Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation
Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

This Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report (IPCC-SREX) explores the challenge of understanding and managing the risks of climate extremes to advance climate change adaptation. Extreme weather and climate events, interacting with exposed and vulnerable human and natural systems, can lead to disasters. Changes in the frequency and severity of the physical events affect disaster risk, but so do the spatially diverse and temporally dynamic patterns of exposure and vulnerability. Some types of extreme weather and climate events have increased in frequency or magnitude, but populations and assets at risk have also increased, with consequences for disaster risk. Opportunities for managing risks of weather- and climate-related disasters exist or can be developed at any scale, local to international. Prepared following strict IPCC procedures, SREX is an invaluable assessment for anyone interested in climate extremes, environmental disasters and adaptation to climate change, including policymakers, the private sector and academic researchers.

Foreword; Preface; Summary for policymakers; 1. Climate change: new dimensions in disaster risk, exposure, vulnerability and resilience; 2. Determinants of risk: exposure and vulnerability; 3. Changes in climate extremes and their impacts on the natural physical environment; 4. Changes in impacts of climate extremes: human systems and ecosystems; 5. Managing the risks from climate extremes at the local level; 6. National systems for managing the risks from climate extremes and disasters; 7. Managing the risks: international level and integration across scales; 8. Toward a sustainable and resilient future; 9. Case studies; Annex I. Authors and expert reviewers; Annex II. Glossary of terms; Annex III. Acronyms; Annex IV. List of major IPCC reports; Index.

Christopher B. Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, Professor of Biology and Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford University and Faculty Director of Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. Field received his AB in Biology from Harvard in 1975 and his PhD in Biology from Stanford in 1981. In more than 200 published papers, Field's research has addressed many aspects of global change, from the molecular to the global scale. His contributions probe the global carbon cycle, impacts of climate change on ecosystems and agriculture and options for sustainable renewable energy. He is a recipient of the Heinz Award, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the US National Academy of Sciences. He was a coordinating lead author for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and, as of September 2008, co-chair of Working Group 2 of the IPCC.
Vicente Barros was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He gained a Masters of Science in Meteorology at the University of Michigan and a PhD in Meteorological Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires in 1973. He held research positions at the UNAM (Mexico) and at the Argentine Council of Sciences (CONICET) where he has been Senior Researcher since 1994. He was Professor of Climatology and Director of the Master Program of Environmental Sciences at the School of Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires. He is currently Emeritus Professor of this University. Vicente Barros has published over 60 peer-reviewed papers, most of them on climate variability and trends on South America and on impacts of climate variability and climate change in the regional hydrology. He is also author of a book on climate change and co-editor of another three on related matters. In 1996, he directed the First National Communication of Argentina to the UNFCCC and