Photo of a forest fireMembers of WCRP's Grand Challenge on Weather and Climate Extremes (GC-Extremes) and co-authors published a Nature Climate Change perspective article on "Future climate risk from compound events". The article is partially based on outcomes of the workshop "Addressing the challenge of compound events" which was held in April 2017 at the ETH Zurich, likewise in the context of the WCRP GC-Extremes.

Increased risk for weather and climate extremes is often driven by multiple underlying, and interacting, physical processes. Risk assessment methods have in the past often only considered one driver or hazard at a time. The present paper by Zscheischler et al. demonstrates how a better understanding of compound events may improve projections of potential high-impact events. Such advances might then in turn benefit the work on extreme events of engineers, social scientists, impact modellers and decision-makers.

The WCRP Grand Challenge on Weather and Climate Extremes promotes progress on high-profile science questions on extreme events in the context of a changing climate. In particular, it addresses underlying science questions, aims for advances in relevant modeling techniques and strives to improve both quality and coverage of observational data used to monitor and understand extremes.

The WCRP Grand Challenges represent current areas of emphasis in scientific research, modelling, analysis and observations. WCRP promotes the Grand Challenges through community-organized workshops, conferences and strategic planning meetings so that international partnership and coordination can yield actionable information for decision makers.