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How to stop being surprised by unprecedented weather

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posted on 2025-10-17, 07:33 authored by Timo Kelder, Dorothy Heinrich, Lisette Klok, Vikki Thompson, Henrique M. D. Goulart, Ed Hawkins, Louise J. Slater, Laura Suarez-Gutierrez, Robert WilbyRobert Wilby, Erin Coughlan de Perez, Elisabeth M. Stephens, Stephen Burt, Bart van den Hurk, Hylke de Vries, Karin van der Wiel, E. Lisa F. Schipper, Antonio Carmona Baéz, Ellen van Bueren, Erich M. Fischer
We see unprecedented weather causing widespread impacts across the world. In this perspective, we provide an overview of methods that help anticipate unprecedented weather hazards that can contribute to stop being surprised. We then discuss disaster management and climate adaptation practices, their gaps, and how the methods to anticipate unprecedented weather may help build resilience. We stimulate thinking about transformative adaptation as a foundation for long-term resilience to unprecedented weather, supported by incremental adaptation through upgrading existing infrastructure, and reactive adaptation through short-term early action and disaster response. Because in the end, we should take responsibility to build resilience rather than being surprised by unprecedented weather.<p></p>

Funding

NASA cooperative grant titled “Today’s Risk of Extreme Events” (agreement number 80NSSC22K1706)

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the US National Institutes of Health (Award Number P20ES036118)

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) via the International Science Partnerships Fund (ISPF) under Grant number [22/CC/11103] at the Co-Centre for Climate + Biodiversity + Water.

European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program within the project ‘XAIDA: Extreme Events – Artificial Intelligence for Detection and Attribution’ under grant agreement No 101003469

History

School

  • Social Sciences and Humanities

Department

  • Geography and Environment

Published in

Nature Communications

Volume

16

Issue

1

Publisher

Nature Portfolio

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The Author(s)

Publisher statement

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Acceptance date

2025-02-24

Publication date

2025-03-10

Copyright date

2025

ISSN

2041-1723

eISSN

2041-1723

Language

  • en

Depositor

Prof Robert Leonard Wilby. Deposit date: 16 October 2025

Article number

2382

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