User-oriented information on tropical cyclones and water cycle extremes for the climate and disaster risk management

PI: Obersteiner, Michael

Department: Environmental Change Institute

As climate changes - likely to a warmer state than anytime during the existence of humans - extreme events threatening socio-economic fabric of our society are occurring at increasing frequency and/or intensity in many parts of the world. Especially deadly and costly are tropical cyclones (e.g., in 2017 hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria caused damages of more than 260 billion USD) and water cycle extremes (e.g., Pakistan monsoon flooding in September 2022 still affects more than 33 million people, while evolving multi-year drought in the Horn of Africa presently places 22 million people at risk of starvation).

The overarching goal of this one-year project is to provide easy-to-use actionable information on tropical cyclones, and droughts and floods in a changing climate not yet available at the World Bank's Climate Change Knowledge Portal, and so far, not utilised in economic analysis of climate impacts for the Bank's investment projects supporting resilience strengthening and adaptation planning. In the physical essence, out approach is based on recently developed dynamical-statistical methodology for combination of multiple observations and state-of-the-art climate simulations.

This project is relevant to the EPSRC Physical sciences theme as it will use multiple established climate datasets, and the most up-to-date research findings in climate physics and modelling of rather stochastic tropical cyclones and extreme precipitation. Operationally, we will enable the World Bank's practitioners and stakeholders around the globe to employ such user-oriented climate information in economic analysis of the development pilot projects and to respond to changes in characteristics of tropical cyclones, droughts and floods as climate evolves.