Climate risk concerns and management among European organisations

The physical risks associated with a changing climate pose significant threats to societal, economic, and environmental systems. Effectively managing these risks depends heavily on scientific knowledge, including climate science. Adaptation efforts remain uneven across sectors and regions, with varying levels of progress, ambition, and implementation capacity. Quantitative studies are essential for understanding the actions being taken and the drivers behind adaptation. Much of the existing literature in this field often relies on small-sample surveys or interviews and tends to focus on individual sectors, such as agriculture or tourism. However, sensitivity to climate risks and adaptation needs vary widely across sectors and types of organizations. There is a pressing need for a more comprehensive understanding of how users perceive climate risks and how they manage them in practice across different sectors.

This study contributes to the literature by exploring the extent to which climate-sensitive organizations in Europe are aware of climate risks and actively integrate climate risk management into their organisational decision-making processes. The research addresses the following questions:

• How does concern about climate and weather risk compare with concern about other types of organisational risks?
• What are the main drivers of climate risk management in organisations?
• To what extent do organisations currently use weather and/or climate information?
• What are unmet needs for climate information provision?

To answer these questions, a large-scale survey was designed and distributed via the Qualtrics survey platform to professionals working in risk analysis and management roles within businesses and organizations across Europe (n=1864) .

The results reveal significant concerns regarding physical climate risks, alongside broader concerns about other organizational risks. Organizations with longer planning horizons exhibited higher concern compared to those with only short planning horizons. Risks to human safety and past experiences of extreme events being identified as the strongest drivers of Climate Risk Management (CRM) and climate information use. The ordered logit model shows that experience of weather/climate-related events raises the likelihood of an organisation carrying out CRM by 150%. Although most respondents indicated that their organization’s longest planning horizon for important decisions was between 1–5 years, the most commonly used sources of climate information were weather forecasts, followed by observations, sub-seasonal, and seasonal forecasts, respectively. A small proportion of respondents reported using longer-term climate information. While current users reported generally high satisfaction with the information they currently received, a desire for easier to understand and more accurate/reliable information was expressed. The implications for climate services will be discussed based on the results.