Adapting to climate change

According to the UN, many causes of poverty in developing countries are made worse by climate change. Adapting to the threats posed is challenging and, to ensure ongoing sustainable and equitable development in these countries, support with the process of adaptation is essential.

Our research into climate risk analysis and novel adaptation frameworks is helping organisations worldwide – spanning the energy and water sectors as well as Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) – to plan for and adapt to the many challenges posed by climate change.

^{Image courtesy of Robert Wilby
Nurek Dam, Tajikistan, feeds a 3GW hydropower
plant - the largest facility of its kind in Central Asia}

In contrast to current practice, our approach first assembles a portfolio of adaptation measures and evaluates them under a range of plausible future climate conditions.

A key advantage of this approach is that climate storylines and adaptation objectives are co-designed with practitioners, so a shared understanding of system vulnerabilities emerges. It also provides ‘scenario-neutral’ adaptation outcomes that are valid regardless of ongoing climate model developments. In addition, it is less resource-demanding than conventional frameworks.

Our climate scenario tool – the Statistical DownScaling Model (SDSM) – performed well in trials with various partners and has since been widely adopted.

SDSM continues to evolve, and the latest version can infill missing weather information in broken meteorological records and provide extreme value estimates for rare weather events.

By developing smarter approaches to climate risk assessment and decision-making, we are helping to protect critical infrastructure developments around the world - despite deep uncertainty about the future impacts of climate change.