But not all correlated climate phenomena are harmful, so it’s important to find out which combinations have a particularly negative effect. Often pure climate researchers cannot fully answer this question; it calls for the expertise of experts who, for example, deal with the impact of climate on nature and society.
Climate change acts as an additional complicating factor, affecting not only individual events, but also the relationship between them. Last year, for example, we showed that in future drought and heat will occur simultaneously even more frequently in many regions of the world than they have to date
3
(see
ETH News
).
A new approach to risk assessment
So what does this mean for climate science? In a recently published Perspective
4
, we call for a cross-disciplinary, bottom-up approach to studying compound events in a changing climate. What’s needed first and foremost are scientists who exchange views across disciplines
5
. For in order to identify and analyse relevant compound events globally, there must be close collaboration between climate researchers, impact assessment experts, engineers and statisticians, and a close dialogue with industry and local decision-makers.
