Anticipating unprecedented weather: We have the tools to do it

Unprecedented weather events are rising due to climate change, but scientists can better anticipate them using four complementary methods. A recent study urges combining these approaches to inform proactive adaptation, with a focus on transformative strategies to build resilience and address root causes.

The most immediate and alarming manifestation of climate change in our daily lives is the rise in unprecedented weather events. Floods, unusually strong hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, and cold spells are becoming more frequent. Yet, their occurrence and severity often remain difficult to predict, making preparing for their potential impacts challenging. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. Over recent decades, scientists have developed several methods that can forecast extreme weather events and project future outcomes of climate change and their social impacts with increasing accuracy.

A recent study published in Nature Communications offers a comprehensive overview of the available methods to anticipate unprecedented weather events and argues that we should take full advantage of these tools to build resilience and avoid being caught off guard by future adverse weather.

The authors of the article identify four categories of approaches to identifying unprecedented weather events, each providing different lines of evidence. The first is conventional statistical analysis, which relies on observational data from climate series of the past – mainly for the last 70 years. This method offers detailed insights into weather patterns in the recent past. Still, it is limited by the relatively short and sparse nature of the records, making it prone to systematically underestimating extreme events that, now and in the future, are more likely to occur due to a change in the underlying climatic conditions of the Earth.

Importance of the past

Scientists complement modern observations with historical observations, documentary evidence, and oral history to address these limitations. These sources help rediscover extreme events from the more distant past, placing today’s “unprecedented” events in a broader context. As the researchers note, documentary evidence, oral history, and Indigenous knowledge also illustrate “how people have learned to cope with extreme weather,” providing previous examples of building resilience to unprecedented weather.

Another approach involves developing storylines – scenarios that explore the “physically plausible and self-consistent unfolding of climatic events” by building counterfactuals (“what-if” situations) that explore how past, present or future events might have unfolded under different conditions. On a similar note, climate models simulate physically plausible future events “that lie outside the range of observed events.” These models offer insights into “the types of processes that could lead to unprecedented weather.”

Each of these four approaches is powerful yet has limitations when considered individually. However, the data and results they provide can be seen as complementary and are useful for informing us on what types of “unprecedented” weather events we can expect based on both the study of the past and the anticipation of the future. This information can also help reduce the surprise element for the severity and potential impacts of such extreme events.

How to not be taken off-guard

With this knowledge in hand, it becomes essential to act proactively to build resilience through disaster management and climate mitigation approaches. The study highlights three types of adaptive interventions:

• Reactive adaptation, which consists of short-term responses to a disaster;
• Incremental adaptation, which involves medium- and long-term actions to strengthen and prepare our infrastructure and systems for disasters;
• Transformative adaptation, that aims to “reshape and fundamentally alter the systems, structures, and practices to achieve more just and equitable outcomes.”

These three approaches form a conceptual “adaptation pyramid,” and the authors emphasise that they must be used together to build a climate-resilient social system. However, the ultimate goal is to be prepared – not merely to limit the damage. This is why efforts need to converge towards transformative adaptation. As the researchers stress, this approach “switches focus from the impacts and hazards towards the underlying development context and drivers of vulnerability, which avoids exacerbating the conditions.” Thus, transforming our systems means not only enhancing resilience and reducing vulnerability but also addressing the root causes of extreme events – such as greenhouse gas emissions – and, last but not least, striving for sustainable development.

Further readings:

• The perspective article on Nature Communications: How to stop being surprised by unprecedented weather
• A short summary of the article: How to stop being surprised by extreme weather