Climate Extremes Will Challenge Our Supply Chains (Guest Post by Anders Levermann, PIK)

In his recent Nature article, Climate Economics: Make Supply Chains Climate-smart, Anders Levermann argues that supply chains need to adapt to extreme weather. He discusses this topic in the following guest post.

Extreme weather events are likely to intensify the more greenhouse-gases we emit – and these extremes are more than just a local risk. Links in global economic chains and world markets mean that flooding or heat-waves in one place can have repercussions elsewhere. Extreme rainfall and typhoon Yasi paralyzed the world’s fourth largest coal exploration site in Australia in 2010/11. Coking coal prices went up by 25% in 2011. In order to estimate the impact of climate change on our society we need to understand both future weather extremes and our global economic network. In Potsdam we recently set up a website to collect and analyze this data. Everyone can register and contribute expertise. In a similar fashion as Wikipedia we hope to gradually generate a global community that creates a system of checks and balances to obtain an up-to-date database of high quality and detail to induce a global adaptation of our supply chains. For news follow @ZEEANit on Twitter or register at zeean.net.

Anders Levermann is a physics professor for the dynamics of the climate system and co-chair of the research domain Sustainable Solutions at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Levermann, A. (2014). Climate Economics: Make Supply Chains Climate-smart. Nature, 506, 27-29 DOI: 10.1038/506027a