PLEA Network

16 May 2018, COSMOS, If it’s not one thing, it’s another: the challenge of compound weather events. The deadly Russian wildfires of 2010, the Brisbane floods of 2011 and the inundation of New York by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 were all “perfect storms”, devastating combinations of weather and climate conditions that no-one saw coming. “Compound events” such as these – where drought amplifies a heatwave, or one storm comes hard on the heels of another – could have been foreseen, according to one group of climate scientists, who argue that most analysis of the hazards of climate change underestimates the real risks. In a paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the group – made up of Swiss, Dutch, American and Australian researchers – make the case that “most major weather and climate-related catastrophes are caused by compound effects”, and call for turning climate risk projections upside down. After disastrous events such as fires and floods, says Michael Leonard of the University of Adelaide in South Australia, one of the authors of the paper, people sometimes want to think they were unavoidable: “You’ll often hear phrases like ‘We didn’t see it coming’,” he says, “when, actually, maybe we could have seen it coming. I guess there’s a public need for people to excuse themselves a bit, but from a professional point of view planners and modellers can do better.” Read more here