Inventories of extreme weather events and impacts: Implications for loss and damage from and adaptation to climate extremes

Clarke, Ben; Otto, Friederike E. L.; Jones, Richard G.

doi:10.1016/j.crm.2021.100285

Cited by 52 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 74 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…As described earlier, extreme event attribution (EEA) studies compare a world without human-induced climate change created using computer modeling simulations, against the world we have today using observational data. The results of this comparison help us to measure how much more/less likely or more/less severe a particular weather event became due to anthropogenic climate change (Clarke, Otto, and Jones 2021). Two such studies were published by the umbrella science organization World Weather Attribution (WWA) in June and August of 2019 that offered insights into the extent to which the 2019 heatwaves were impacted by climate change.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reporting on the 2019 European Heatwaves and Climate Change: Journalists’ Attitudes, Motivations and Role Perceptions

Strauß

Painter

Ettinger

et al. 2021

Journalism Practice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In summer 2019, several countries in Europe experienced unprecedented heatwaves. Two extreme event attribution (EEA) studies, which assess the role of climate change in extreme weather events, were published at roughly the same time as the heatwaves were taking place (June/August 2019). Building on a prior study of online news media coverage of the heatwaves, this study surveyed journalists from major news outlets in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. Based on the responses of 42 journalists, we found a relative lack of knowledge about EEA studies but a high level of importance assigned to writing about the link between the heatwaves and climate change (e.g., likelihood or intensity); a relatively low number of specialist reporters vs. general reporters covering the heatwaves; a strong reliance on scientific experts as sources; no inclusion of climate change deniers; stronger role perceptions as educators than advocates; relatively little time and resource constraints on their reporting; and an overall tendency for the journalists to report more about climate change. The findings provide new insights into journalism practice and climate journalism in terms of the peculiarities and contextual factors that can influence coverage of extreme weather events and climate change.

show abstract

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reporting on the 2019 European Heatwaves and Climate Change: Journalists’ Attitudes, Motivations and Role Perceptions

Strauß

Painter

Ettinger

et al. 2021

Journalism Practice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…• projecting the risk of compound extremes for different levels of future warming (Zscheischler et al, 2018;Wang et al, 2020); • evaluating the impacts of the compound extremes on natural and built environments (AghaKouchak et al, 2020;Zhang and Najafi, 2020); • developing adaptation measures to the changing risk of compound extremes (Weber et al, 2020;Clarke et al, 2021); • enhancing subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction of these extremes (Zamora et al, 2021;Zou, 2021); • improving the representation and evaluation of compound extremes in fully-coupled climate models (Ridder et al, 2021;Zscheischler et al, 2021) and developing multivariate bias correction for these models (Vezzoli et al, 2017;Zscheischler et al, 2019); • applying machine learning to understand these extremes Zou, 2021).…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compound Hydrometeorological Extremes: Drivers, Mechanisms and Methods

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Compound extremes pose immense challenges and hazards to communities, and this is particularly true for compound hydrometeorological extremes associated with deadly floods, surges, droughts, and heat waves. To mitigate and better adapt to compound hydrometeorological extremes, we need to better understand the state of knowledge of such extremes. Here we review the current advances in understanding compound hydrometeorological extremes: compound heat wave and drought (hot-dry), compound heat stress and extreme precipitation (hot-wet), cold-wet, cold-dry and compound flooding. We focus on the drivers of these extremes and methods used to investigate and quantify their associated risk. Overall, hot-dry compound extremes are tied to subtropical highs, blocking highs, atmospheric stagnation events, and planetary wave patterns, which are modulated by atmosphere-land feedbacks. Compared with hot-dry compound extremes, hot-wet events are less examined in the literature with most works focusing on case studies. The cold-wet compound events are commonly associated with snowfall and cold frontal systems. Although cold-dry events have been found to decrease, their underlying mechanisms require further investigation. Compound flooding encompasses storm surge and high rainfall, storm surge and sea level rise, storm surge and riverine flooding, and coastal and riverine flooding. Overall, there is a growing risk of compound flooding in the future due to changes in sea level rise, storm intensity, storm precipitation, and land-use-land-cover change. To understand processes and interactions underlying compound extremes, numerical models have been used to complement statistical modeling of the dependence between the components of compound extremes. While global climate models can simulate certain types of compound extremes, high-resolution regional models coupled with land and hydrological models are required to simulate the variability of compound extremes and to project changes in the risk of such extremes. In terms of statistical modeling of compound extremes, previous studies have used empirical approach, event coincidence analysis, multivariate distribution, the indicator approach, quantile regression and the Markov Chain method to understand the dependence, greatly advancing the state of science of compound extremes. Overall, the selection of methods depends on the type of compound extremes of interests and relevant variables.

show abstract

“…The Russian heatwave, meanwhile, was found to have been made 5 times more likely to occur by the climate change observed since 1960 (Rahmstorf and Coumou 2011). In the UK, estimates using simple hazard-based FAR methodology link around 1,500 excess deaths from three heatwaves directly to climate change (Clarke et al 2021). And another study on the 2003 heatwave used an end-to-end approach, combining meteorological attribution with the effect of temperatures on mortality, to directly attribute deaths in Greater London and Central Paris; 64 additional Londoners (∼20% of the total) and 506 Parisians (∼70% of the total) died due to the influence of climate change (Mitchell et al 2016).…”

Section: Attributable Impactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extreme weather impacts of climate change: an attribution perspective

Clarke

Otto

Stuart-Smith

et al. 2022

Environ. Res.: Climate

174

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Extreme event attribution aims to elucidate the link between global climate change, extreme weather events, and the harms experienced on the ground by people, property, and nature. It therefore allows the disentangling of different drivers of extreme weather from human-induced climate change and hence provides valuable information to adapt to climate change and to assess loss and damage. However, providing such assessments systematically is currently out of reach. This is due to limitations in attribution science, including the capacity for studying different types of events, as well as the geographical heterogeneity of both climate and impact data availability. Here, we review current knowledge of the influences of climate change on five different extreme weather hazards (extreme temperatures, heavy rainfall, drought, wildfire, tropical cyclones), the impacts of recent extreme weather events of each type, and thus the degree to which various impacts are attributable to climate change. For instance, heat extremes have increased in likelihood and intensity worldwide due to climate change, with tens of thousands of deaths directly attributable. This is likely a significant underestimate due to the limited availability of impact information in lower- and middle-income countries. Meanwhile, tropical cyclone rainfall and storm surge height have increased for individual events and across all basins. In the North Atlantic basin, climate change amplified the rainfall of events that, combined, caused half a trillion USD in damages. At the same time, severe droughts in many parts of the world are not attributable to climate change. To advance our understanding of present-day extreme weather impacts due to climate change developments on several levels are required. These include improving the recording of extreme weather impacts around the world, improving the coverage of attribution studies across different events and regions, and using attribution studies to explore the contributions of both climate and non-climate drivers of impacts.

show abstract

Inventories of extreme weather events and impacts: Implications for loss and damage from and adaptation to climate extremes

Cited by 52 publications

References 74 publications

Reporting on the 2019 European Heatwaves and Climate Change: Journalists’ Attitudes, Motivations and Role Perceptions

Reporting on the 2019 European Heatwaves and Climate Change: Journalists’ Attitudes, Motivations and Role Perceptions

Compound Hydrometeorological Extremes: Drivers, Mechanisms and Methods

Extreme weather impacts of climate change: an attribution perspective

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About