Challenges and opportunities for understanding societal impacts of climate extremes
Abstract
Climate extremes exact a heavy toll on society, with adverse impacts unequally distributed across populations. In this perspective, we outline key challenges and opportunities for advancing research on understanding societal impacts of climate extremes. We identify three key challenges: limited availability and quality of impact data, difficulties in understanding the processes leading to impacts and lack of reliable impact projections. We argue that there is a window of opportunity to address several dimensions of these challenges, and we highlight recent examples and ongoing developments that hold transformative potential for the research field. We conclude with a call to build momentum by fostering interdisciplinary research and collaboration across sectors.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Climate change impacts on agriculture
Climate Change
Adaptation
Migration
Climate Change and Health Impacts
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Earth System Dynamics
- Publisher
- Copernicus GmbH
- Volume
- 17
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 199–208
- Publication date
- 26 February 2026
- Language
- EN