Human actions are significantly impacting Earth's environment. Scientists have strengthened their ability to attribute certain changes, especially related to sea-level rise and extreme weather events, to global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The effects of climate change are more obviously beginning to influence communities around the world, and are expected to generate even more challenging consequences in the future. Even as governments and industry must work rapidly to cut emissions to prevent the worst effects of a warming climate, communities must also take actions now to begin adapting to the new realities that global warming will certainly bring. This is particularly urgent for people living in areas historically subject to extreme heat, semi-arid zones, coastal areas, small island nations, or communities that live in or near the Arctic Circle.
Our faculty and researchers deploy their expertise in natural sciences, engineering, and economics to model how global warming will influence sea level rise, coastal flooding, hurricanes, heat waves, and droughts, and the communities who experience them.
From a policy perspective, our researchers recommend policies and actions to both lessen climate change risks and also prepare for the impact that an already warming climate is having on communities.
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Our researchers are investigating if and how climatic extremes or climate changes, along with other causal factors, have contributed to historical conflicts over the past two millennia and what light this casts on potential exacerbation of future conflict.
"Princeton researchers have provided the first estimation of the potential damage from back-to-back, or compound, heat waves, which the authors found will increase as global warming continues. But government warning systems and health care outreach do not currently calculate the risks of sequential heat waves. Instead, risk and response are determined by the severity of individual episodes of extreme temperatures."
As environmental changes and extreme weather begin to affect people's ability to produce food, generate income, or live safely in their homes, one common adaptation response is to migrate to a new place with the hopes of increasing household or personal livelihood and security. Our researchers are looking at a range of scenarios to understand what factors affect people's decisions to migrate in relation to climate change influences, what the broader impact of these migration choices may be, and what forward-looking policies governments can adopt.
As global average temperatures increase, melting of polar ice sheets is expected to accelerate sea-level rise. Coastal flooding that results from these changes and related extreme weather events, like hurricanes, entail substantial monetary, environmental, and human costs. Our researchers are undertaking studies to better estimate and plan for the potential effects of sea-level rise at different warming scenarios, as well as analyses of decision-making regarding large infrastructure projects, smaller-scale accommodations like building floodable infrastructure, and retreat from the coast, that could help reduce the impact of sea-level rise.
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As the climate crisis worsens, some South Africans are relocating to places with more stable climate conditions, according to a study led by Princeton University researchers.
Using…
In the grasslands of Nepal’s Chitwan Valley, local farmers rely on the production of rice and other grains to generate household income. But their livelihoods are under threat, as Nepal is experiencing the effects of climate change at a much faster rate than the global average.
As these effects worsen, it’s unclear what smallholder…
A new partnership between Princeton University’s Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment (C-PREE) and the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI) is pairing students and researchers to work on solutions to today…
The triple-digit temperatures sweeping across the country this summer go far beyond routine weather fluctuations. Indeed, June 2021 was the hottest June in the history of national weather records, and by the end of July, fully 40% of the nation was experiencing drought, which contributed to a western wildfire season whose smoke reached…
Climate change is generally portrayed as an environmental and societal threat with entirely negative consequences. However, some sectors of the global economy may actually end up benefiting.
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