Climate Physical Risk

World Weather Attribution scientists from Japan, the US, the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands studied Typhoon Dujuan, which skirted Japan's Pacific coast on 21 September and killed 17 people, mostly in landslides in Chiba. They found air along the track held about 9% more water vapour and seas ran 2–3C warmer than in a preindustrial climate, and that warming raised rainfall at the wettest locations by 20–40%; El Niño played no part. The rain exceeded local infrastructure design values, and the group says even well-prepared countries need to strengthen adaptation.

A study in Nature Climate Change reports that the rapid decline of Antarctic sea ice since 2016 has reversed a long-running trend in Antarctic Intermediate Water, a layer that spreads across much of the Southern Hemisphere. Inside Climate News describes a sharp salinity increase in the layer at depths of 2,300 to 4,000 feet around Antarctica, with consequences for how the ocean stores heat and carbon still to be worked out.

Researchers writing in The Conversation report that fine-particle pollution in haze-hit parts of Indonesia has routinely topped 500 micrograms per cubic metre this year and reached 1,000 in places, more than 65 times the WHO's 24-hour limit. Satellites have logged more than 120,000 fire hotspots, seven times last year's count though fewer than in 2015, and the fires have released an estimated 175 million tonnes of carbon, about three-quarters of Indonesia's annual fossil-fuel emissions. The record El Niño's dry spell turned drained, deforested peatland into fuel, and the authors expect conditions to worsen as El Niño intensifies toward year end.

Cyclone Arnab came ashore on India's eastern coast on Wednesday morning with heavy swells and gale-force winds, and early reports cited by The Loadstar put the toll at three dead in Andhra Pradesh, with extensive damage to homes and utility installations. Visakhapatnam, a key feeder port for Maersk's east-coast service, suspended all operations until further notice, and Kuehne+Nagel flagged Gangavaram and Krishnapatnam as also affected; vessel handling along the coast had been restricted since Monday. Shipping agents expect congestion once terminals reopen, on ports already strained by bunched arrivals from Asia.

Combined storage in the Menindee Lakes fell below 480 gigalitres this month for the first time since 2021 after a year of low catchment rainfall, and the upper lakes dropped below 250GL, the trigger for temporary New South Wales restrictions on some irrigators in the northern Murray-Darling basin. Scientists including ANU's Jamie Pittock warn that fish kills are likely this summer without more flow down the Baaka-Darling, after mass kills in 2018, 2019 and 2023. An expert panel's recommendation to curb upstream extraction in dry periods, delivered two years ago, has not been implemented.

Denver Water's board was set to vote on 15 temporary patrol positions for summer 2027 to enforce watering limits, which staff expect to last much of the year, alongside rate rises of 5.7% for the average city household and 7.9% in the suburbs. The utility imposed two-day-a-week limits this summer and banned lawn watering from 1 October, issuing 448 fines worth $265,000 in the first 18 days of the ban. Demand fell 11% against the five-year average, short of the 20% target, and lower sales cost the utility about $4 million.

RenaissanceRe's chief underwriting officer, David Marra, told analysts that property catastrophe rates should fall less at the 1 January renewals than the mid-teens percentage cut in RenRe's own book so far this year. He said supply still outstrips demand, with cat bonds pressing hardest on the top layers of programmes, but that new capital is more disciplined than a decade ago and terms and retentions should hold. Demand growth has slowed to single digits after buyers added $10 billion of limit last year, $15 billion in 2024 and $20 billion the year before.

Morocco's finance ministry has published its 2027 finance bill with a plan to build a regulatory framework for securitising insurance risks, including catastrophe bonds, to cover climate risks and bring outside capital into disaster risk transfer. Moroccan law has referred to securitisation before without the rules to make it work; Artemis says the change could make the country a cat bond issuer. Morocco is working with the World Bank on a $400 million climate and disaster resilience programme, and its parametric earthquake cover paid out $275 million after the 2023 quake.

VIG Re, the reinsurance arm of Vienna Insurance Group, is seeking at least €50 million of four-year European windstorm retrocession through Charles Bridge Re, its first catastrophe bond, on an industry-loss trigger from 1 January 2027. Price guidance is a 3–3.5% spread on a 1.77% expected loss, with Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium making up about 80% of the risk. Artemis says the deal brings 2026's new cat bond sponsors to 15, equalling last year's record.

A VTDigger and PBS Frontline investigation finds Vermont has no state disaster reserve and no county governments, leaving small towns to absorb flood damage that can exceed their budgets: Sutton's 2025 road damage of $1.4 million was more than twice its highway budget. Federal aid failed to arrive for the first time last year, when President Trump denied a major disaster declaration for the July 2025 floods, and Pew rates Vermont the state most financially exposed to swings in federal aid. FEMA's review council has said states should carry more of the cost, though Congress has not changed the Stafford Act.

President Trump pledged more federal aid for victims of Texas's July floods, the Texas Tribune reports, after FEMA turned down the state's initial request for assistance to individuals. The floods swamped homes in Uvalde and damaged Kerr County properties, some for the second time in two years; FEMA had approved help for some counties' infrastructure repairs but left households to nonprofit funds and their own money. No amount was attached to the promise.

President Trump signed an emergency declaration on 26 October for flooding in northern New Mexico, letting FEMA pay 75% of eligible emergency costs in San Juan, Cibola, Rio Arriba and Sandoval counties and five tribal nations. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham puts recovery costs at $200–300 million after the San Juan and Animas rivers overflowed, damaging about 500 homes around Shiprock and forcing evacuations from some 1,500 residences. The state has committed $12 million of its own emergency funds so far.

The Securing California's Flood Future panel of academics, policy and insurance specialists released its final report on 28 October, as the state braces for a strong El Niño winter. UC Davis researchers writing on the panel's work put about 7 million Californians and $900 billion of infrastructure at flood risk, more than wildfire exposure, while flood insurance take-up stays low and federal mitigation funding has been cut. The panel recommends statewide flood mapping independent of FEMA, stricter limits on floodplain growth, new state mitigation funding and a western-states mutual aid pact.