Climate change: Risks, impacts and adaptation

Two eminent authors who contributed to the latest IPCC Report on climate change share their insights into its very real and present risks and impacts, to which we will all need adapt.

Climate change is not for the future, impacts are here now in all regions and becoming increasingly complex. Our current 1.1ºC warmer world is already affecting natural and human systems, including health, floods, crop production and natural ecosystems.

As impacts vary both across and within regions, sectors, and societal groups, inequalities have deepened. The risks for the world are increasing with every increment of warming.

This presentation will summarise the key risks and the adaptation pathways which would reduce risks. Cities are hotspots for multiple risks of increasing temperatures and extreme heat, floods and droughts increasingly strongly if warming would surpass >2°C. Not all adaptation options are equally useful with increasing warming, and some will put us in positions where we are locked into specific approaches.

Professor Lea Berrang Ford, Priestley Chair in Climate and Health at the University of Leeds, will explore the global situation and Professor Daniela Schmidt, School of Earth Science at Bristol University, will focus on Europe specifically.