Climate resilience and event frequency

The Swiss Re report on natural catastrophes in 2025 has just been released. 2025 was below the long-term loss trend but not a sign of reduced risk. Here is what the year actually contained: 🔥 USD 40 billion in insured losses from the Los Angeles wildfires alone — the largest wildfire loss event in history ⛈️ USD 51 billion from severe convective storms — the third-costliest year on record for this peril 🌊 USD 11 billion in economic losses from compound monsoon flooding across Southeast Asia 🌍 More than 17,900 people killed or missing from disasters induced by natural hazards Wildfire insured losses are growing at 12% per year. Severe convective storms at 7%. And crucially, in North America for wildfires and in Europe for storms, losses are growing twice as fast as exposure — meaning hazard intensification and vulnerability shifts are adding fuel beyond what simple asset growth can explain. This is not an insurance story. It is a climate and resilience story. The World Meteorological Organization State of the Global Climate 2025 documented that 2025 was the second or third warmest year in the 176-year observational record. Ocean heat content reached a new record high for the ninth consecutive year. Eight of the ten most negative glacier mass balance years since 1950 have occurred since 2016. The Earth's energy imbalance — the fundamental measure of how fast heat is accumulating in the climate system — reached its highest value on record in 2025. The physics of a warming planet shows up in the loss ledgers of the insurance industry with a lag — and that lag is now closing fast. Over 80–90% of catastrophe losses in emerging economies remain uninsured. The communities absorbing the greatest physical risk have the least financial capacity to recover from it. Read the Carbon Brief article: https://lnkd.in/dZNR6E8k Read the WMO State of Global Climate: https://lnkd.in/eEuwv7tV

Business Climate Resilience 🌎 Climate-related disruptions are increasing in frequency and severity, creating material risks for business operations, supply chains, and local communities. Addressing these challenges requires a structured and forward-looking approach to climate resilience. The World Economic Forum presents a framework that outlines ten key actions across three pillars: enhancing resilience, capitalizing on opportunities, and shaping collaborative outcomes. These actions are designed to help organizations avoid economic loss, drive sustainability-linked value, and strengthen systemic responses. Enhancing resilience involves asset-level climate hazard mapping, crisis response planning, and contingency strategies for workforce productivity during extreme weather. Addressing single points of failure and diversifying service delivery and supply chain models is essential to minimize operational disruption. Capturing new opportunities requires understanding long-term consumption shifts, adapting local business models, and directing R&D toward sustainable materials, circular models, and resilient infrastructure. Climate-smart portfolio strategies can position climate adaptation as a source of competitive advantage. Systemic resilience depends on coordinated action across the value chain. Collaboration with public, private, and grassroots stakeholders can unlock shared value frameworks, support regenerative practices, and enable the deployment of early warning systems and nature-based financial mechanisms. To operationalize these priorities, businesses are encouraged to activate key enablers within 24 months. These include integrating climate risk into enterprise risk management, conducting detailed audits of capabilities, and aligning capital investment decisions with resilience objectives. Data intelligence, scientific partnerships, and responsible use of technology—particularly AI—will be critical to improve foresight, enable adaptive planning, and enhance the quality of strategic decision-making in the context of escalating climate volatility. #sustainability #sustainable #business #esg

Climate change is reshaping business performance today ❗ Rio Tinto lost ~USD 800 million in revenue not from destroyed assets, but because cyclones stopped iron ore production and shipping. ❗ After Hurricane Harvey, US businesses suffered 20× more losses from lost revenue than from physical damage. ❗ Floods in Thailand disrupted electronics and auto supply chains so badly that the government warned buyers may “look elsewhere” due to reliability concerns. 👉 The pattern is clear, that real climate cost for businesses is business interruption, not repair bills. 🍃 This is where the opportunity emerges. In a world of frequent disruption, reliability becomes a competitive advantage. ✅ Companies that can keep operating, through diversified supply chains, resilient infrastructure, and better data, will win contracts, retain customers, and stabilise earnings while others fall behind. ✅ Climate resilience is following a familiar path: from cost → to necessity → to strategic edge. ➡️ The most important shift for leaders now is to move from managing climate risk to building operational advantage. #ClimateChange #BusinessStrategy #Resilience #SupplyChains #RiskManagement #SustainableFinance

1 in 10 years → Every 3 years. Climate change is impacting construction projects: Yet nobody’s talking about it… The issue: UK construction contracts reference "1 in 10 year weather events." But these events are now happening every 3 years. Your project will be in either a peak or a dip in the weather cycle. NEC contracts use Met Office data and locations to define these thresholds. Great in theory. Useless when climate patterns have shifted. This spring in Europe? Severe drought across parts of Europe. Last year? Extreme flooding. What this means for contractors working under a NEC contract: → Can't claim for weather delays if it's "less than 1 in 10 years" → But extreme weather is now the norm, not the exception → NEC's fixed methodology offers no discretion for new patterns → Reality: unpredictable extremes every few years. Z Clauses for weather will be needed. Real example happening now: UK groundworks contractors are weeks ahead of schedule. Beautiful dry conditions alertly in the year. Perfect for excavation. Great if you're building a reservoir, however will there be enough water to fill it in the future? The truth: Our contracts assume weather patterns from 30 years ago. Climate change will increasingly make those assumptions worthless. The NEC's objective approach was great in the 1990s but needs to adapt to new realities. Time to update: → Redefine what constitutes "extreme" weather → Adjust frequency assumptions in contracts → Plan for unpredictability, not monthly patterns → Build climate resilience into risk allocation The 1 in 10 year clause is dead. Climate change will kill it. Time our contracts caught up with reality. P.S. Want to get smarter at contracts, claims, and commercial risk? I drop sharp, no-BS insights straight from the top of the industry. Join my FREE newsletter here — don't miss what’s coming: https://lnkd.in/ga9WGi6C

I am delighted to share our latest paper, “Who Bears the Burden? An Assessment of Vulnerability and Resilience to Consecutive Disasters”. In this study, we analyzed three back-to-back climate-related disasters (2020 wildfire smoke, 2021 winter snowstorm, and 2021 extreme heatwave) in the Portland-Metro region. Using data from 416 census tracts, we correlated social vulnerability (SoVI), resilience (BRIC) with hazard impacts and proximity to community-based organizations (CBOs). 1.       We find that communities already facing air pollution, heat islands, and poor infrastructure were hit hardest. 2.       Migrant workers, non-US citizens, racial minorities, and low-income households experienced disproportionate impacts due to existing vulnerability. However, affluent areas and populations in those areas had slightly lower exposure, lower social vulnerability, and higher resilience. 3.       CBOs, although concentrated in high-risk areas, lacked the resources to significantly reduce disaster impacts. 4.       Furthermore, heat-related mortality was more closely linked to social vulnerability and poor housing conditions than age alone. Less than a quarter of the region’s population lived in areas hit by two or more extreme events, compounding risks. This study is a call for multi-hazard planning and environmental justice. As climate extremes become more frequent and complex, we must build localized, equity-centered disaster-reduction strategies. Investment in infrastructure, housing retrofits, green space, and CBO capacity building will be essential to prepare communities for the growing risk of consecutive disasters. Many thanks to NSF NCAR - The National Center for Atmospheric Research for sponsoring this study and to my research team and collaborators: Jason Sauer, Matthew Walter, James Done, Ming G, Elliott Gall, Aswatha Raghunathasami, Paul Loikith, Chris Lower, Heejun Chang, Arun Pallathadka, and Mae Sowards.   Idowu Ajibade et al 2025 Environ. Res. Lett. 20 084006 Click here for a free download of the article: https://lnkd.in/eK5SQcmU

🔌 Building Power Grids That Bounce Back: Why Distribution Resiliency Matters More Than Ever Extreme weather is no longer rare: it’s becoming the new normal. From hurricanes and wildfires to ice storms and heat waves, these events are responsible for the vast majority of large-scale power outages in the U.S. In fact, up to 90% of weather-related outages originate in distribution networks, the “last mile” of our electric grid where poles, wires, and transformers directly serve communities. A recent study published in the Journal of Infrastructure Preservation & Resilience by Prof. Caisheng Wang et al. highlights a crucial takeaway: 👉 Reliability is not the same as resiliency. Reliability keeps the lights on during everyday conditions. Resiliency keeps the lights on—or gets them back on quickly—when disasters strike. 🧩 What makes a distribution grid resilient? Grid hardening: reinforcing poles, undergrounding lines, vegetation management, elevating substations. Smarter network design: reconfigurable feeders, sectionalizing switches, and microgrids that can “island” during major events. Distributed Energy Resources (DERs): solar, storage, and even EVs that can support critical loads post-disaster. AI & ML tools: from outage prediction models to reinforcement-learning-based restoration planning. 💡 Why does this matter? Civil and electrical engineers will increasingly work together on climate-resilient infrastructure. Whether you’re designing coastal foundations, planning hardened utility corridors, or integrating microgrids into communities, understanding power distribution resiliency is becoming essential. This publication is a call to action: we need grids that are not just reliable, but resilient—capable of withstanding and recovering from the extreme events that are becoming routine. This is a space full of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and real opportunity to make a societal impact. Free full-text: https://lnkd.in/d4yV-rgm #DERs #DistributionNetworks #ExtremeHazards #HILPevents #Microgrid #Resiliency #review #JIPR #newPub

230 million people just learned the hard way that "I hope the forecast is wrong" is not a resilience plan. One winter storm, 2000 miles wide, just pressure tested North America. From northern Mexico, to Atlantic Canada: • record snow from Arkansas to Ontario • "catastrophic" ice across the South • freeze warnings as far as the Gulf Early damage estimates are in the tens of billions of dollars, with some projections cracking $100B On paper, a lot of this was "unlikely". But in reality, it was inevitable. Inevitable because we plan to the average in a world that’s ruled by extremes. We design subdivisions, houses, farms, and infrastructure using 30‑year normals and “100‑year” events… …in a climate that is no longer normal, and where “unprecedented” is getting precedent. We lean on: • 30 year climate "normals" • 100-year storm curves • historical snow loads and frost dates But these distributions are dynamic and shifting, and the tails of those curves are getting bigger. We've historically been optimizing for the middle of the bell curve, and pretend the edges are someone else's problem. Rather than asking: "What's typical here?" We need to be asking: "What's the worst plausible combinations this site could see in its lifetime?" If we want land systems that actually hold under pressure, we have to flip the script. We need to treat extremes as the design teacher and averages as background noise. We no longer have the luxury of designing for "normal". The pattern is already here, in plain sight. "Unprecedented" events are starting to arrive on a schedule. So, do we: keep designing for "normal" and acting surprised every time, or start designing for extremes and finally call it resilience? (screenshot credit: earth . nullschool . net -> link in comments)

The US once again dominated global catastrophe losses in 2025 — not because of hurricanes. *In 2025, global insured natural catastrophe losses reached USD 107 billion, marking the sixth consecutive year above USD 100 billion. The US accounted for 83% of global insured losses (USD 89 billion), driven primarily by record-breaking wildfires and severe convective storms. https://lnkd.in/eabC64J8 *The Los Angeles wildfires were the costliest wildfire event ever recorded globally, with USD 40 billion in insured losses, reflecting the growing concentration of high-value assets in hazard-prone areas and the increasing impact of extreme weather. *Severe convective storms continued their multi-year upward trend, underscoring how frequent, lower-severity events are becoming a major driver of aggregate losses. *Despite an active Atlantic hurricane season, US hurricane losses remained low, as no major hurricanes made landfall — highlighting on the one hand how secondary perils can drive annual outcomes, and on the other hand how the season could have become much worse if a hurricane had made landfall. There is a one-in-ten chance that global losses hit USD 300 billion (see our sigma 1/2025 https://lnkd.in/e3rjYG-5). *The upshot: risk in the US is becoming more concentrated, more costly and more volatile, reinforcing the importance of prevention, resilience and risk-informed planning alongside strong insurance and reinsurance capacity.   #ClimateRisk #Wildfires #Insurance #Resilience

Heavy rainfall and flooding during Storm Claudia in Ireland earlier this month were made twice as likely by climate change, scientists have found. They have also said luck prevented even worse damage as the downpours came during a neap tide when high tides were lower than usual. Scientists from Met Éireann and the Icarus climate research centre at Maynooth University analysed conditions before and during the storm to understand why its impacts were so severe. They found that both the storm rain and the 30 days of heavy rain beforehand had become twice as likely because of the heating planet. They warn that as global temperatures continue to rise, the frequency of similar events will increase. “We would expect similar two-day rainfall events to happen once every one to two years and 30-day rainfall events to happen once every two year…. The worry is that our luck will run out eventually… We will experience an extreme event that coincides with a spring high tide, and the resulting impacts for flooding are likely to be far worse than we’ve experienced before” We cannot continue to depend on luck.

Last month, Cuba declared an outbreak of arboviruses, diseases transmitted by arthropods such as mosquito, midges, and ticks, warning that Dengue, Oropouche, and Chikungunya viruses were present in all 15 of the country's provinces. Officials cited persistent rains, high temperatures, inadequate waste management, and water supply challenges as key outbreak drivers.    Cuba is reflective of a broader global trend: Climate-related events are increasingly driving infectious disease outbreaks and other health emergencies. Dengue and other arboviruses often surge six to eight weeks after major climate events. This means communities must contend not only with immediate disaster recovery, but also with heightened public health risks in the weeks and months that follow.    How can we improve prevention and response to climate-driven arboviral outbreaks? One essential action is embedding resilience into health planning now. We need to create health systems that can effectively respond to climate-driven health threats and provide essential health services. To meet the health threats of the future, we must begin building resilient health systems today.    https://lnkd.in/eH9yQfdJ