Maarten van Aalst

Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre

The database maps the integration of climate considerations in social protection programs in emerging and developing economies. Using a mixed-methods approach, we identified 98 climate-relevant social protection programs and collected data on over 70 variables related to their scope and climate relevance at policy, design, and implementation level.

Independent Expert Report to the European Commission

Southern Madagascar recently experienced a severe food security crisis, made significantly worse by well below average rainfall from July 2019 to June 2021. This exceptional drought has affected a region with high pre-existing levels of vulnerability to food insecurity (subsistence agriculture and pastoralism in the region is rain-fed only), while...

Towards the end of June 2021, temperature records were broken by several degrees Celsius in several cities in the Pacific Northwest areas of the US and Canada, leading to spikes in sudden deaths and sharp increases in emergency calls and hospital visits for heat-related illnesses. Here we present a multi-model, multi-method attribution analysis to...

Armed conflict increases people's vulnerability to climate extremes. Since many of these climate extremes are predictable beforehand, Early Warning Early Action (EWEA) can help protect people's lives, livelihoods, and wellbeing. While such EWEA systems exist in several countries, there is limited scientific knowledge about EWEA in conflict-affected...

This article provides a stocktake the adaptation literature between 2013 and 2019 to better understand how responses affect risk under the particularly challenging conditions of compound climate impacts. Across 39 countries, 45 response types to compound hazards display anticipatory (9%), reactive (33%) and maladaptive characteristics (41%), as wel...

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes COVID-19, emerged in late 2019, halfway through the preparation of the IPCC WGII Sixth Assessment Report. This Cross-Chapter Box assesses how the massive shock of the pandemic and response measures interact with climate-related impacts and risks as well as its significan...

There is an urgent need to raise awareness of the risks for generalizing 'flood' within the development of new risk assessment framework and adaptation strategies, and further outline opportunities for ensuring current and future multiform flood risk can be both assessed and reduced in particular for the most vulnerable populations. This requires e...

The Working Group II contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides a comprehensive assessment of the scientific literature relevant to climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. The report recognizes the interactions of climate, ecosystems and biodiversity, and human societie...

Increases in the frequency and magnitudes of extreme events, attributed to anthropogenic climate change by WGI (IPCC, 2021a), are now causing profound negative effects across all realms of the world (marine, terrestrial, freshwater and polar) (medium confidence) (Fox-Kemper et al., 2021; Seneviratne et al., 2021) (Sections 2.3.1, 2.3.2, 2.3.3.5, 2....

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought dynamics of compound hazards and risk-response feedbacks to the fore of hydrometeorological hazard preparedness and response. For example, lockdowns implemented to slow the hazard of COVID-19 transmission have the potential unintended side effect of isolating or demobilizing people in the face of an incoming compou...

In October 2020, Central Vietnam was struck by heavy rain resulting from a sequence of 5 tropical depressions and typhoons. The immense amount of water led to extensive flooding and landslides that killed more than 200 people, injured more than 500 people, and caused direct damages valued at approximately 1.2 billion USD. Here, we quantify how the...

Towards the end of June 2021, temperature records were broken by several degrees Celsius in several cities in the Pacific northwest areas of the U.S. and Canada, leading to spikes in sudden deaths, and sharp increases in hospital visits for heat-related illnesses and emergency calls. Here we present a multi-model, multi-method attribution analysis...

The COVID-19 pandemic and anthropogenic climate change are global crises. We show how strongly these crises are connected, including the underlying societal inequities and problems of poverty, substandard housing, and infrastructure including clean water supplies. The origins of all these crises are related to modern consumptive industrialisation,...

In June 2018, the Peruvian provinces of Arequipa and Puno in the southern Andean region were affected by heavy snowfall, which caused severe damage to people and livelihoods in several communities. Using the Forecast-based Financing approach, the Peruvian Red Cross implemented its pre-defined early action protocol before this event, after receiving...

Assessing global progress on human adaptation to climate change is an urgent priority. Although the literature on adaptation to climate change is rapidly expanding, little is known about the actual extent of implementation. We systematically screened >48,000 articles using machine learning methods and a global network of 126 researchers. Our synthe...

In this brief, we articulate the role of social protection in addressing major socio-economic challenges arising from climate change, especially for low- and middle-income countries, and the need to strategically link social protection and national climate change responses. (A Technical Paper accompanying this Brief is also available)

People affected by conflict are particularly vulnerable to climate shocks and climate change, yet little is known about climate change adaptation in fragile contexts. While climate events are one of the many contributing drivers of conflict, feedback from conflict increases vulnerability, thereby creating conditions for a vicious cycle of conflict....

Growing evidence suggests that climate adaptation responses that do not incorporate equity considerations may worsen inequality and increase vulnerability. Using data from a systematic review of peer-reviewed empirical research on adaptation responses to climate change (n = 1,682), we present an assessment of how social equity is considered in adap...

Weather forecasts, climate change projections, and epidemiological predictions all represent domains that are using forecast data to take early action for risk management. However, the methods and applications of the modeling efforts in each of these three fields have been developed and applied with little cross-fertilization. This perspective iden...

This paper articulates the role of social protection in addressing major socioeconomic challenges arising from climate change, especially for low- and middle-income countries, and the need to strategically link social protection and national climate change responses. It proposes a comprehensive strategic framework that joins these two agendas, reco...

This panel discussion will seek to identify clear, near-term scientific messages on adaptation opportunities for the COP26 Adaptation and Resilience Theme priority. The session will address key questions such as: - What would you like to see in the CoP26 settlement to enhance capacity for adaptation nationally and internationally? - What would you...

Extreme heat events impact people and ecosystems across the globe, and they are becoming more frequent and intense in a warming climate. Responses to heat span sectors and geographic boundaries. Prior research has documented technologies or options that can be deployed to manage extreme heat and examples of how individuals, communities, governments...

In the face of climate change, development and humanitarian practitioners increasingly recognize the need to anticipate and manage multiple, concurrent risks. One prominent example of this increasing focus on anticipation is the rapid growth of Forecast-based Financing (FbF), in particular within Red Cross and Red Crescent (RCRC). To evaluate how a...

The last few years have seen an explosion of interest in extreme event attribution, the science of estimating the influence of human activities or other factors on the probability and other characteristics of an observed extreme weather or climate event. This is driven by public interest, but also has practical applications in decision-making after...

Real-world experience underscores the complexity of interactions among multiple drivers of climate change risk and of how multiple risks compound or cascade. However, a holistic framework for assessing such complex climate change risks has not yet been achieved. Clarity is needed regarding the interactions that generate risk, including the role of...

Extreme weather and climate events associated with El Niño and La Niña cause massive societal impacts. Therefore, observations and forecasts are used around the world to prepare for such events. However, global warming has caused warm El Niño events to seem bigger than they are, while cold La Niña events seem smaller, in the commonly used Niño3.4 i...

Disastrous bushfires during the last months of 2019 and January 2020 affected Australia, raising the question to what extent the risk of these fires was exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change. To answer the question for southeastern Australia, where fires were particularly severe, affecting people and ecosystems, we use a physically based inde...

We present the first systematic, global stocktake of the academic literature on human adaptation. We screen 48,316 documents and identify 1,682 articles that present empirical research documenting human efforts to reduce risk from climate change and associated hazards. Coding and synthesizing this literature highlights that the overall extent of ad...

Over the last few years, methods have been developed to answer questions on the effect of global warming on recent extreme events. Many “event attribution” studies have now been performed, a sizeable fraction even within a few weeks of the event, to increase the usefulness of the results. In doing these analyses, it has become apparent that the att...

Context : It is now widely accepted that the climate is changing, and that societal response will need to be rapid and comprehensive to prevent the most severe impacts. A key milestone in global climate governance is to assess progress on adaptation. To-date, however, there has been negligible robust, systematic synthesis of progress on adaptation...

Context : It is now widely accepted that the climate is changing, and that societal responses will need to be rapid and comprehensive to prevent the most severe impacts. A key milestone in global climate governance is to assess progress on adaptation. To-date, however, there has been negligible robust, systematic synthesis of progress on adaptation...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports provide policy-relevant insights about climate impacts, vulnerabilities and adaptation through a process of peer-reviewed literature assessments underpinned by expert judgement. An iconic output from these assessments is the burning embers diagram, first used in the Third Assessment Repor...

Two extreme heatwaves hit Western Europe in the summer of 2019, with historical records broken by more than a degree in many locations, and significant societal impacts, including excess mortality of several thousand people. The extent to which human influence has played a role in the occurrence of these events has been of large interest to scienti...

Abstract. Disastrous bushfires during the last months of 2019 and January 2020 affected Australia, raising the question to what extent the risk of these fires was exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change. To answer the question for southeastern Australia, where fires were particularly severe, affecting people and ecosystems, we use a physically-...

East Africa experiences chronic food insecurity, with levels varying from year-to-year across the region. Given that much can be done to prevent this level of suffering before it happens, humanitarian agencies monitor early indicators of food insecurity to trigger early action. Forecasts of total seasonal rainfall are one tool used to monitor and a...

Working in the complex context of climate change adaptation and resilience, individuals and organisations are often required to work together in consortia across disciplinary, institutional, geographical, and cultural boundaries. Working in large consortia offers great opportunities for addressing complex problems. It enables those with a wide vari...

The global impacts of river floods are substantial and rising. Effective adaptation to the increasing risks requires an in-depth understanding of the physical and socioeconomic drivers of risk. Whereas the modeling of flood hazard and exposure has improved greatly, compelling evidence on spatiotemporal patterns in vulnerability of societies around...

In April 2017, over 70 scientists, policymakers and practitioners from 32 countries convened at the International Conference on Climate Risk Management in Nairobi, Kenya. This conference utilized innovative approaches to facilitate a process of constructive, critical reflection of the existing climate risk management knowledge base, as well as its...

Extreme temperatures are one of the leading causes of death and disease in both developed and developing countries, and heat extremes are projected to rise in many regions. To reduce risk, heatwave plans and cold weather plans have been effectively implemented around the world. However, much of the world's population is not yet protected by such sy...

Empirical evidence shows that acting on early warnings can help humanitarian organizations reduce losses, damages and suffering while reducing costs. Available forecasts of extreme events can provide the information required to automatically trigger preparedness measures, while ‘value of information’ approaches can, in principle, guide the selectio...

This paper proposes a heat wave definition for Bangladesh that could be used to trigger preparedness measures in a heat early warning system (HEWS) and explores the climate mechanisms associated with heat waves. A HEWS requires a definition of heat waves that is both related to human health outcomes and forecastable. No such definition has been dev...

In light of strong encouragement for disaster managers to use climate services for flood preparation, we question whether seasonal rainfall forecasts should indeed be used as indicators of the likelihood of flooding. Here, we investigate the primary indicators of flooding at the seasonal timescale across sub-Saharan Africa. Given the sparsity of hy...

Climate shocks contribute to a significant share of the humanitarian burden, and are a key factor in increasing poverty and food insecurity. Social protection is increasingly recognised as an instrument to help build resilience to climate risks through long-term, large-scale national systems. However, most experiences to date have focused on social...

In light of strong encouragement for disaster managers to use climate services for flood preparation, we question whether seasonal rainfall forecasts should indeed be used as indicators of the likelihood of flooding. Here, we investigate the primary drivers of flooding at the seasonal timescale across sub-Saharan Africa. Given the sparsity of hydro...

The humanitarian sector is active at the global frontline of climate impacts, and has a track record in influencing the climate change policy agenda. Geoengineering is a humanitarian concern: the potential for deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system has major implications in terms of impacts on the most vulnerable. Yet so...

Too often, credible scientific early warning information of increased disaster risk does not result in humanitarian action. With financial resources tilted heavily towards response after a disaster, disaster managers have limited incentive and ability to process complex scientific data, including uncertainties. These incentives are beginning to cha...

Too often, credible scientific early warning information of increased disaster risk does not result in humanitarian action. With financial resources tilted heavily towards response after a disaster, disaster managers have limited incentive and ability to process complex scientific data, including uncertainties. These incentives are beginning to cha...

Southeast Brazil experienced profound water shortages in 2014/15. Anthropogenic climate change is not found to be a major influence on the hazard, whereas increasing population and water consumption increased vulnerability.

Disaster risk reduction efforts traditionally focus on long-term preventative measures or post-disaster response. Outside of these, there are many short-term actions, such as evacuation, that can be implemented in the period of time between a warning and a potential disaster to reduce the risk of impacts. However, this precious window of opportunit...

Significance Understanding the vulnerability of societies around the world is crucial for understanding historical trends in flood risk and for producing accurate projections of fatalities and losses. We reproduced historical river flood occurrence using daily climate data for the period 1980–2010 and quantified the natural and socioeconomic contri...

In mid-January, Malawi and Mozambique were hit by heavy rainfall that caused major impact with hundreds dead and more than three hundred thousand displaced. A major international aid operation was set up by the United Nations and the International Red Cross to help the most affected. The question arises again and again how rare this extreme rainfal...

This chapter serves as an introduction to Part B of this volume. It provides context for an assessment of regional aspects of climate change in different parts of the world, which are presented in the following nine chapters. While the main focus of those chapters is on the regional dimensions of impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability (IAV), this c...

While climate variability and change affect global patterns of disease, there are few examples of methods that effectively integrate climate into health programming. This study examines a Red Cross Red Crescent pilot project in Kenya, Tanzania, Vietnam, and Indonesia that incorporated climate information and considerations in health operations. Our...

Disaster risk reduction efforts traditionally focus on long-term preventative measures or post-disaster response. Outside of these, there are many short-term actions, such as evacuation, that can be implemented in the period of time between a warning and a potential disaster to reduce the risk of impacts. However, this precious window of opportunit...

Human interference with the climate system is occurring. [WGI AR5 2.2, 6.3, 10.3-6, 10.9] Climate change poses risks for human and natural systems (Figure TS.1). The assessment of impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability in the Working Group II contribution to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (WGII AR5) evaluates how patterns of risks and potential...

Scientific climate information can save lives and livelihoods, yet its application is not always straightforward. Much of the available information does not describe the risk of threshold events, and misunderstandings can leave society less resilient to climate shocks.

The Development & Climate Days celebrated its 10th anniversary at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change COP 18 in Doha, Qatar (1–2 December 2012). With a vision of re-energizing the original purpose of bringing together policy-makers, practitioners and researchers for intensely participatory learning, dialogue and networking, th...

In 2008, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) used a seasonal forecast for West Africa for the first time to implement an Early Warning, Early Action strategy for enhanced flood preparedness and response. Interviews with disaster managers suggest that this approach improved their capacity and response. Relief...

The severity of the impacts of extreme and non-extreme weather and climate events depends strongly on the level of vulnerability and exposure to these events (high confidence). [2.2.1, 2.3, 2.5] Trends in vulnerability and exposure are major drivers of changes in disaster risk, and of impacts when risk is realized (high confidence). [2.5] Understan...