Assessing future climate change impacts in the EU and the USA: insights and lessons from two continental-scale projects*

Abstract

Climate change will impact many economic sectors and aspects of natural and human wellbeing. Quantifying these impacts as they vary across regions, sectors, time, and social and climatological scenarios supports detailed planning, policy, and risk management. This article summarises and compares recent climate impact assessments in Europe (the JRC PESETA III project) and the USA (the American Climate Prospectus project). Both implement a multi-sector perspective combining high resolution climate data with sectoral impact and economic models. The assessments differ in their coverage of sectors and scenarios, mix of empirical and process-based methods, handling of uncertainty, and representation of damages. Despite the dissimilarities, projected relative economic impacts are comparable, with human mortality as the dominant impact category. Both studies further show a large spatial heterogeneity of impacts that may amplify pre-existing economic inequality in the EU and US, and that mitigation can considerably reduce economic impacts. The comparison highlights the various decision-points involved in interdisciplinary climate impact modelling and lessons learnt in both projects, on the basis of which we provide recommendations for further research.

Review article: Natural hazard risk assessments at the global scale

“…In the studies reviewed below, DRR measures are not explicitly accounted for in the modelling frameworks. This is largely due to uncertainty in human actions -continued ability to manage fuel and suppress fires under different climatic conditions and increased sprawl into wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas -and due to regime changes in weather and vegetation making previously non-hazardous vegetation areas susceptible to fire, especially with increased logging and fragmentation, particularly in tropical areas (Laurance and Williamson, 2001;Flannigan et al, 2009;Corlett, 2011;. Significant steps forward could be made by examining interactions between vegetation, weather, climate, and human activities that cause wildfires.…”

“…Recent studies at the continental or global scale show that vulnerability to naturalhazard-related disasters is decreasing in some areas because people adapt over time and reduce vulnerability (e.g. Ciscar et al, 2019;Jongman et al, 2015). In other areas, future vulnerability is expected to increase, for example due to a limited availability of resources to adapt (Winsemius et al, 2018) or due to the impacts of successive disasters that push communities into poverty (Mirza, 2003).…”

Anthropocene Geopolitics and Foreign Policy: Exploring the Link in the EU Case

“…The same factors constitute both substantial threats to state security and solid grounds for more inimical global politics. These boil down to intensified competition for resources, land grabs, radicalization and aggressive foreign policies, and collapse of states and creation of security holes (Barnett & Adger, 2007; Ciscar et al, 2019; Klare, 2012). Aggravated climatic conditions in Africa and the Middle East, for example, have added to (but not themselves caused) turmoil and instability with Syria, Sudan, and the emergence of the Ilamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Boko Haram standing out (William-Wallace, 2019, pp.…”

Review article: Natural hazard risk assessments at the global scale

“…Recent studies at the continental or global scale show that vulnerability to natural hazardrelated disasters is decreasing in some areas, because people adapt over time and reduce vulnerability (e.g. Ciscar et al 2019;Jongman et al 2015). In other areas, future vulnerability is expected to increase, for example due to a limited availability of resources to adapt (Winsemius et al, 2018) or due to the impacts of successive disasters that push communities into poverty (Mirza 2003).…”