Leading Climate Experts to Advise on Verisk’s Development of Enterprise-Wide Climate Change Solutions

To help organizations better understand the impacts of climate change and inform their resilience and sustainability efforts, Verisk has formed the Verisk Climate Advisory Council. Council members will provide strategic guidance and feedback on climate change solutions Verisk is developing, such as the climate conditioning of the company’s extreme event models, and present research, specific to each members’ specialty area, regarding the evolving state of climate change. The ongoing research by the experts on this council will help ensure that Verisk is well-informed on the latest climate change research and analyses to help drive its development of industry-leading products and services.

The Verisk Climate Advisory Council is currently comprised of the following climate experts:

• Dr. Cindy Bruyère is the Director for the Capacity Center for Climate and Weather Extremes (C3WE) at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). She was the 2020-2021 Scientific and Engineering Leadership Fellow for the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), and she is a Research Fellow at the North-West University, South Africa. Her research focuses on the impact of weather and climate extremes.
• Dr. Henk Dijkstra is a professor of dynamical oceanography at the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric research Utrecht and the Director of the Centre for Complex Systems Studies at Utrecht University. His research focuses on understanding the physics of the large-scale ocean circulation and the role of the ocean in the climate system through fundamental studies using concepts and methods from complex systems science. He is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2005, he received the Lewis Fry Richardson medal from the European Geosciences Union.
• Dr. Kenneth E. Kunkel is a research professor of atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University and lead scientist for assessments with the North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies. His research has focused on climate variability and change, particularly related to extreme weather and climate events. He is an author of several chapters of the Third and Fourth U.S. National Climate Assessments. He is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.
• Dr. Park Williams is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Park is a hydroclimatologist whose research aims to understand the causes and consequences of hydrological extremes such as drought. His expertise is in the causes and consequences of drought and how this has transformed the American West as temperatures rise and how we should adapt to a future of more frequent droughts and dangerous wildfires.

“At Verisk, we have long engaged with leading scientists and engineers, often alongside customers, to ensure the solutions we create reflect the latest science, freshest perspectives and cutting-edge technologies,” said Mark Anquillare, COO and group president, Verisk. “Clients across a wide range of industries that need to understand and manage risk from weather, climate, and environmental perils rely on Verisk for analytic insights and science-based solutions to help assess and mitigate the complex risks associated with a changing climate. We’re fortunate to have the benefit of the council members’ expertise to support this important work.”

Verisk scientists, product developers and engineers enable global customers from the insurance industry to governmental agencies to Fortune 100 companies to better understand, anticipate, manage and react to weather- and climate-related risk. The company develops unique data sets, models and operational expertise in forecasting and observational systems, a wide range of indices, global climate models, weather and risk analysis and more. The Verisk Climate Advisory Council will help address customers’ unique needs to tackle this significant global issue. Verisk’s deep industry expertise, combined with research-backed insight from these highly respected scientists, will inform the company’s decision-making for products and services related to resilience and sustainability.

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“Verisk has developed leading extreme event models for addressing risk and continued collaboration with outside experts is critical to maintaining this position in the market,” said Bill Churney, president of Extreme Event Solutions at Verisk. “We’re excited to begin working with the council members, and we’re confident that with their feedback we will not only build more sophisticated solutions that reflect our best understanding of the future climate but also offer enhanced value to help our clients better address this critical issue facing society.”

Source: Verisk