Missing Links in Predicting Future Extreme Weather Risk
Speaker: Dr. Jane Baldwin, UC Irvine
Date: October 28, 2025
Time: 1:00 PM ET
Location: Virtual
Abstract There is increasing appreciation that extreme weather risks are being altered by climate change. Unfortunately, large gaps remain between quantification of the physical hazard of these events (e.g. wind, rain, heat) and their societal impacts (e.g. deaths, structural damages). In this talk I will describe two different research areas I have engaged in seeking to connect understanding of extreme weather hazards to impacts, in particular for tropical cyclones and extreme heat. I will first briefly summarize what is known about how these events will evolve with climate change. Then I will focus on uncertainties that emerge in estimating human vulnerability to these events, which challenges our ability to confidently predict their changing impacts with global warming. I will close by emphasizing the critical role of interdisciplinary collaboration in this work, but also the difficulties that poses for forward progress in traditionally siloed academic spaces.
Biography Dr. Jane Baldwin is broadly interested in how large-scale atmospheric dynamics influence regional climate and climatic extremes, with an eye to climate change and policy applications. Dr. Baldwin is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth System Science at University of California, Irvine. She was previously a Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University developing models of tropical cyclone risk. She completed her PhD in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at Princeton University, collaborating with the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. Her dissertation used Global Climate Models to examine the influence of mountains on deserts, monsoons, and tropical cyclones. She also researched temporal structure and risk of heat waves through a PEI-STEP fellowship in joint with the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (formerly Woodrow Wilson School). She was introduced to climate dynamics research through her senior thesis while an undergraduate studying Earth and Planetary Science at Harvard University.
Resources
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JPL Climate Risk Science Workshop
Workshop convened by JPL’s Climate Science group exploring climate risk, resilience, and interdisciplinary modeling approaches. -
Fifth Assessment Report — IPCC
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s landmark Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), providing comprehensive assessments of climate change science and impacts. -
Nashville Complex Risk Case Study
Pilot project with TVA and the City of Nashville examining how human vulnerabilities—including health, economic, and social factors—interact with compound climate risks such as extreme cold and power outages. -
EPRI Report: Fragility Curves and Climate Risk Assessment
Introduces fragility curves—quantitative models relating physical climate hazards to vulnerability—and discusses their role in power system risk assessment and resilience planning. -
Understanding Fragility Curves
Explains the concept and development of fragility curves as a means of linking hazard intensity to probability of failure for power system assets. -
Vulnerability in a Tropical Cyclone Risk Model: Philippines Case Study
Case study applying a tropical cyclone risk model to the Philippines, highlighting dimensions of vulnerability and system exposure. -
ISIMIP — Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project
An international network of climate-impact modelers producing harmonized data and cross-sectoral analyses of climate impacts across natural and human systems. -
LitPop Dataset
Eberenz et al. (2020) provide globally consistent asset exposure data for physical climate risk assessment, combining nightlight and population information. -
World Bank: Measuring Well-Being
World Bank publication offering conceptual and methodological frameworks for measuring human well-being and its determinants. -
FEMA’s Hazus
FEMA’s standardized modeling tool for estimating potential losses from floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural hazards. -
EM-DAT: The International Disaster Database
A comprehensive database of over 27,000 mass disasters worldwide since 1900, maintained by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). -
Humidity’s Role in Heat-Related Health Outcomes: A Heated Debate
Study examining how humidity modifies heat-related health outcomes and the implications for public health metrics. -
Interactions Between Indoor Heat and Energy Affordability
Turek-Hankins et al. (2025) explore how energy affordability and building heat dynamics amplify household risk in hot-humid U.S. climates. -
Simplicity Lacks Robustness When Projecting Heat-Health Outcomes
Vanos et al. (2020) demonstrate that overly simplified modeling approaches can undermine projections of heat-health outcomes in a changing climate. -
Wicked Problems
Guru Madhavan’s book exploring how science, design, and policy intersect to address complex, intractable problems that cannot be solved within a single field.