The impacts of weather and climate extremes depend on interactions between physical hazards, exposure, and vulnerability. Beyond intensity, the duration, timing, spatial extent, and co-occurrence of extremes can strongly influence their consequences. Understanding these relationships is essential for assessing how climate change alters risks to societies and ecosystems.
This interdisciplinary session connects research on the physical drivers of weather and climate extremes with assessments of their societal and environmental impacts. We particularly welcome studies that investigate how the mechanisms and characteristics of extremes shape their consequences, and how these relationships change under different climatic and socioeconomic conditions.
Contributions are invited on:
- Physical drivers and impact pathways: Atmospheric dynamics, ocean–atmosphere interactions, land–atmosphere coupling, and thermodynamic processes shaping extremes and their consequences. Topics include the roles of persistence, spatial extent, antecedent conditions, and compound or sequential hazards in determining impacts.
- Attribution of extremes and their consequences: Assessments of how anthropogenic climate change and natural variability influence extremes and associated impacts, including approaches that distinguish climatic influences from changes in exposure and vulnerability.
- Prediction and assessment of climate risks: Integration of observations, climate simulations, statistical approaches, and impact models to understand and anticipate risks under present and future conditions. Contributions may address cross-sector and cascading impacts, impact-based forecasting, and the implications of improved physical understanding for preparedness and adaptation.
We welcome observational, modelling, theoretical, and empirical studies addressing heatwaves, droughts, heavy precipitation, floods, fire weather, and compound extremes. Contributions may examine individual links between physical drivers, hazards, and impacts; interdisciplinary studies connecting these elements are particularly encouraged. The session aims to strengthen dialogue between extreme-event science and impact research, advancing understanding of how physical climate processes translate into societal and environmental risks.