Projecting physical and transition risk, and adaptation and resilience to climate change and associated extreme events

Climate change will alter the frequency and severity of extreme weather events and associated disturbances that threaten people, infrastructure and ecosystems, making it imperative to assess risks and prepare cost-effective responses.

To assess physical risks to infrastructure posed by extreme events, we continually advance analytic methods. Combining historical evidence with our Integrated Global System Modeling (IGSM) framework’s climate model as well as those used by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)-participating institutions, we analyze extreme events under the current climate as well as a range of future outcomes. Our assessments target risks to any system threatened by extreme precipitation events, floods, drought or extreme heat; to wind energy systems impacted by extreme or low-wind events; to solar energy systems affected by extended cloudiness events; and to coastal infrastructure imperiled by storm-surge events.

We also evaluate transition risk—the financial risk, borne by investors and the financial system, associated with the decarbonization of the economy that’s likely to take place in the coming decades as the world strives to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Finally, we conduct studies on how to optimize adaptation and resilience (e.g. water infrastructure planning, flexible design, grid resiliency) strategies that customize infrastructure design to evolving regional needs.

To learn how your organization can benefit from funding our research, please visit the Joint Program Sponsorship page.