Tropical Cyclones, Displacement, and Policy: Advancing Climate Risk Assessments

Extreme weather events such as tropical cyclones, heatwaves, and floods pose imminent threats to environmental and social systems. Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of many such events, amplifying their potential impacts on society from direct economic losses to metrics like human displacement. Understanding and quantifying these climate-related risks is essential for building societal resilience. However, assessing these risks involves significant challenges, from managing diverse sources of uncertainty in risk models to addressing the complex interplay of social, environmental, and political factors. This talk will explore three areas of my research: quantifying uncertainty and sensitivity in tropical cyclone risk assessments, developing a climate risk modeling approach to human displacement, and bridging social and natural sciences to examine how subjective attribution of extreme weather influences climate policy support.