2024 Baltimore Forum on Climate Linked Economics
Agenda for 1/29/24 - 2/1/24
I am super excited to post our agenda for the 2024 Baltimore Forum on Climate Linked Economics which will be held at the Baltimore Convention Center and the Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor from Monday, January 29, through Thursday, February 1.
Our Forum will accelerate a dialogue between the scientific community and the broader spectrum of economists, corporate leaders, risk managers, financial planners, insurance experts, technology pioneers, and policymakers. We are forging a connection between these seemingly distinct worlds to harness their collective expertise and tackle some of the most pressing challenges of our time. The intersection of climate science and business has never been more critical. Climate change has far-reaching implications for the global economy.
Monday, Jan 29, 2024
830am - 10am: Climate Links to Insurance Markets and the Built Environment
Chair, Stephen Bennett, Demex
830am: Interdisciplinary Challenges in Deploying Forward Looking Climate Science for Engineering Based Climate Adaptation
Scott Weaver, CLIMET Consulting, LLC
As impacts from extreme weather events continue to increase, it has become clear that strengthening support for climate adaptation strategies is necessary to ensure our Nation’s prosperity and its ability to effectively rebound from weather and climate disasters. Nowhere is this more important than in engineering design of the built environment. The average person spends 90% of their time inside a building, and as climate impacts and billion-dollar weather disasters continue to grow, it is critical that we elevate the national discourse to support the use of forward-looking climate science into structural engineering design standards.
Nevertheless, there are myriad interdisciplinary technical, policy, and communication challenges to overcome. These obstacles are examined through a multidisciplinary lens and recommendations offered to ameliorate their impacts. Topics of discussion include: broad aspects of relevant national climate adaptation and disaster policy or lack thereof, the role of scientific advocacy in shaping priorities for the national response to climate change, technical issues in aligning the current capabilities of meteorology and climate science with the needs of those engaged in the development and implementation of national structural engineering design standards, and overcoming differences in practice across the engineering and climate science communities.
845am: Climate Risks and Insurance Sector: A Peek into Recent Trends
Di Chen, Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero / Bloomberg LP
Insurance is a crucial battleground in managing climate risks. Besides their fundamental presence in catastrophic loss protection, their fingerprints are on all sections of the economy. Insurers’ exposures extend far into the future, giving the industry a particularly acute appreciation of long-term climate risks. But recently, several international insurers/reinsurers cut their exposure to natural disasters or sold their reinsurance business. Some insurance companies stopped underwriting for new homeowners policies in California and Florida, while some dramatically increased the premium. Meanwhile, business owners in the United States are looking to expand their insurance coverage amid risks related to climate change. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the weather-related havoc playing out across the US is exposing a “protection gap”.
This seemingly increasing gap begs the questions: From a finance point of view, what drives the recent climate risk-related movements in the insurance sector, and what are some potential solutions to the problem?
This presentation aims to peek into the above questions by first synthesizing updated industry research on the current trends and dynamics related to climate risks in the insurance sector. Next, we will briefly discuss relevant investment and capital allocation considerations that may have influenced those changes. Finally, we will introduce emerging financial instruments such as Climate resilient development (CRD) bonds, and discuss their utilities.
900am: Controls on Flood Insurance Penetration over Continental United States
Malaquias Pena, Univ. of Connecticut
Flooding is among the most devastating natural hazards globally, inflicting widespread economic damage and affecting numerous communities each year. Despite the availability of the National Flood Insurance Program in the United States, challenges such as low participation, poor risk assessment, and financial unsustainability persist. Understanding the drivers behind flood insurance penetration is thus crucial for resilience planning and risk mitigation.
To comprehensively assess the factors influencing the willingness to purchase flood insurance, we utilized a dataset comprising 37 features. These features fall into four main categories: geo-hydrology, socio-economic, claim-related, and property-specific, and span the years 2010 to 2019. However, traditional one-step models prioritize geo-hydrological factors like property elevation and water proximity, thus underrepresenting socio-economic aspects.
Here we introduce a two-step Random Forest model: the first model focuses on geo-hydrological features, and its residuals inform the second model, which includes all features. The proposed model demonstrated satisfactory performance, as evidenced by an RMSE of 63 and an R-squared value of 0.85 on an independent dataset. We further quantified model uncertainty through additional metrics, including confidence intervals for the predictions. Moreover, we conducted a quantitative assessment of each predictor's contribution to the overall model. Notably, we identified specific features with substantial potential to enhance flood insurance penetration rates, such as historical claim frequency, house age, and household income. These results underscore the model's robustness to adequately weigh the role of socio-economic drivers that were previously overshadowed.
Such insights are instrumental for the development of tailored insurance products, particularly benefiting marginalized populations.
915am: Analysis of Florida Hurricane Season Insurance Wind Claims 2007-2021
Charles Paxton, Channelside Weather LLC
Monthly aggregated and anonymized insurance claims data, by Florida county, from LexisNexis® Risk Solutions proprietary data, linked to wind during tropical cyclone events, are analyzed for trends during the 15-year period. The analysis compares the aggregated and anonymized wind-related insurance claims in Florida to NOAA Storm Data and National Hurricane Center reports to identify consensus, outliers, claim totals per event, and to calculate the relationship of wind speed to claims payouts by county.
During the period, 39 tropical cyclone events were identified that produced damage linked to either direct tropical cyclone wind or tornadoes. The events analyzed include the three hurricanes considered major including Mathew (2016), Irma (2017), and Michael (2018) and those counties directly impacted by wind analyzed to be 25 ms-1 or greater.
930am: Keynote Speaker: Climate-Linked Challenges for the Insurance Markets
Steve Bowen, Chief Science Officer at Gallagher Re
The year 2023 marked a historic milestone in the United States, as severe convective storm (SCS) activity propelled insured losses approaching $60 billion for the first time on record. This marked just the third time on record that the tally surpassed $40 billion (2011, 2020, 2023). Remarkably, only three years on record—2005 ($135 billion), 2017 ($69 billion), and 2022 ($60 billion)—have seen mainland hurricane activity result in insured losses exceeding $50 billion. This helps put into context the exceptional level of loss activity incurred from thunderstorms in 2023.
According to insights shared by Steve Bowen, the Chief Science Officer at Gallagher Re, a global reinsurance broker, the severity of SCS losses underscores the urgent need for a deeper understanding of this and other weather perils. Recognizing this gap, Gallagher Re appointed Bowen to the newly created position in late 2022, to work across the firm to integrate scientific research into business offerings and further establish private and public sector engagement.
Steve and his team are dedicated to providing practical, solutions-oriented, data-led, and objective assessments of the evolving risks posed by climate change. As the world's risk horizon becomes increasingly turbulent, the insurance marketplace is stepping up to the challenge, aiming to empower policyholders to navigate the future successfully.
The growing and broad-reaching impacts of climate change and natural hazards demand innovation and clear communication on how risks are evolving. Reinsurers, in collaboration with insurers, are actively working to understand and address the evolving landscape of risk. Moreover, they are taking a proactive role in advancing the climate change conversation by engaging various private and public sector entities to develop and deliver applicable research and thought leadership.
The 2023 SCS activity serves as a wake-up call not just for the insurance industry, but academics, emergency managers, and various local and federal governmental agencies. It not only emphasizes the pressing need for a better understanding of emerging perils but also underscores the industry's commitment to innovation and collaboration. As reinsurers and insurers join forces to comprehend and mitigate risks, the collective effort aims to build a resilient framework that will stand up to the challenges posed by an ever-changing climate.
This presentation will focus on collaborations and best practices to meet the future needs of insurers.
Steve Bowen has nearly two decades of insurance industry experience and is currently Chief Science Officer at Gallagher Re. He initially turned his love of weather into an academic background in meteorology by starting his professional career in television.
A key motivation of his day-to-day work features the emerging and evolving trends associated with increasing weather volatility, climate change, population and exposure patterns, and natural hazard-related financial losses. He strives to implement data analytics to help clearly communicate evolving hazard risks and associated loss trends to the insurance industry and beyond. An increasingly vital part of his work includes providing expertise to new strategies focused on combating the growing hazard, physical, non-physical, societal, and financial challenges posed by climate change. This includes a growing focus on critical issues within the ESG space and transitioning to a net-zero carbon emission world.
Steve earned his Master of Science in Business Analytics degree from the University of Notre Dame, and his Bachelor of Science degree in Meteorology from Florida State University.
Tuesday, Jan 30, 2024
830am - 10am: Climate Links to Risk Modeling, Climate Disclosures, and Climate Regulation (Part 1)
Chair, Joshua Hacker, Jupiter Intelligence
830am: Environmental and Economic Impacts of Climate Change
Brian Castine, Maryland Department of Natural Resources
My presentation is about the environmental and economic impacts of climate change. Many people believe climate change does not influence them financially. This is not true. The alterations in temperature, precipitation totals and weather patterns have an enormous effect on a person’s finances.
Climate change has six environmental outcomes. The ecological consequences are droughts, floods, heatwaves, more extreme tropical cyclones, melting of glacial and sea ice and extinctions and declines in wildlife populations. Each of the six environmental effects has negative economic impacts.
Examples of adverse monetary influences include greater spending on wildfire suppression, higher food prices, elevated water bills, escalation in homeowners’ insurance fees and governments having to spend enormous amounts of money on disaster relief and aid.
The ecological outcomes of climate change clearly have economic consequences. In fact some of the financial impacts are caused by more than one of the environmental factors. For example, both droughts and floods will lead to higher food prices because agriculture crops will be destroyed. Likewise, food prices have skyrocketed over the past several years due to produce being decimated by deficiencies or surpluses in rainfall. Individuals may not be able to purchase food resulting in starvation.
Another illustration is elevated homeowners’ insurance fees. Floods and tropical cyclones cause destruction to homes. Insurance companies will have to raise rates in areas more prone to flooding and tropical cyclones. Homeowners may not be able to afford insurance. If a flood or tropical cyclone destroys their home the individuals will not be able to rebuild because they may have no money or financial assistance. A good example of this is when hurricane Ian decimated Florida, insurance rates went up dramatically. People could be homeless and in need of government assistance.
Luckily there are some steps the public can take to reduce greenhouse emissions and prevent the environmental effects from becoming worse. One is to walk or take a bike to get from one place to the next. Another is for people to use a vehicle that runs on electricity, hydrogen fuel cells or other forms of alternative energy. The third is to use energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal to generate electricity. The final solution is to remove carbon dioxide and methane molecules from the atmosphere. This can be done in two ways. The first is by planting more trees because vegetation takes carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The second is to use machines that can remove greenhouse gas molecules from the atmosphere and store the particles below the earth’s surface. By educating the public, hopefully people can do more to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and help prevent the extreme weather events from becoming more severe and causing greater economic losses.
845am: Property-Specific Assessments of Losses Anticipated from Physical Climate Risk in the US
Edward Kearns, First Street Foundation
Physical climate risk information products have been created and publicly distributed by the nonprofit First Street Foundation and its partners at the Pyregence Consortium and the Arup Corporation. These risk products are resolved at the property level for the US, and convey both the probability of experiencing flood, wildfire, wind, and heat exposure over the next 30 years in a changing climate, as well as the likely costs associated with any damages anticipated to buildings on those properties.
New versions of the First Street flood model (v3) and wildfire model (v2) were delivered in July 2023, with updates including projections using CMIP6 climate models; new precipitation intensity, duration, and frequency estimates as inputs for pluvial flood estimates; geographically-variable fire suppression; pyrome-specific calibration of wildfire behavior; and revised loss/cost estimates.
In 2023, First Street estimates that there are an estimated 18 million homes at risk of a 1:100 year event, with over $60 billion in expected losses. These estimates climb in 2053 to over 19 million homes with $80 billion of possible losses. Similarly, for wildfire risk there is a probable loss of over 17 thousand homes in the US for 2023, growing to an 33 thousand homes expected to be destroyed in 2053. The costs of those expected losses grow from $12 billion in 2023 to $24 billion in 2053. These anticipated physical and economic losses are expected to impact real estate values and thus local economies in vulnerable locations (Gourevitch et al, 2023) and are expected to play a role in patterns of climate migration across the US.
900am: Sensitivity Analysis for Assessing Climate Change Impacts on the Economy in an Integrated Assessment Model
Patrick Harr, Jupiter Intelligence
Climate scientists, economists, social scientists, and policymakers are adopting the tools and techniques of risk analysis in their efforts to identify future impacts of climate change. A basic model that links in a fundamental manner the physical climate system and the economy is the integrated assessment model (IAM). These models have been derived using varying tenants of economic systems and practices under the impacts of climate change. As such, IAMs typically include a rather comprehensive set of endogenous variables that define climate sensitivity, damage functions, and economic factors, which include growth, consumption, and returns. In a basic sense, the endogenous variables are written in various forms as functions of exogenous variables that typically identify the physical climate system, the economy, and the interaction between the two systems.
Over the past several decades, IAMs have evolved to provide the frameworks of many investigations and policies to identify the impacts of climate change on the economy. Because IAMs are designed to model a variety of physical and socio-economic under varying degrees of intricacy, they must represent complex interactions such that it is often difficult to identify the direct relationships between endogenous and exogenous variables. Beyond identifying relationships among the variables, it is equally or more difficult to identify uncertainties in key variables and how those uncertainties permeate through the model formulation and analyses.
While IAMs have been used extensively to link physical climate change and economic conditions, they have been strongly criticized as they do not account for important factors such as acute physical risks, tipping points, societal attitudes, and severe aggregation across political and physical boundaries. Another major criticism is that IAMs do not capture deep uncertainty. That is the propagation of uncertainty in exogenous input through the model to the analyses of the model output. To address this latter concern, sensitivity analysis (SA) has been proposed as a technique by which uncertainties in key model exogenous parameters may propagate and define uncertainties in model endogenous variables.
In its most basic form, SA is often defined as a “one-factor-at-a-time” (OFAT or OAT) methodology. These methods systematically implement changes (i.e., one standard deviation increase or decrease) in exogenous parameters and then examine corresponding changes in the modeled responses. In practice, this is straightforward but many studies have concluded that this type of SA is not adequate to disentangle the path of uncertainty throughout the model processing.
An alternative that has just become more widely applied is that of a global sensitivity analysis (GSA). In GSA, exogenous variables are varied simultaneously in a repeated fashion, and a partitioning of the variance is conducted to account for the role of uncertainty in each parameter and combinations of parameters.
In this presentation, an SA is applied to a simplified IAM by first applying an OFAT method to examine the spectrum of uncertainty in a key model output, which is the social cost of carbon. The OFAT results are compared to a GSA and the ranking of variables defined to drive the most uncertainty in the GSA is compared to the ranking from an OFAT. The key result hinges on whether the sensitivity rankings follow what would be considered a physically and economically consistent flow or influence of the exogenous to endogenous variables and whether that is consistent between the OFAT and GSA methods. While many of the criticisms of IAMs remain valid, the application of the two SAs is used to address the issue of uncertainty in an IAM.
915am: Understanding the Limits of Climate Prediction When Assessing Risk
R. Saravanan, Texas A&M Univ
As the impact of climate change becomes more apparent in the physical world, the need to accurately assess climate risk is becoming more urgent in the socioeconomic world. When insurers start pulling out of states, as has been happening recently, they frequently assign some blame to climate risk. We rely on climate predictions from models to assess this risk. But how much should we trust model predictions of a distant future?
Weather prediction has well-known scientific constraints that arise from chaos theory. As an initial-value problem, uncertainty in weather forecasts grows over time and eventually overwhelms the predicted signal. We know from direct personal experience not to trust weather forecasts beyond about 10 days, which is close to the 2-week theoretical limit of weather prediction. Bigger computers and more complex weather models cannot take us past this limit.
As a boundary-value problem, climate prediction is fundamentally different from weather prediction. Climate predictions can extend from 10 years to 100 years. But climate prediction uncertainty also grows with time. Are there limits to how far in time and how much detail in space we can predict? Since we lack personal experience of the validity of long-term climate predictions, we often fail to ask this question when assessing climate risk. This can lead to overconfidence in model capabilities and the belief that with more powerful computers, we can build a “digital twin” of the Earth that can make arbitrarily accurate climate predictions many decades into the future.
Just like weather prediction, climate prediction is also subject to limitations. Some of these limitations are shared with weather prediction, such as nonlinear chaotic uncertainty, and structural model uncertainty, but they impact climate prediction differently. Others, like the uncertainty associated emission scenarios, are specific to climate prediction.
When it comes to quantifying the uncertainties and limits of climate prediction, the devil is in the details: What variable are we trying to predict and over which spatial domain? Predicting temperature change over the whole globe is far less noisy than predicting rainfall in a small region, for example. Coarse-resolution climate models are much better at predicting occurrences of large-scale heat waves than predicting frequencies of small-scale hurricanes.
In this talk, we analyze the limitations of approaches used to quantify the uncertainty of climate prediction. Assessments of risk often pick a single “current-policy” type of scenario as the boundary condition and use a jumble of CMIP climate models and simulations to quantify the uncertainty. The choice of the jumble of models and simulations used for risk assessment is crucial. If not curated carefully, this jumble may not capture the different types of uncertainties properly.
930am: Navigating Climate-Related Regulatory Requirements: A Focus on Tropical Cyclone Risk
M. Rencurrel, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
Climate-related regulatory requirements continue to increase with no signs of slowing down. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed a requirement for publicly listed companies to disclose climate-related risks and their plans for mitigating them. Quantifying risk associated with these hazards requires a detailed understanding of the hazard in question, including climate change effects, and the exposure and vulnerability details at the asset level. Tropical Cyclones (TC) bring some of the biggest natural disaster risks to life and property, accounting for the most overall damage and highest average cost per event for natural hazards in the United States from 1980 to 20211. Due to the rarity of these events, the observed historical record does not provide enough adequate data to accurately assess TC risk. However, recent modeling advances have led to significant improvements in our abilities to do so.
Here, we present two models that can help identify these types of potential risks when combined. A TC hazard model ingests data from a subset of CMIP6 models and uses a statistical-dynamical model to generate an ensemble of synthetic storm tracks that capture the statistical distribution of TCs for a given time period and warming scenario. Wind and precipitation fields are then added to each track to capture approximate impacts over time.
Event distributions are extracted for each location within the asset portfolio to plug into a probabilistic TC loss model. Building characteristics are identified and used to help extract wind-driven damage curves for each structure and are combined with the hazard data to help simulate the financial impacts.
Probabilistic TC losses are important for companies with a physical asset portfolio. Beyond understanding their exposure to TC risk, a business can make actionable decisions in prioritizing buildings that should be refitted and determining the optimal regions for expansion which would mitigate risk. Efforts to quantify, and understand, the possible impacts of different climate change scenarios provide an impetus for businesses to promote actions towards mitigation.
1NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (2023). https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/, DOI: 10.25921/stkw-7w73
945am: Ensemble-based climate assessment for mining operations in Mexico: a university and private sector partnership
Hsin-I Chang, University of Arizona
The University of Arizona’s Center for Applied Hydroclimate Sciences (CAHS) is leading the effort to develop partnership between university and mining industry to provide user-driven climate assessment products. Current collaborations with Fresnillo and Industrias Peñoles focus on conducting a scientifically rigorous climate modelling exercise.
The goal is to support mining-related engineering, operations, health, safety, environment, and community teams in designing adaptation pathways. Specifically, CAHS generates ensemble-based climate change projection scenarios from a combination of downscaled IPCC projections and statistics-based weather generator. Both statistically and dynamically downscaled climate model products have been recommended by the Mining Association of Canada to support climate risk assessments of mining assets. Service region includes various crucial Fresnillo and Peñoles mining sites throughout Mexico, where several meteorological variables are identified as key indicators for climate risk and critical for the entire mining cycle.
Actionable climate assessments are necessary to understand the risk, vulnerabilities, and adaptation measures to protect mining safety and resilience, and collaborate with neighboring communities. Working with the mining companies’ engineering teams, results are designed to support regulatory requirements, solid capital planning and transition strategy.
145pm - 300pm: Climate Links to Risk Modeling, Climate Disclosures, and Climate Regulation (Part 2)
Chair, Joshua Hacker, Jupiter Intelligence
145pm: Characteristics and Predictive Modeling of Short-term Impacts of Hurricanes on the US Employment
Gan Zhang, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
This study examines the short-term employment changes in the US after hurricane impacts. An analysis of hurricane events during 1990-2021 suggests that county-level employment changes in the initial month are small on average, though large employment losses (>30%) can occur after extreme storms. The overall small changes are partly a result of compensation among different employment sectors, such as the construction sector and the leisure and hospitality sector. Employment losses tend to be relatively pronounced in the service-providing industries. The post-storm employment shock is negatively correlated with the metrics of storm hazards (e.g., extreme wind and precipitation) and geospatial details of impacts (e.g., storm-entity distance). Additionally, non-storm factors such as county characteristics strongly affect short-term employment changes. The findings inform predictive modeling of short-term employment changes, which shows promising skills for service-providing industries and high-impact storms.
The Random Forests model, which can account for nonlinear relationships, greatly outperforms the multiple linear regression model commonly used by economics studies. These findings may help improve post-storm aid programs and the modeling of hurricanes' socioeconomic impacts in a changing climate.
200pm: Understanding the Physical Risk of Climate Change: a Business Exposure Perspective
Alexander Andrianov, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
There has been an observable rise in the frequency and severity of weather hazards (e.g., tropical cyclones, wildfires, tornadoes, etc.) that are likely attributable to global climate change. These hazards pose a significant risk to businesses across the globe who have assets in regions that could experience building damage or supply chain interruption due to these increasing hazards.
We developed a suite of models that result in global maps of the variability in frequency and severity of 12+ climate change related hazards. These models take, as inputs, various output from global climate models (depending on the hazard) and observational data from governmental sources. An example is the use of tornado observational data, which we can transform to a uniform grid while preserving the observed Enhanced Fujita Scale rankings before continuing model development.
From the inputs, we do a combination of the following: 1. relate the observational record of a hazard to observed weather parameters, and 2. develop an environmental index of a hazard (e.g., fire environmental index) over the historical period. Once a historical layer is created and validated, we can use the same methodology on CMIP6 output over future projections for various scenarios.
To use this modeling for business applications, we create indices of the results from this work that are combined with the latitude and longitude of asset locations to help assess potential exposure across a profile of locations important to any given business. It is imperative that climate change science helps drive and determine robust risk evaluation to businesses seeking to plan and mitigate the impact of future climate change.
215pm: Setting the Bar for Climate Risk Scenario Analysis
Joshua Hacker, Jupiter Intelligence
This presentation explains the key flaws in scenarios put forth by regulations for scenario analysis and stress testing, and provides examples that demonstrate the value of the breadth of climate scenarios for analyzing risk.
Scenario analysis of one kind or another forms the backbone of regulatory guidance for climate risk disclosure and management. A complete scenario analysis would address the risk of economic damages from a transition to a green economy (transition risk), and the direct risks from changing environmental factors (physical risk). While flawed modeling has enabled incorrect interpretations of the ties between SSPs and physical outcomes, the same flawed modeling is informing scenario analysis guidelines and regulations. Transition and physical risks interact in ways that are not yet well modeled, and current scenario analysis practices are incomplete in that they do not consider both kinds of risk in a common framework.
An example is that some have argued that SSP5-8.5 should not be used, because SSP5 is not realistic. This conclusion is non-sequitur. It is not rational to reject GCM projections for SSP5-8.5 as a plausible physical outcome, based on SSP5, because the coupling between RCP 8.5 and SSP 5 is based on fundamentally flawed assumptions and modeling. Consistency between socioeconomic pathways and physical climate modeling scenarios cannot be established by the models used to do so. Risk analysis, disclosure, and management are better served by ignoring the supposed connections between SSPs and physical risk. An informative risk analysis would leverage the rich physical risk data informed by CMIP6 to construct scenarios that capture the range of plausible physical outcomes.
Many scenario analysis frameworks follow the recommendations of the Task Force for Climate-Related Disclosure (TCFD). While the TCFD recommends using multiple scenarios, it is non-specific on what scenarios (i.e., combinations of physical risk and transition risk pathways) are most insightful. That leaves scenario definition in the hands of regulatory organizations or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that add specificity to the analysis, such as the Network for Greening of the Financial System (NGFS).
Scenario analysis remains the most viable path forward because of the deep uncertainty inherent to assessing and managing climate change risks. And it’s becoming more clear that physical risks will cost us more than transition risks (e.g. NGFS Scenarios, 2022). Given that we face real threats and need to have some rational response to assessing climate risk, which requires new scenarios, a practical question is then: do we have the information we need to define and perform useful scenario analysis for climate risk?
The answer to that depends on how we choose the physical and transition risk models and pathways, and whether the data needed to inform those choices exist. Data to inform a range of useful possible and plausible physical climate pathways does exist today. This is possible because of the breadth of climate modeling executed against the IPCC scenarios, irrespective of the socioeconomic pathways that have been coupled with the physical pathways.
By breaking the assumption that we can robustly link transition and physical risk, we are free to design scenarios meant to stress test each risk separately, while continuing to develop storylines or modeling that can build plausible links between the two. Focusing on physical risk, we can think about approaches that can support superior risk analysis with data that we already have. That avoids both the nonviability of combined transition and physical risk, and fundamental challenges associated with accumulating data needed for robust transition risk. And in many cases it enables assessing the risks associated with physical tipping points.
230pm: Keynote Speaker: Improving US Banking Regulation in an Era of Climate Change
Robert Brammer, Chair of the American Bar Association’s Climate Change Committee and CEO of Brammer Technologies
The increasing impacts of extreme weather and the growing awareness of the risks of climate change have led the US banking regulatory agencies to initiate efforts to determine how best to address possible significant weather and climate effects on the US banking system. Recent bank failures have shown the need for risk management practices that address a broad range of risks. Climate change should undoubtedly be included. The challenges in developing these regulations include acting in time to mitigate the risks of the rapidly changing climate while recognizing the significant uncertainties in our understanding of these changes. While the scientific community knows much about the physics and chemistry of climate change, there are considerable uncertainties in applying that knowledge to developing quantitative climate-related banking models and appropriate banking regulations. This presentation addresses significant scientific, technical, legal, and regulatory issues underlying climate-related banking regulation. It concludes with recommendations for what may come next in developing these regulations.
430 - 600pm: Panel Discussion - Exposing the Complementary Roles of Government and the Private Sector in Climate Risk and Adaptation
Moderator: Joshua Hacker, Jupiter Intelligence
Panelists:
Dr. Adam Sobel, Professor of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, and of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University
Dr. R. Jisung Park, Assistant Professor, School of Social Policy and Practice and the Wharton School’s Department of Business Economics and Public Policy
Dr. Sarah Kapnick, Chief Scientist at NOAA
Nels Ylitalo, Director, Regulatory and Sustainable Risk Analysis, FactSet
Just as the world is heating up, so is the debate about the roles and responsibilities of government and the private sector in identifying climate-related physical risks, and identifying effective strategies for mitigation and adaptation. Climate risk data are widely viewed as a public good. And, public and private demand for that information has been growing rapidly over the last several years. Demand from the private sector is spurred by rapidly increasing pressure toward climate risk disclosure, and a growing interest among sophisticated data consumers to gain competitive advantages through climate risk assessments. The private sector offerings to support that demand have grown rapidly, and as a result there have been criticisms and doubts about the validity and efficacy of private sector-based data to address climate-related physical risks. On the other hand, government-based services often evolve slowly, at a pace that cannot meet the pace of demand for climate risk information.
Effective adaptation, in itself, requires multiple complex steps all built on fundamental climate science and the climate models that support parts of that value chain. The nature and complexity of the problem is so large that it appears obvious that the strengths of both the private sector and government are needed to address it. Authors contributing to peer-reviewed literature and the media have shined a spotlight recently, leveling criticism at both the rise of private sector climate analytics, and the lack of government leadership and oversight.
This session gathers members of government, the private sector, and academia to put these issues front and center, and explore pros and cons of methods and models being used in government and private sectors. A special emphasis is placed on the merits that may be drawn from methods that could combine the strengths of both government and the private sector.
Wednesday, Jan 31, 2024
830am - 1000am: Panel Discussion - How Do Federal Science Agencies Catalyze Innovation for Climate Challenges?
Moderator: Manda Adams, National Science Foundation
Panelists:
Alexandra Isern, National Science Foundation, Directorate for Geosciences
Erwin Gianchandani, National Science Foundation, Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships
Jennifer Arrigo, Department of Energy, Office of the Undersecretary for Science and Innovation
Climate impacts society on local, regional and global scales. Both the impacts and the possible solutions to changing climate require resilience, innovation and cooperation across industries, as well as across sectors (public, private, and academic). The mission of many federal agencies dictates that those agencies have a role to play in addressing climate change and clean energy challenges. The magnitude of these challenges demands an accelerated and integrated approach to address societal needs and innovate technological solutions. But the unique mission of different agencies leads to approaches that may be distinctly different yet synergistic. Understanding that landscape can be challenging for academics and the private sector to navigate. This panel will represent perspectives from multiple government agencies to discuss the role each agency plays in catalyzing innovation and entrepreneurship and how different agencies support or encourage partnerships that include the private sector.
145pm - 300pm: Workshop - Navigating Climate Entrepreneurship for Beginners: Federal Funding & Partnering
Leads:
Genevieve Lind, SBIR Program Manager at NOAA
Maggie Yancey, Entrepreneurship Development Lead at NASA
Benjamin Toms, Founder of Intersphere
Are you interested in innovating solutions to climate challenges but not sure where to start? This session will provide an overview of federal resources available for scientists who are interested in climate innovation and entrepreneurship. The session will begin with a summary of the types of resources available across federal agencies that can support climate innovation, provided by representatives from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Following the introduction, we will be joined by a panel of climate innovators and entrepreneurs who have partnered or worked with federal agencies like NOAA, NASA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Energy (DOE). Panelists will share their experiences leveraging a variety of tools and resources to drive climate innovation and support their entrepreneurial endeavors.
The session will include a variety of perspectives from companies who have leveraged resources such as the Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) funding programs, Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs), and other opportunities to work alongside federal partners in the ocean, climate, and space communities. Following the presentation, there will be a 90-minute breakout session to encourage interaction with agencies and the variety of resources being featured in this panel. You are invited to speak directly with presenters, panelists, other agency experts, and entrepreneurs to learn more about specific programs and opportunities.
You’re also invited to join us for a 90-minute breakout session follow-up to the Navigating Climate Innovation for Beginners: Federal Funding & Partnering workshop to encourage interaction with agencies and the variety of resources featured on the panel. Climate innovators and entrepreneurs who have partnered or worked with federal agencies and representatives from agencies including NOAA, NASA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), and others will be available to answer your questions in a small group setting. Resources represented include Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) funding, Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs), and other tools for supporting innovation in the ocean, climate, and space communities. Attendees are invited to speak directly with presenters, panelists, and other invited guests, including agency experts and entrepreneurs, to learn more about specific programs and opportunities.
300pm - 430pm: Breakout Session: Navigating Climate Entrepreneurship for Beginners: Federal Funding & Partnering (Follow-On Session)
Leads:
Genevieve Lind, SBIR Program Manager at NOAA
Maggie Yancey, Entrepreneurship Development Lead at NASA
Benjamin Toms, Founder of Intersphere
This 90-minute breakout session is a follow-up to the Navigating Climate Innovation for Beginners: Federal Funding & Partnering workshop to encourage interaction with agencies and the variety of resources featured on the panel. The session provided an overview of federal resources available for scientists who are interested in climate innovation and entrepreneurship. Climate innovators and entrepreneurs who have partnered or worked with federal agencies and representatives from agencies including NOAA, NASA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), and others will be available to answer your questions in a small group setting. Resources represented include Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) funding, Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs), and other tools for supporting innovation in the ocean, climate, and space communities. Attendees are invited to speak directly with presenters, panelists, and other invited guests, including agency experts and entrepreneurs, to learn more about specific programs and opportunities.
430pm - 600pm: Workshop - Clean Energy and Climate Adaptation at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory
An opportunity to partner on tools, models, and analyses
Leads:
Kristin Wegner, Project Leader at NREL
Grant Buster, Data Scientist at NREL
Clean energy is a key component to resilient infrastructure. Providing decision-makers, including stakeholders across national security, government, and infrastructure owners and operators (such as utilities) the information and tools they need to make decisions related to energy is critical to improving community resilience.
In this 90-minute stakeholder engagement session, NREL’s Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis (JISEA) will present findings from their Climate Resilience Catalyzer, a cross-NREL collaborative approach to developing a clean energy and climate resilience research agenda.
We invite stakeholders to discuss our cross-lab research priorities and a subset of guiding research questions related to economics through guided discussion. We will also present opportunities we’ve identified for interested partners to collaborate with NREL to build upon our existing tools, models, and analyses, with the goal to better understand and address the economic links between clean energy and infrastructure resilience.
Thursday, Feb 1, 2024
830am - 1000am: Assessing Climate Risk
Chair, Jeff Massey, Amazon
830am: Foundational Datasets for Climate Linked Economics: NOAA’s Role in Developing Natural Capital Accounts and the Pilot Offshore Oil and Gas Account
Sarah Siegel, NOAA
In January 2023, the White House released the National Strategy to Develop Statistics for Environmental-Economic Decisions, which charts a course for the development of a national system of Natural Capital Accounting (NCA). NCA incorporates the environment and ecosystem services, or natural capital, into traditional measures of socioeconomic prosperity such as GDP. Better understanding the links between the economy and environment provides insight into how to leverage natural capital to counteract the destabilizing risks to the environment and markets caused by climate change and nature loss. The United Nation’s System for Environmental Economic Accounting Central Framework provides internationally consistent guidelines. The goal of the framework is to provide a comprehensive view of the stocks and flows of environmental assets while following the structure of the equivalent economic account framework. The compatibility between the two guidelines allows easy integration between economic and environmental data; this will allow a greater understanding of the interconnections between the environment and economy, including for risk assessments and understanding infrastructure and societal investments.
The US NCA effort recommends a 15-year phased approach to reach the development of core statistical products. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is intimately involved in supporting the national strategy. The efforts include expanding existing ocean-related statistical accounts such as the Marine Economic Satellite Account to better incorporate natural capital. However, the agency is also charged with developing ocean-related natural capital accounts. The first phase marine natural capital accounts at NOAA, as proposed earlier in 2023, includes the development of three pilot accounts: offshore oil and gas, commercial fishing, and beach recreation (Wielgus et al., 2023). The pilots were chosen for the diversity in their type of commodity, data availability, and challenges they each present. The goal for each pilot account is to present, in both physical and monetary terms, the annual starting and ending natural capital stock while measuring additions and reductions.
This presentation will share the development of the pilot offshore oil and gas account. We will share preliminary physical and monetary accounts, aligned with the UN framework, for the years 2009-2019. The analysis will include a geospatial lens to provide an understanding of the location of natural capital and historical trends. We will discuss the pilot account’s approach, including data limitations, incorporating inner continental shelf data, as well as broadening the scope of the account to incorporate ecosystem accounts to understand the environmental impacts.
Using the pilot offshore oil and natural gas account as an example of the coming natural capital accounting products and statistical releases, the presentation will provide insight into a developing foundational environmental dataset that will provide value to macroeconomic and financial researchers and provide insights into the linkages between the environment and economy. This presentation seeks not only to inform AMS climate practitioners, but also to solicit feedback from them on datasets and approaches that might be useful in conducting natural capital accounting.
845am: Problems of the Sustainability Reporting: Greenwashing and the Perceptions of the Public
S. Ping Ho, National Taiwan University
With the popularity of the sustainability reporting, there are many controversies and issues. This study takes the problems of greenwashing as an entry point, explores existing research and related systems, analyzes the types and patterns of corporate greenwashing behaviors, and empirically studies the perception of the public toward greenwashing phenomenon.
While earlier literature explored the definition, types, and implementation of greenwashing, recent literature has focused on analyzing the motivations of corporate greenwashing and the factors that influence corporate sustainable behavior and reporting. This study, through literature investigation and the analysis of corporate greenwashing, first investigates the greenwashing cases impeached by U.S. regulatory agencies SEC, FTC, and Australian regulatory agency ASIC, then proposes a theoretical framework on corporate sustainable behavior and greenwashing, and lastly empirically test the theoretical framework from the perspective of the consumers’ perception of greenwashing.
The empirical study sets various hypothetical conditions to evaluate the impact of various factors on the public’s perception through situational questions. Combining nine influencing factors of the proposed model’s three major aspects of corporate characteristics and a general situation without hypothetical conditions, a total of ten hypotheses are empirically evaluated on the factors influencing the public's trust in corporations’ sustainable behavior and sustainability reporting.
The research results show that corporate size, reputation, visibility, and the industry’s environmental and social impacts have statistically significant impact on the public’s perception of the credibility of corporate sustainability reporting. Except for the government regulation, other factors such as third-party assurance, ESG scoring, and the issuance of sustainability reports are shown to affect the public's trust in the sustainability reporting. Therefore, this study also finds the moderating effect of the public's green consumption and ESG knowledge on other influencing factors. By exploring the factors that influence corporations’ sustainable or greenwashing behavior, we may obtain a deeper understanding of greenwashing and derive the strategies for mitigating the greenwashing.
900am: NCA5 and the Economic Impacts of Climate Change in the United States
Chapter 19 of the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) (Economics) outlines the myriad ways that climate change stands to impact the U.S. economy, both today and in the future. The chapter summarizes the implications of these impacts on different sectors of the economy, from households to governments. The AMS community is invited to explore the Economics chapter as well as the full NCA5—the preeminent source of climate information for the United States. NCA5 is developed by the U.S. Global Change Research Program and was released in late 2023.
915am: Keynote Speaker: The Fifth National Climate Assessment- Understanding Risks and Informing Responses
Allison Crimmins, Director of the National Climate Assessment
The Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5), developed by the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and released in late 2023, provides vital information to the Nation on the risks of and responses to climate change. Over 800 authors and contributors from across the country collectively developed a broadly accessible report in website form that can support and inform a wide range of decision-makers. NCA5 synthesizes and evaluates the current state of the science on climate and provides the latest information on Earth system processes and climate trends, noting the climate impacts that people are already experiencing in their communities. It describes climate risks and impacts that people across the US face with rising emissions and warming, including impacts on sectors like energy, transportation, agriculture, health, economics, social systems and justice. And it demonstrates how the mitigation and adaptation choices made today can contribute to a more resilient and just Nation, highlighting actions underway in communities around the country to reduce the risks associated with climate change, increase resilience, and improve livelihoods and well-being. This talk will conclude with a demonstration of several NCA5 resources, including the interactive NCA5 Atlas tool and Spanish-translated chapters.
Thursday, Feb 1, 1045am - Noon:
AMS Presidential Session: A Fireside Chat on the Administration's Priorities on Climate and Global Change
Chair, Stephen Bennett, Demex
Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Deputy Director for Climate and Environment at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, will spearhead a "fireside chat" style conversation centered around the rollout of the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) and will also discuss broad Biden Administration climate and global change scientific research and development priorities. The Administration is spearheading new coordination efforts in climate services that will serve as foundational intelligence for strategic imperatives in Climate Linked Economics.
Hosted by AT&T’s Principal Meteorologist, Mark Papier, this conversation includes perspectives from NCA5 Director, Allison Crimmins, NCA5 Chief Environmental Economist, Solomon (Sol) Hsiang, AMS President Brad Colman, and Demex’s Chief Climate Officer and Chair of the Forum on Climate Linked Economics, Stephen Bennett.
Jane Lubchenco is the Deputy Director for Climate and Environment at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the U.S. Sherpa to the Ocean Panel. She leads a stellar team that uses knowledge and innovation to help achieve America’s aspirations of a healthy environment, stable climate, and prosperous, equitable, secure communities. They work on a range of intersecting topics including climate change, nature, the ocean, polar regions, Indigenous Knowledge, equity and environmental justice. Lubchenco is a marine biologist and environmental scientist with leadership experience in academia, civil society, philanthropy, and government. She served on the National Science Board for 10 years (1996-2006), as Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator (2009-2013), and the inaugural State Department’s Science Envoy for the Ocean (2014-2016). She began her current role at the White House in early 2021, on loan from Oregon State University (OSU). She is an elected member of numerous academies including the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), Royal Society, and Pontifical Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards including 24 honorary doctorates, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the highest honors given by the NAS, National Science Board, and the U.S. Coast Guard. She received a B.A. in biology from Colorado College, a M.S. in zoology from University of Washington, and Ph.D. in ecology from Harvard University. She has held faculty appointments at Harvard, Stanford University, and OSU.
Mark (Elliot) Papier is AT&T’s principal meteorologist where he communicates risk analysis through various print and video channels. He supports FirstNet before, during and after deployment with around-the-clock monitoring of natural disasters to ensure data driven decisions assist the public safety community through more agilent, resilient, and timely decisions on movement, placement, and protection of assets. Prior to AT&T, Mark spent nearly 20-years as a broadcast meteorologist for The Weather Channel. As the Expert within television show teams, Mark led on-air during times of extreme or severe weather. He also focused on weaving climate change information and science into presentations to educate viewers about both current and future ramifications.
Allison Crimmins is the Director of the National Climate Assessment. She is a climate scientist on detail from EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where she is leading the fifth National Climate Assessment at the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Allison has expertise in assessing climate impacts and risks, particularly on health and economic damages, and led the 2016 U.S. Climate and Health Assessment.
Solomon Hsiang is the Chief Environmental Economist at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Hsiang supports the development of the United States’ Statistics for Environmental-Economic Decisions, containing national natural capital accounts. Hsiang also works to modernize regulations that affect how the climate and environment are valued in government decision-making and he works with numerous teams on the economic analysis of climate change. Hsiang is on loan from the University of California, Berkeley where he directs the Global Policy Laboratory. Hsiang was the Lead Author of the first Economics chapter for the US National Climate Assessment. Hsiang earned a BS from MIT, a PhD from Columbia University, and completed is post-doctoral studies at Princeton University.
Brad Coleman currently serves as President of the American Meteorological Society. Brad is an experienced Science Director with a demonstrated history of working in the Atmospheric Sciences and Software Industry at Bayer Crop Sciences, The Climate Corporation, Microsoft, and the National Weather Service.
Stephen Bennett is Chair of the Forum on Climate Linked Economics and Chief Climate Officer for The Demex Group where he works with global leaders in insurance, reinsurance, and risk management to mutually drive innovation for adapting financial and insurance coverage for climate resilience. Prior to Demex, Steve led the team that innovated technology for supply chain resilience at organizations such as Unilever, AB-InBev, and Apple. Steve also spent over a decade applying weather and climate technology for commodity trading and equity investing. Much of that time was at one of the world’s largest hedge funds, Citadel.
145pm - 300pm: Climate Links to Finance and Operational Decision-Making
Chair, Jason Cordeira, UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes
145pm: Fifth National Climate Assessment: Innovations and Challenges in Securing Adequate Climate Risk Financing in the Northeast United States
Mark Bove, Munich Reinsurance America, Inc.
Many early adopters of both climate mitigation and adaptation action have been in the Northeastern United States. The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy (2012) drove some of this action through programs focused on making rebuilding projects more resilient across all natural hazards.
Now many constituencies across scales and sectors are moving ahead with funding climate planning and implementation. States, Tribal Nations, and local governments are also beginning to fund climate planning and project implementation with non-grant public funding, and private-sector actors are increasingly self-funding their own actions.
Continued progress in mitigating and adapting climate change in the northeast - and elsewhere - will ultimately depend on the ability to obtain adequate financing. The Northeast chapter of the fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) examines the expanding number of options for climate risk financing, as recent efforts in the Northeast provides an opportunity to identify remaining knowledge gaps and challenges that constrain or enable action.
This presentation will provide an overview on how climate risk finance has evolved over the past few years for individuals, businesses and communities in the Northeast. The session will focus on both public and private sources of climate risk funding, as well as novel solutions and products now coming to market.
200pm: Climate Risks to Supply Chains: Findings of the 5th U.S. National Climate Assessment
Ann Kosmal, U.S. Global Change Research Program
Across the United States, climate risks to supply chains are both observed and expected to increase per the findings of Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA 5). The development process of the NCA 5 spans federal governance, author selection, public engagement and many other factors including evidence, documentation, and accessibility. Across the two responses to climate change both emissions mitigation and climate adaptation as well as the regions and sectors of the entire National Climate Assessment, climate risks to supply chains affect livelihoods and investments. Key findings and factors driving climate risks to supply chains are discussed. The pace, scale, and scope of efforts to transform supply chains are discussed regarding sufficiency to meet either current or expected disruptions and costs.
215pm: Improving Weather Derivative Trading with Probabilistic S2S Forecasts
Karl Critz, Salient Predictions
Salient Predictions uses machine learning to provide differentiated subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) weather forecasts. Traders can apply these forecasts directly to weather-linked derivatives such as Heating Degree Days (HDDs) / Cooling Degree Days (CDDs) and to weather-influenced commodities like power or gas. Salient's probabilistic S2S forecast leverages deep weather connections 2 to 52 weeks in advance, which provides non-consensus insights not available to traditional 14-day deterministic forecasts.
This study compares actual settlement values to forecasts at HDD/CDD locations traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. We propose and test a decision making framework that quantifies the value of an accurate, reliable probabilistic forecast. While no individual forecast is guaranteed to be perfect, over time a quality forecast creates a measurable edge. Salient's forecasts enable more informed decisions that can lead to increased profits and reduced risk.
230pm: Keynote Speaker - Climate Linked Economics of Water Management in the West
F. Martin Ralph, Director Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego
Atmospheric rivers (ARs) that impact the U.S. West Coast are long narrow bands of concentrated water vapor transport that form over the Pacific Ocean. They are responsible for up to half of the annual precipitation in California, 94 percent of all flood damages totaling $620 million annually, and individually may influence catastrophe such as the $1.1 billion in damages to the Lake Oroville Spillway in February 2017. Better AR forecast accuracy and lead time enhances resilience to drought and flood, especially as climate change results in more intense ARs.
Knowing when and where ARs will hit, and how much precipitation they’ll produce, is key to Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations (FIRO), a flexible water management approach that uses forecasts to help water managers selectively retain or release water from reservoirs for increased resilience to droughts and floods. FIRO is a research and operations partnership where practitioners help design and implement FIRO to maximize its potential.
Over the past decade, AR research has led to important scientific breakthroughs that make FIRO possible. For example, model results and model-informed practices at Lake Mendocino in California indicate that FIRO can increase median storage by >30%--enough for >30,000 households -- over conventional reservoir operations while maintaining water supply, mitigating flood risk, and providing healthy ecosystems.
430pm - 6pm: Panel Discussion - Climate Links to Supply Chain and Commodity Markets
Moderator: Jon Davis, Chief Meteorologist for Everstream Analytics
Panelists:
Jeff Massey, Weather Team Lead for Amazon Prime Air
Ann Kosmail, Climate Response Architect for the U.S. Global Change Research Program
David D’Arcangelo, Chief Meteorologist for Susquehanna International Group
Stephen Bennett, Chief Climate Officer for The Demex Group
Much of global economic production is organized around a complex system of interdependent supply chains. Supply chains facilitate the production of everything from computers and cars to lifesaving medicines and food, and support world trade in goods that are worth almost $20 trillion annually. The end to end component of the supply chain starts with agriculture and energy and extends through production, transportation, and deliver of products to the consumer/end user. Over time, these supply chains have been honed to deliver maximum efficiency and speed. But questions about supply-chain risks and resilience are now being raised in the context of acute weather events. As climate change shifts the localized frequency and severity of extreme weather, this alters the risk of global supply-chain disruptions. Special emphasis will be placed on communication of weather/climate risk to the “end user” and the flow of information to the decision-makers. Today’s panel will discuss climate risk from the perspective of supply chain planning and operations.
