The challenge of compound events
Hazards such as floods, wildfires, heatwaves and droughts usually result from a combination of interacting physical processes that occur across multiple spatial and temporal scales. The combination of physical processes leading to an impact is referred to as a compound event. Because of their complexity, compound events pose challenges to climate scientists and impact modelers, particularly under a changing climate.
During a workshop at ETH in 2017, an international group of interdisciplinary researchers discussed the current understanding of compound events, and how to move forward. As an outcome of this workshop, a Perspective paper under the lead of Jakob Zscheischler has now been published in external pageNature Climate Changecall_made. A cross-disciplinary effort bridging climate scientists, impact modellers, statisticians and stakeholders is required to better understand, describe and project compound events. The research directions that have been proposed in that paper will be coordinated by the recently approved external pageCOSTcall_made Action external pageDAMOCLEScall_made at the European scale.
Links
- external pageFuture climate risk from compound eventscall_made, J. Zscheischler et.al., Nature Climate Change (2018)
- Personal Homepage of Jakob Zscheischler