Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation

Member governments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have approved this Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX).

This summary for policymakers provides insights into how disaster risk management and adaptation may help vulnerable communities to cope better with climate change. It aims to assist community organizations and international disaster risk managers in making sound scientific decisions on infrastructure, urban development, public health, insurance and planning.

Background

The SREX assessed the scientific literature on a range of issues such as the relationship between climate change and extreme weather and climate events (climate extremes) to the implications of these events for society and sustainable development. It explored the:

• interaction of climatic, environmental and human factors that can lead to impacts and disasters
• options for managing the risks posed by impacts and disasters
• role that non-climatic factors play in determining impacts.

In this report, adverse impacts are considered disasters when they produce widespread damage and cause severe alterations in the normal functioning of communities or societies. A wide range of factors, including anthropogenic climate change, natural climate variability and socioeconomic development, influences climate extremes, exposure and vulnerability. Disaster risk management and adaptation to climate change focus on reducing exposure and vulnerability and increasing resilience to the potential adverse impacts of climate extremes, even though risks cannot be completely eliminated.

Findings

• the report highlights the complexity and the diversity of factors that are shaping human vulnerability to extremes that for some communities and countries can become disasters whereas for others they can be less severe.
• there is substantial evidence that maximum and minimum daily temperatures have increased globally due to the increase of greenhouse gases.
• changes in drought patterns and longer droughts are observed in some regions, however there remains a lack of direct observations and agreement in the available scientific studies.
• long-term trends in tropical cyclone intensity, frequency or duration have yet to be identified.

Conclusions

Globally, hot days will become even hotter and occur more often. For many regions, the frequency of hot days will increase by a factor of 10. Heavy precipitation will occur more often, and the wind speed of tropical cyclones will increase while their number will likely remain constant or decrease.

The options for decreasing risk can provide benefits across a wide range of possible levels of climate change and are presented in tables in the Report.

IPCC
November 2011