What we used to call the “worst flooding in a hundred years” is now only the “worst flooding in a decade”.
Climate scientist Friederike Otto is studying the impacts of climate change on extreme weather events. In our interview she talks about her research.
Friederike Otto was born in the north German city of Kiel in 1982, studied physics in Potsdam and did her PhD in philosophy at Freie Universität Berlin. She has worked at the University of Oxford and is now a professor of climate science at Imperial College London. As a climate researcher she was one of the authors of the assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) and has shaped the still young field of attribution research, which examines the impact of global warming on specific extreme weather events.
Professor Otto, extreme weather events also happened before the climate change we are facing today. What is different now with climate change?
Extreme weather is by definition unusual weather. Many weather events, and above all heatwaves, that would have been considered extreme last century - that is to say the probability of their ever occurring at all was perhaps 0.01 percent - are now happening every two years. What we used to call the “worst flooding in a hundred years” is now only the “worst flooding in a decade”.
Different regions around the world are battling with different types of extreme weather. Have you been able to identify regions that are particularly hard hit?
While many people in Germany still believe they live in a kind of safe paradise where there are no fatal weather events, the Global South is plagued by terrible droughts. However, the differences in terms of extreme weather are in fact relatively small by comparison with the dramatic differences in terms of vulnerability - i.e. the extent to which some people suffer from the weather events. People all over the world die in heatwaves, are left homeless by torrential rainfall or lose their harvests during times of drought. In Germany they receive immediate aid from the state, whereas in Somalia they do not.
How can attribution research help prepare us to cope better with future extreme weather?
Attribution research reveals how climate change has already led to changes in our weather, like the fact that the flooding in Central Europe a month ago is no longer something that occurs just once in a century but at least twice as often. At the same time, it shows which people are losing their lives or their livelihoods - and why. Both types of information are essential if we are to become more resilient, while also showing just how incredibly expensive failures in climate policy already are and who is paying the price.
Is there one particular country or region that you would describe as particularly progressive in terms of its approach to climate change?
No. That said, there are examples of good practice in certain areas - Pakistan for instance has very good climate justice laws. And Paris is the only city in the world where people are at least talking about how a world without private cars would be so much more liveable - completely irrespective of climate change.
