Hear from German climatologist Dr. Friederike Otto, Associate Director of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University, for this installment of the series Business, Science, Culture: Climate Edition.
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Let’s talk about 1.5 degrees.

In science, politics and even the media, climate change is measured in degrees. 1.5: the nearing threshold for catastrophic changes caused by humans burning fossil fuels.

What temperature fails to account for as a metric of climate change, however, is impact: rising sea levels, drought, warming oceans—angry weather and its impact on humans and the world’s delicate ecosystems.

For a long time it has not been possible to connect climate change and global warming to weather and climate-related disasters. But the tide—the rising tide, as it were—is turning.

Leading that charge is German climatologist Dr. Friederike Otto, developer of the emerging field of climate change attribution, named an MIT Tech Review top ten breakthrough technology, and author of Angry Weather: Heat Waves, Floods, Storms and the New Science and Climate Change. Dr. Otto’s research moves the topic of climate change from an abstract future threat to a concrete and present reality. Her climate change attribution is a tool to quantify and establish the pivotal connection between climate change and its direct impacts.

Dr. Otto’s extreme event attribution also allows us to better understand where risks are coming from and how they can be addressed. Studies in the field open a window to help see who is most vulnerable and who is exposed. Instead of continuing to play a blame game, attribution moves the debate toward addressing risk.

Dr. Otto’s idea for a global inventory of climate change impacts. Such an inventory would:

- Aid disaster preparedness and adaptation at local and national scales
- Provide a comprehensive source of evidence for global stocktakes on adaptation and loss and damage such as mandated by the Paris Climate Agreement
-Finally put adaptation on equal footing with mitigation.

Find out more about the event on our website: https://www.dwih-newyork.org/en/event/angry-weather-towards-a-global-inventory-of-climate-change-impacts/