Journal: Environmental Research: Climate

Abbreviation

Environ. Res.: Climate

Publisher

IOP Publishing

Journal Volumes

ISSN

2752-5295

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Filters

2023 - 20267
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Publications 1 - 7 of 7
  • A natural hazard risk modelling approach to human displacement - frontiers & challenges
    Item type: Journal Article
    Meiler, Simona; Mühlhofer, Evelyn; Lüthi, Samuel; et al. (2025)
    Environmental Research: Climate
    Extreme weather is increasingly driving human displacement worldwide, a trend expected to worsen with climate change. Quantifying global displacement risk is thus crucial for assessing potential impacts and informing long-term strategies to build more resilient societies, and reducing this risk. One approach involves leveraging classic probabilistic risk modelling methods that hinge on the interplay of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. Here, we present a methodological stocktaking of these natural-hazard risk models as applied to human displacement. Specifically, we present a globally consistent displacement risk model from multiple hazards under present-day and future conditions. We model population displacement from tropical cyclone winds, coastal floods, river floods, and droughts under present, optimistic, and pessimistic future climate conditions for the middle and end of the century, assuming constant exposure and vulnerability. Our results reveal that current displacement risk is on the order of 30 million annual average displacements (AAD). By 2100, global displacement risk could increase by 75% (157%) under optimistic (pessimistic) climate scenarios. While our risk model makes methodological advances through its global setup, utilisation of two risk frameworks and state-of-the-art datasets, we also highlight current challenges in displacement risk modelling. For instance, our approach primarily models displacement as the direct result of loss of homes from sudden-onset hazards. While we begin to incorporate indirect drivers, such as livelihood loss in river floods and droughts, the model still omits important social, political, and economic dimensions. Nevertheless, as our model adopts a modular design, continuous updates enable the inclusion of additional hazards, improved data, and integration of these broader dimensions. This stocktaking represents a concerted research effort, and our modelling framework may help inform global discussions in international climate negotiations, including those related to Loss and Damage, national action plans, policy development, and other climate adaptation strategies, provided appropriate data and context are applied.
  • Stratospheric injection of solid particles reduces side effects on circulation and climate compared to SO2 injections
    Item type: Journal Article
    Stefanetti, Fabrice; Vattioni, Sandro; Dykema, John A.; et al. (2024)
    Environmental Research: Climate
    Most research of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) for solar radiation modification has focused on injection of SO₂. However, the resulting sulfuric acid aerosols lead to considerable absorption of terrestrial infrared radiation, resulting in stratospheric warming and reduced cooling efficiency. Recent research suggests that solid particles, such as alumina, calcite or diamond, could minimize these side effects. Here we use, for the first time, the atmosphere-ocean-aerosol-chemistry-climate model SOCOLv4.0, incorporating a solid particle scheme, to assess the climatic impacts of SAI by these injection materials. For each substance, we model tropical SAI by means of constant yearly injection of solid particles, aimed to offset the warming induced by a high-GHG emission scenario over the 2020-2100 period by 1 K. We show that solid particles are more effective than sulfur at minimising stratospheric heating, and the resulting side-effects on the general atmospheric circulation, stratospheric moistening, and tropopause height change. As a result, solid particles also induce less residual warming over the arctic, resulting in greater reduction of GHG-induced polar amplification compared to sulfuric acid aerosols. Among the materials studied here, diamond is most efficient in reducing global warming per unit injection, while also minimizing side effects.
  • Ultrafast Arctic amplification and its governing mechanisms
    Item type: Journal Article
    Janoski, Tyler P.; Previdi, Michael; Chiodo, Gabriel; et al. (2023)
    Environmental Research: Climate
    Arctic amplification (AA), defined as the enhanced warming of the Arctic compared to the global average, is a robust feature of historical observations and simulations of future climate. Despite many studies investigating AA mechanisms, their relative importance remains contested. In this study, we examine the different timescales of these mechanisms to improve our understanding of AA's fundamental causes. We use the Community Earth System Model v1, Large Ensemble configuration (CESM-LE), to generate large ensembles of 2 years simulations subjected to an instantaneous quadrupling of CO2. We show that AA emerges almost immediately (within days) following CO2 increase and before any significant loss of Arctic sea ice has occurred. Through a detailed energy budget analysis of the atmospheric column, we determine the time-varying contributions of AA mechanisms over the simulation period. Additionally, we examine the dependence of these mechanisms on the season of CO2 quadrupling. We find that the surface heat uptake resulting from the different latent heat flux anomalies between the Arctic and global average, driven by the CO2 forcing, is the most important AA contributor on short (<1 month) timescales when CO2 is increased in January, followed by the lapse rate feedback. The latent heat flux anomaly remains the dominant AA mechanism when CO2 is increased in July and is joined by the surface albedo feedback, although AA takes longer to develop. Other feedbacks and energy transports become relevant on longer (>1 month) timescales. Our results confirm that AA is an inherently fast atmospheric response to radiative forcing and reveal a new AA mechanism.
  • Emergence of strong trends in humid heat intensity and duration in recent decades over South Asia
    Item type: Journal Article
    Singh, Jitendra; Singh, Deepti; Sippel, Sebastian; et al. (2026)
    Environmental Research: Climate
    South Asia experiences the hottest temperatures in the pre-monsoon season, followed by intense humid heat during the early summer monsoon. We examine trends and drivers of humid heat extremes in both seasons. We find that since early 2000s, monsoon season humid heat extremes have warmed twice as fast as the long-term rate since the 1950s, with their duration increasing from similar to 2 days in the 1950s to several weeks in present-day climate. This intensification in parts of South Asia is driven by peak humidity occurring similar to 2 weeks earlier since 2000, coinciding with higher temperatures. Pre-monsoon humid heat extremes have increased across most areas, except Western South Asia, where they have declined since 2000. Declining humidity levels drive pre-monsoon trends, while elevated humidity during precipitation events that precede humid-heat events explain their monsoon season intensification. Our findings call for targeted responses to escalating humid heat that threatens health, productivity, and the economy.
  • Sustainable development key to limiting climate change-driven wildfire damages
    Item type: Journal Article
    Hwong, Yi-Ling; Byers, Edward; Werning, Michaela; et al. (2025)
    Environmental Research: Climate
    Climate change is causing wildfires to become more frequent and intense. While predicting burned areas using bioclimatic and anthropogenic factors is an active research area, few studies have examined what drives the economic damages of wildfires. Our study aims to fill this gap by analyzing key factors influencing global economic wildfire damages and projecting future damages under three shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). We apply regression analyses to identify significant predictors of economic wildfire damages at country levels and use the fitted model to project future damages under SSP126, SSP245, and SSP370. Results show that the human vulnerability index (HVI), reflecting socioeconomic conditions, is the strongest predictor of historical wildfire damages, followed by water vapor pressure deficit during the fire season and population density around forested areas. We found high population density to be associated with lower damages. These findings contrast with studies of burned areas, where climate factors are more dominant. Our model projects that by 2070, average global economic wildfire damages will be three times higher under SSP370 than SSP126. Our model also shows that following SSP126 not only reduces wildfire damages but also lessens the inequalities in damage distribution across countries. This pathway's dual focus on equitable socioeconomic progress and climate action potentially enhances a country's resilience that helps mitigate wildfire damages. Our analyses also indicate that strong socioeconomic development can offset wildfire damages associated with climate hazards, although this is less certain under SSP370. SSP126's integrated approach improves both socioeconomic conditions and limits global warming, providing substantial benefits to less developed countries while still reducing damages in developed nations, despite their already low HVI scores. Our work complements existing research on burned areas and underscores the importance of sustainable development and international collaboration in reducing the economic damages of wildfires.
  • Assessing the impact of very large volcanic eruptions on the risk of extreme climate events
    Item type: Journal Article
    Freychet, Nicolas; Schurer, Andrew P.; Ballinger, Andrew P.; et al. (2023)
    Environmental Research: Climate
    Very large volcanic eruptions have substantial impacts on the climate, causing global cooling and major changes to the hydrological cycle. While most studies have focused on changes to mean climate, here we use a large ensemble to assess the impact on extreme climate for three years following tropical and extratropical eruptions of different sulfur emission strength. We focus on the impact of an extremely large eruption, injecting 40 Tg sulfur into the stratosphere, which could be expected to occur approximately twice a millennium. Our findings show that the eruption would have a profound effect on large areas of the globe, resulting in extremely rare drought events that under normal circumstances would occur once every century becoming very likely. Several regions such as West Africa, South and East Asia and the Maritime continent are particularly affected with the expected climate shifting well outside the usual range, by up to five standard deviations. These results have important consequences as they indicate that a severe drought in multiple breadbasket regions should be expected following a large eruption. The risk of heavy rainfall tends to decrease over the same regions but by a reduced amount, heatwaves become extremely rare, however the chance of extreme Winter cold surges do not increase by a corresponding amount, since widespread parts of the Northern Hemisphere display a winter warming. Our results show that the location of the eruption is crucial for the change in extremes, with overall changes larger for a Northern Hemisphere eruption than a tropical and Southern Hemisphere eruption, although there is a regional dependency. Simulations of different eruptions with similar forcing distributions but with different sizes are consistent with a linear relationship, however for smaller eruptions the internal variability tends to become dominant and the effect on extreme climate less detectable.
  • Beyond single company climate risk disclosure: event-based physical risk reporting
    Item type: Journal Article
    Wattin Håkansson, Victor; Meiler, Simona; Hülsen, Sarah; et al. (2025)
    Environmental Research: Climate
    An increasing number of countries and stakeholders now require large companies to disclose physical climate-related risks. However, the lack of standardization has led to the use of varied risk metrics from different data sources, making it difficult to compare physical risks across companies and preventing investors from aggregating risks at the portfolio level. To address this, we develop an approach using standardized, event-based probabilistic natural catastrophe risk assessments to improve global risk data aggregation and enable customized risk metrics. Integrating these methods into climate physical risk reporting would help investors align portfolios with a risk-return efficient frontier that accounts for physical risks, directing capital toward companies better equipped to manage climate impacts and promoting strategic adaptation. We propose a transparent, replicable, open-source methodology using event-loss tables to present per-event impact data. This approach is illustrated with two fictional companies exposed to tropical cyclone risk under current and future climate scenarios, highlighting the potential for company comparison, and portfolio risk assessment and optimization. Finally, we call on the scientific community and regulators to establish standardized hazard sets and financial loss functions to support transparent comparison and risk aggregation.
Publications 1 - 7 of 7