Weather Related Insurance Losses in North America Have Jumped

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

October 31, 2012 | 5:07 PM

After Hurricane Sandy leaves millions without power and halted public transit, crews work to clear trees off of SEPTA regional rail lines in Montgomery County.

Just a week and a half before Hurricane Sandy struck the eastern seaboard, a report by one of the world’s leading reinsurers warned of increasing costs of man-made climate change. Costs in North America have jumped significantly. Munich Re insures insurance companies. Climate Central has more on Munich Re’s report:

North America has seen the world’s sharpest increase in the number of natural catastrophes during the past 32 years, a trend that in some respects is linked to manmade global warming, according to a report released Wednesday from the global reinsurance giant Munich Re. The study, which has not undergone scientific peer review, examined natural disaster losses between 1980 and 2011, finding that weather-related loss events in North America “nearly quintupled” during the period, compared to just an increase factor of two in Europe, for example.