UK-China cooperation on climate change risk assessment: Developing indicators of climate risk

This report identifies a set of climate risk indicators to monitor and assess climate risk. Understanding the nature and severity of these risks is fundamental to the urgent tasks of mitigation and adaptation. Decision-makers need information on the full range of risks that climate change poses, including across the spectrum of probabilities, recognising that a low-probability outcome may still correspond to a high risk if the impact is severe – and that what is low probability at one time may become high probability at a later time. 

The report identifies

• three categories of risk to assess: the future pathway of global emissions;
• the direct risks arising from the climate’s response to those emissions;
• and the risks to complex human systems.