Dan Ward ’04 | Modeling Weather-Related Catastrophe Risk in a Warming Climate

Abstract: The evolving frequency and severity of events related to extreme weather, like hurricanes, floods, and wildfires, in our warming climate, leads to changes in the risk of property damage which be estimated using catastrophe models. These are numerical models that calculate the intensity of different atmospheric hazards for a large set of hypothetical events, estimate the property damage for each event, and finally compute the resulting financial loss. Catastrophe models that incorporate climate change can help us answer questions about the future risk from weather-related hazards under different time frames and emissions scenarios. Which natural hazards are changing the most and where? What is the cost of something like sea-level rise in terms of future damage from storm surge? How does climate change affect the frequency of the biggest loss events? These and other questions have significant implications for the way the global insurance industry and the rest of us should prepare for catastrophe risk in a warming climate.
Bio: Dan Ward ’04 is a Senior Director on the Model Development team at Karen Clark & Company (KCC), the Boston-based innovation and technology Leader in catastrophe risk modeling. Following his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, he returned to Cornell University as a Postdoctoral Associate to research the role of wildfires and land use in the Earth system. He then moved to Princeton University where he continued studying the impacts of wildfire emissions on climate as an Associate Research Scholar until joining KCC in 2017 as a Senior Meteorologist.
This event is presented as part of the 2025 Perspectives on the Climate Change Challenge Seminar Series:
- Most Mondays, Spring Semester 2025, 2:55-4:10 p.m.
- Zoom Link
This university-wide seminar series is open to the public (via Zoom), and provides important views on the critical issue of climate change, drawing from many perspectives and disciplines. Experts from Cornell University and beyond present an overview of the science of climate change and climate change models, the implications for agriculture, ecosystems, and food systems, and provide important economic, ethical, and policy insights on the issue. The seminar is being organized and sponsored by the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering and Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.