especially sparce when looking at individual areas of the coast. We see the paleoclimatic research providing a much better source for estimating the probabilities of very intense, very rare events. This supplements the historical record at the tail of the distribution.