Story highlights Hail might become less frequent, but it will be more damaging, a new study suggests

The greatest impact will be to current hail-prone areas

(CNN) Climate change is likely to reduce the number of hailstorms across North America in the coming years, a new study says, but don't get rid of your insurance policy quite yet. You will probably still need a new roof due to hail damage, as the research suggests the storms that do come will be more damaging.

According to the study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, human-induced climate change is likely to decrease the number of hailstorms while increasing the size of hail in the storms that do form.

"As the planet warms, we are finding that we're having fewer rainfall events, but when it does rain, it tends to be heavier. And that seems to be what -- at least what our work is suggesting -- it could be what's happening with the hail as well," said Julian Brimelow, a researcher with Environment and Climate Change Canada, a government department, and a co-author of the study.

The team used computer modeling simulations of hail growth to discover how hailstone growth will change. It ran models for the years 1971-2000 and 2041-2070 and then compared the data.

This is not a calculation you could do on the back of an envelope, Brimelow said. It took about six months to run the calculations for a 50-kilometer resolution model that includes most of North America, run for four time periods a day for the 30-year intervals, past and future.

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