TY - GEN A1 - Geiger, Tobias A1 - Frieler, Katja A1 - Levermann, Anders T1 - Reply to Comment on: High-income does not protect against hurricane losses (Environmental research letters. - 12 (2017)) T2 - Environmental research letters N2 - Recently a multitude of empirically derived damage models have been applied to project future tropical cyclone (TC) losses for the United States. In their study (Geiger et al 2016 Environ. Res. Lett. 11 084012) compared two approaches that differ in the scaling of losses with socio-economic drivers: the commonly-used approach resulting in a sub-linear scaling of historical TC losses with a nation's affected gross domestic product (GDP), and the disentangled approach that shows a sub-linear increase with affected population and a super-linear scaling of relative losses with per capita income. Statistics cannot determine which approach is preferable but since process understanding demands that there is a dependence of the loss on both GDP per capita and population, an approach that accounts for both separately is preferable to one which assumes a specific relation between the two dependencies. In the accompanying comment, Rybski et al argued that there is no rigorous evidence to reach the conclusion that high-income does not protect against hurricane losses. Here we affirm that our conclusion is drawn correctly and reply to further remarks raised in the comment, highlighting the adequateness of our approach but also the potential for future extension of our research. KW - climate change KW - tropical cyclones KW - damage KW - meteorological extremes KW - vulnerability Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa88d6 SN - 1748-9326 VL - 12 PB - IOP Publ. Ltd. CY - Bristol ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Geiger, Tobias A1 - Frieler, Katja A1 - Levermann, Anders T1 - High-income does not protect against hurricane losses JF - Environmental research letters N2 - Damage due to tropical cyclones accounts for more than 50% of all meteorologically-induced economic losses worldwide. Their nominal impact is projected to increase substantially as the exposed population grows, per capita income increases, and anthropogenic climate change manifests. So far, historical losses due to tropical cyclones have been found to increase less than linearly with a nation's affected gross domestic product (GDP). Here we show that for the United States this scaling is caused by a sub-linear increase with affected population while relative losses scale super-linearly with per capita income. The finding is robust across a multitude of empirically derived damage models that link the storm's wind speed, exposed population, and per capita GDP to reported losses. The separation of both socio-economic predictors strongly affects the projection of potential future hurricane losses. Separating the effects of growth in population and per-capita income, per hurricane losses with respect to national GDP are projected to triple by the end of the century under unmitigated climate change, while they are estimated to decrease slightly without the separation. KW - climate change KW - tropical cyclones KW - damage KW - meteorological extremes KW - vulnerability Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/11/8/084012 SN - 1748-9326 VL - 11 PB - IOP Publ. Ltd. CY - Bristol ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wenz, Leonie A1 - Kalkuhl, Matthias A1 - Steckel, Jan Christoph A1 - Creutzig, Felix T1 - Teleconnected food supply shocks JF - Environmental research letters N2 - The 2008-2010 food crisis might have been a harbinger of fundamental climate-induced food crises with geopolitical implications. Heat-wave-induced yield losses in Russia and resulting export restrictions led to increases in market prices for wheat across the Middle East, likely contributing to the Arab Spring. With ongoing climate change, temperatures and temperature variability will rise, leading to higher uncertainty in yields for major nutritional crops. Here we investigate which countries are most vulnerable to teleconnected supply-shocks, i.e. where diets strongly rely on the import of wheat, maize, or rice, and where a large share of the population is living in poverty. We find that the Middle East is most sensitive to teleconnected supply shocks in wheat, Central America to supply shocks in maize, and Western Africa to supply shocks in rice. Weighing with poverty levels, Sub-Saharan Africa is most affected. Altogether, a simultaneous 10% reduction in exports of wheat, rice, and maize would reduce caloric intake of 55 million people living in poverty by about 5%. Export bans in major producing regions would put up to 200 million people below the poverty line at risk, 90% of which live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our results suggest that a region-specific combination of national increases in agricultural productivity and diversification of trade partners and diets can effectively decrease future food security risks. KW - food security KW - trade shocks KW - vulnerability KW - climate change KW - teleconnections Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/11/3/035007 SN - 1748-9326 VL - 11 PB - IOP Publ. Ltd. CY - Bristol ER -