Beyond vulnerability assessment

Abstract

Climate stress testing is a promising way to improve preparedness for climate change hazards over a wide range of applications and actors, borrowed from the finance and nuclear power sectors. In their Commentary 'Managing risk with climate vulnerability science', Stern et al.1 build on a recent report of the National Academy of Sciences2, introducing a climate stress test to “consider how a potentially affected country, region, or socioeconomic system would be likely to perform, including how it might suffer, if struck by particular climate-related events and suggest ways to increase resilience to...disruptive events”1. We support the idea of a stress test, but believe much wider opportunities exist than the identification of security risks, and a stronger contribution from — and important challenge for — science than improved monitoring and predictive science is needed than is proposed by our US colleagues.