Background The 2025 ice-rock avalanche that destroyed the Swiss Alpine village of Blatten in May 2025 represents an important example of high-altitude cascading risk. It also received wide media attention. This study analyses how the Blatten disaster was represented in Swiss news media, examining descriptions of the hazard cascade, disaster response strategies, dominant themes, and broader media frames. Using a corpus of 2,052 news articles, the study combines structured large language model extraction with human validation, topic modelling, and framing synthesis to analyse multilingual media coverage at scale. Results Swiss media consistently portrayed Blatten as a cascading high-mountain disaster involving rock slope failure, glacier collapse, debris flows, river damming, lake formation, and downstream flood risk. Coverage highlighted a broad portfolio of disaster risk management measures, including monitoring, early warning, evacuation, emergency interventions, financial assistance, insurance, reconstruction, and possible relocation. Topic modelling revealed that reporting extended well beyond the physical hazard to include community disruption, governance, funding, tourism, insurance, and long-term recovery. Framing analysis identified competing narratives in which successful emergency management coexisted with debates over reconstruction versus retreat, cultural identity, financial responsibility, and the future habitability of Alpine communities. Climate change emerged as an overarching but contested frame, appearing both as a driver of increasing mountain hazards and as the subject of scientific, political, and societal debate. Conclusions The Blatten disaster was represented not only as a cascading natural hazard but also as a catalyst for broader debates on climate change adaptation and the future of mountain communities. The findings demonstrate that media discourse extends beyond physical processes and emergency response to encompass governance, finance, cultural values, and place attachment. Integrating computational text analysis with qualitative framing provides a scalable approach for examining societal interpretations of disasters and can support interdisciplinary research on climate risks, disaster risk management, and long-term adaptation.

Compound hot–dry events have recently led to severe consequences globally, often triggering cascading impacts across ecological and socio-economic systems. Currently, most analyses of hot–dry extremes rely on short observational records or projections, limiting evaluation against pre-industrial variability—the climatic range to which many natural and human systems adapted over centuries. This makes it difficult to place impacts of the increased intensity and frequency of compound events in an appropriate context for examining adaptation needs.Here we leverage a unique data coverage in the Swiss Alps to quantify changes in summer mean climate and in compound hot–dry extremes and their associated return periods from 1600 to 2099 CE. Data used include multi-century temperature and atmospheric drought reconstructions from tree rings going back to 1600 CE, instrumental station records, and local-scale climate projections for 1981-2099.Copula-based modelling shows that summers classified as extreme in pre-industrial conditions have become common in today's climate and are expected to correspond to cold and wet conditions by the end of the century. Our analysis further shows that the hot–dry conditions witnessed in summer 2003—characterized by simultaneous positive temperature and vapor pressure deficit (VPD) anomalies of 5.3°C and 2.6 hPa relative to the pre-industrial mean, respectively—were unprecedented over at least the past 400 years and are projected to remain rare until the end of the century under RCP2.6. By contrast, they are likely to occur every 2-3 years under RCP4.5 and even to become colder and wetter than average by 2070-2099 under RCP8.5, since in the latter case, temperature and VPD anomalies are projected to exceed pre-industrial conditions by 10.4°C and 8.1 hPa in the extreme case (30-year return period).Without countermeasures, the consequences of these changes will include, among other things, dramatic losses in agricultural production and undesirable changes in forest ecosystem dynamics. Ultimately, our analysis suggests that rapid adaptation is necessary to avoid facing more frequent extreme heat and drought conditions than those observed under pre-industrial conditions. Under RCP8.5, in particular, socio-ecological systems will need to continuously adapt within 15 years to changes in the average climate to avoid facing high-impact hot-dry compound event frequencies higher than those experienced at any time over the past 400 years. Given that adaptation in mountain regions is currently not keeping up with the realized and projected climate impacts, as pointed out in several studies, we argue that the required speed of adaptation can pose substantial challenges for alpine societies.

Climate change is increasing heat wave frequency, duration, and intensity, leading to growing health and economic risks, particularly in urban areas where the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and ongoing urbanization further amplify exposure and vulnerability. Advancing research on the impact of climate change on extreme heat events requires an integrated approach combining urban planning, health studies, and climate science.This paper adopts an integrated approach to assess how climate change manifests in urban heat stress, addressing the limited robustness of existing heat stress projections by incorporating multiple dimensions of uncertainty. It quantifies climate-induced changes in heat stress and explores the presented method's potential to appraise the effect of adaptation strategies on reducing future heat stress.Using Exploratory Modeling and Analysis (EMA) and the Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) heat stress indicator, we analyze future conditions in Basel and Zurich. EMA captures a wide range of uncertainties, providing robust projections without focusing on the most probable scenarios.Our findings underscore the critical influence of emission scenarios, as well as individual vulnerability and adaptation thresholds, in shaping future heat indicators. They are relevant to transformative adaptation, as the assumptions used to model adaptation are transformative, in both depth and scale. The exploratory approach integrating human-system and climatic perspectives, provides a valuable foundation for systematic adaptation analysis that accounts for uncertainty and can support decision-making. It could be further strengthened by incorporating Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways (DAPP) and advancing research on vulnerability-specific thresholds and local adaptation effectiveness.

BackgroundWhile heat-related mortality is well-documented, the full economic burden of non-fatal illness remains underexplored. This gap hinders evidence-based health planning in a warming climate. We aimed to quantify the current and projected financial burden of heat-related hospital admissions in Switzerland.MethodsWe linked daily hospital admissions (1998-2022) from six Swiss cantons, representing 60% of the national total, to temperature records using a Distributed Lag Non-Linear Model (DLNM) meta-analysis. Costs were estimated via the Swiss Diagnosis-Related Groups (SwissDRG) tariff system across different disease categories and age groups. Future climate projections were generated using CH2018 climate simulations with Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios (SSP1-Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP)2.6, SSP2-RCP4.5, SSP5-RCP8.5).ResultsHistorically, extreme heat significantly increased hospital admissions in major Swiss regions, with endocrine/metabolic disorders showing the highest relative risk (RR 2.02). The elderly (75+) and children were the most vulnerable populations. The average annual cost of these direct hospitalizations across the six cantons studied was Swiss Francs (CHF) 20.6 million (2013-2022), notably a conservative estimate representing only a fraction of the total economic burden. Future projections show this burden escalating sharply. Under a high-emissions pathway (SSP5-RCP8.5), these direct costs are projected to increase 2.5-fold by the 2060s, with costs for the elderly quintupling. Critically, even with aggressive mitigation (SSP1-RCP2.6), costs are still projected to triple compared to the baseline. This is driven primarily by demographic aging, with climate change acting as a significant amplifier, responsible for 15-30% of the projected cost increases for the elderly.ConclusionsOur findings from major Swiss regions reveal a substantial and growing financial burden on the healthcare system. Given that these figures represent a lower bound, the true costs are likely much higher. This evidence underscores the urgent need for nationally coordinated adaptation policies to protect public health and ensure healthcare sustainability, even as mitigation efforts continue.

In the era of data-intensive science, the complexity and volume of geospatial data have grown exponentially. Compared to traditional data sources, non-traditional sources are more complex and structured, necessitating sophisticated methodsand a series of decisions to transform raw data inputs into usable and actionable data products. This Special Issue, “Sustainable geospatial analytics and geoinformatics with repeatable, reproducible, and expandable (RRE) framework and design,” brings together a collection of seven pioneering papers that address the critical need for consistency and transparency in geospatial research. These studies explore diverse domains, including explainable machine learning, disaster risk assessment, urban ecological health, infectious disease control and scientific workflow management. Collectively, they advocate for the adoption of an RRE framework to ensure that results can be verified and reproducible across different environments and expanded with new data or methodologies. By integrating visual programming, service-oriented strategies, as well as Findable,Accessible,Interoperable, andReusable (FAIR) principles, the featured research lowers technical barriers for non-experts while enhancing the robustness of complex models. This editorial synthesizes the contributions of these papers, highlighting how they foster a sustainable and collaborative geospatial knowledge ecosystem. This collection serves as a roadmap for the next generation of geoinformatics, where transparency and flexibility are foundational to addressing global environmental and social challenges.

Constraints within socio-ecological systems provide formidable challenges to address climate change through adaptation and risk management, and have the potential to drive a system to an adaptation limit. Understanding adaptation limits is crucial for assessing society's capacity to adapt and avoiding significant losses and damages. However, there is limited empirical research on limits to adaptation. We present a practical approach on how to identify constraints, and draw links to when constraints have obstructed adaptation action to the point of reaching limits. This exploratory study is based on in-depth interviews with residents and practitioners in two regions in the Peruvian Andes, utilizing a conceptual framework. Our findings highlight how interconnected constraints across various domains have obstructed adaptation action to the point of reaching limits, including a community dismantling an early warning system and the failure to relocate residents after a flood, with adverse impacts on various aspects of residents' basic needs and wellbeing. Our findings contribute to the empirical understanding of adaptation limits, underscore the need to focus on multiple interconnected constraints and provide directives on how to avoid reaching certain limits. The study aims to provide a framework for assessing limits to adaptation also in regions beyond the Andes.

The growing urgency of the climate crisis necessitates innovative educational approaches to equip people with the knowledge and skills to address climate challenges and be able to influence policy effectively. Education can be a central asset to promoting climate action, yet the importance of climate change education has been underexposed in large and influential assessment reports such as those from the IPCC. This study provides a comprehensive mapping of the literature on climate change education with a particular focus on the time period 2008-2023. By combining human coding and natural language processing (NLP) techniques, we examined a diverse corpus of over 6’000 publications from the peer reviewed literature. The findings highlight the pivotal role of climate education across various disciplines and its alignment with critical climate research themes such as adaptation, mitigation, disaster risk management, and sustainability. Our analysis reveals three predominant topics within the literature which are related to effective learning methodologies, sustainable development education, and the importance of education in adaptation and resilience. Additionally, we identified emerging themes emphasizing the role of youth as change agents, the necessity of transformative educational practices and the importance of energy literacy. Through geoparsing, it was possible to infer country mentions and case studies. These appeared to be largely skewed towards the English speaking countries and in particular the United States and United Kingdom, underpinning the urgency of diversifying research funding and fostering an open data culture. The insights gained from this scoping review underscore the potential of climate education to not only enhance knowledge but also to drive community engagement and policy initiatives, thus contributing to broader climate action efforts. In essence, it suggests fostering innovative educational practices for cultivating an active and informed society capable of addressing the pressing challenges posed by climate change. Importantly, this study calls for the integration of climate change education themes into climate policy-relevant assessment reports.

Accurate identification of true versus false climate information in the digital age is critical. Misinformation can significantly affect public understanding and policymaking. Automated fact-checking seeks to validate claims against trustworthy factual data. This study tackles the challenge of fact-checking climate claims by leveraging the currently most capable Large Language Models (LLMs). To this end, we introduce Climinator, an acronym for CLImate Mediator for INformed Analysis and Transparent Objective Reasoning. It significantly boosts the performance of automated fact-checking by integrating authoritative, up-to-date sources within a novel debating framework. This framework provides a trustworthy and context-aware analysis incorporating multiple scientific viewpoints. Climinator helps identify misinformation in real time and facilitates informed dialog on climate change, highlighting AI’s role in environmental discussions and policy with reliable data.

Escalating climate-related risks make climate risk management more important than ever. While research on climate risk management has generated substantial useful information on its potential, the practice of climate risk management has not yet fully operationalized this knowledge, and it has simultaneously revealed new challenges. Especially as momentum around climate action wanes in some contexts, research on climate risk management has crucial opportunities to inform and unleash proactive, effective climate adaptation. Here, we reflect on the evolution of climate risk management over time, the lessons learned, and key research and policy issues underpinning the future of the field. Through this collective perspective, we encourage submissions on a range of interlocking themes—adaptation decision support and finance, climate security and justice, emerging technologies and evaluation, and portfolios of action—which together promise to advance both the science and practice of climate risk management.

The completion of the Sixth Assessment Cycle of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides a unique opportunity to understand where the world stands on climate-change-related risks to natural and human systems at the global level, as well as for specific regions and sectors. Since its Third Assessment Report (AR3), released 2 decades ago, the IPCC has developed a synthetic representation of how risks increase with global warming, with risk levels reflected by the colours used, including shades of yellow and red, which led to the nickname “burning embers”. While initially designed to illustrate five overarching Reasons for Concern, these diagrams have been progressively applied to risks in specific systems and regions over the last 10 years. However, the information gathered through expert elicitation and the resulting quantitative risk assessments have hitherto remained scattered within and across reports and specific data files. This paper overcomes this limitation by developing a database containing all embers from AR3 to AR6 and an associated online “Climate Risks Embers Explorer” (CREE) to facilitate the exploration of the assessed risks. The data are also available in an archive file in a widely accessible format (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12626976, Marbaix et al., 2024). Important aspects of data homogenization are discussed, and an approach to structuring information on assessed risk increases is presented. Potential uses of the data are explored through aggregated analyses of risks and adaptation benefits, which show that, excluding high-adaptation cases, half of the assessed risk levels increase from a moderate risk to a high risk between 1.5 and 2 to 2.3 °C of global warming, a result which is consistent with the separate assessment of the Reasons for Concern by the IPCC. The database lays the groundwork for future risk assessments and the development of burning embers by providing a standardized baseline of risk data. It also highlights important areas for improvement in the forthcoming Seventh Assessment Cycle of the IPCC, particularly towards the systematic, homogeneous, and structured collection of information on illustrated risk increases; comprehensive coverage of impacted regions; a systematic consideration of adaptation and/or vulnerability levels; and, possibly, the coverage of risks from response measures. In the context of an ever-growing body of literature and knowledge, the facility described herein has the potential to help in synthesizing and illustrating risks across scales and systems in a more consistent and comprehensive way.

Abstract. The completion of the Sixth Assessment Cycle of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides a unique opportunity to understand where the world stands on climate change-related risks to natural and human systems, at the global level as well as for specific regions and sectors. Since its Third Assessment Report, released two decades ago, the IPCC has developed a synthetic representation of how risks increase with global warming, known as “burning embers” diagrams due to the colours used. While initially designed to illustrate five overarching Reasons for Concern, these diagrams have been progressively applied to risks in specific systems and regions over the last 10 years. However, the information gathered through expert elicitation and the resulting quantitative risk assessments have hitherto remained scattered within and across reports and specific data files. This paper overcomes this limitation by developing an ember database and an associated online “climate risks ember explorer” to facilitate the exploration of the assessed risks. The data are also available in an archive file in a widely accessible format (doi:10.5281/zenodo.12626977, Marbaix et al. 2024). Important aspects of data homogenisation are discussed, and an approach to structuring information on assessed risk increases is presented. Potential uses of the data are explored through aggregated analyses of risks and adaptation benefits, which show that, excluding high adaptation cases, half of the assessed risks levels increase from a moderate to a high risk between 1.5 °C and 2 to 2.3 °C of global warming, a result which is consistent with the separate assessment of the Reasons for Concern by the IPCC. The database lays the groundwork for future risk assessments and the development of burning embers by providing a standardised baseline of risk data. It also highlights important areas for improvement in the forthcoming IPCC Seventh Assessment Cycle, in particular towards systematic, homogenous, and structured collection of information on illustrated risk increases, a comprehensive coverage of impacted regions, a systematic consideration of adaptation and/or vulnerability levels, and possibly the coverage of risks from response measures. In the context of an ever-growing literature and knowledge, the facility described herein has the potential to help in synthesising and illustrating risks across scales and systems in a more consistent and comprehensive way.

Anthropogenic climate change is already causing dangerous and widespread disruptions in global ecological and social systems and affects the lives of billions of people around the world. Even with scaled-up risk management and adaptation, the limits of adaptation will often be reached. Currently, very little is known about the degree to which societies can adapt to climate change, and where and when limits to adaptation will be reached. In this paper, we conceptualize adaptation limits through a novel methodological framework, assess adaptation limits along adaptation pathways, and propose a research strategy for empirical and model-based limits assessments based on biophysical and socio-economic data. Assessing limits is central to national and international adaptation policymaking. More efficient adaptation can also help climate mitigation efforts.

With new cycles of global environmental assessments (GEAs) recently starting, including GEO-7 and IPCC AR7, there is increasing need for artificial intelligence (AI) to support in synthesising the rapidly growing body of evidence for authors and users of these assessments. In this article, we explore recent advances in AI and connect them to the different stages of GEAs showing how some processes can be automatised and streamlined. The meticulous and labour-intensive nature of GEAs serves as both a valuable strength and a challenge to staying pertinent and current in today’s era of urgency and the pursuit of the latest knowledge. Utilising AI tools for reviewing and synthesizing scientific literature holds the evident promise of substantially lessening the workload for experts and expediting the assessment process. This, in turn, could lead to more frequent report releases and a smoother integration of the latest scientific advancements into actionable measures. However, successful outcomes can only be achieved if domain experts co-develop and oversee the deployment of such tools together with AI researchers. Otherwise, these tools run the risk of producing inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading information with significant consequences. We demonstrate this through a few examples that compare recently deployed large language models (LLMs) based tools in their performance in capturing nuanced concepts in the context of the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We recommend establishing ethical committees and organising dedicated expert meetings to develop best practice guidelines, ensuring responsible and transparent integration of AI into GEAs.

Global biodiversity loss and climate change exacerbate feedbacks within social-ecological systems, i.e., between ecosystems, their services and well-being of human societies. Our ability to mediate these feedbacks is hampered by incomplete understanding of the underlying causal links, which could benefit from interdisciplinary approaches to discover theoretical or empirical links from heterogeneous data characteristic of social-ecological studies. We propose a novel framework connecting literature-based causal knowledge with data-driven inference of causality. We test this framework for the highly biodiverse island of Borneo by conducting a systematic literature review of 7473 studies over 170 years, and a causal inference analysis for three conceptual causal diagrams connecting global change, socio-economics, ecosystem services, and biodiversity-ecosystem function using a set of 227 spatially explicit variables. We find that, while natural or social processes have been mostly studied independently, a set of studies already documents causal links across social-ecological domains for processes related to deforestation, food or energy. Causal discovery unveiled consistent negative causal links between global change, social-economic landscape, and biodiversity-ecosystem function, and positive causal links between global change and socio-economics, and these links were robust to indicator selection and addition. We detected few and weak links between social-economic landscape, global change, and ecosystem services. When comparing the data-driven inferred causal links to those documented by the literature, we find that links between biodiversity and ecosystem function with global change, and links between social-economic landscape and ecosystem services were also consistent, and causal analysis uncovered new (potential) causal links not yet described in the literature. Significance Statement Addressing climate change and biodiversity loss in the Anthropocene requires us to recognize that human societies and ecological systems are inherently interconnected in complex adaptive systems. Causal understanding in social-ecological systems enables understanding system dynamics and response to pressures and shocks. While promising, few studies have studied these systems using a combination of ‘big literature’ which provides the state-of-the-knowledge and ‘big data’ that provides the underlying information for causal discovery. With this framework, we can specify and rigorously test, causal links in biodiversity-mediated social-ecological processes under global change and examine potential interventions that lead to much needed sustainable outcomes. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

Climate related changes are already affecting every area of our world and will increasingly do so as global warming increases, resulting in compounding and cascading risks across multiple locations and sectors. Deliberative processes and anticipatory actions are required to adapt to the associated complex and uncertain systemic risks, with dynamic and long-term planning needed even where there is limited knowledge of the effectiveness of adaptation. In this focus article, we examine the adaptation pathways developed for the Europe Chapter of the IPCC AR6. We argue that illustrative pathways built on quantitative and qualitative assessment of adaptation effectiveness can inform adaptation planning to manage the increasing severity of risks. We find that as the global warming level increases adaptation pathways can diverge, leading to radically different futures, for example, adaptation responses to sea level rise. We illustrate how adaptation measures for different risks interact resulting in trade-offs, for example, increasing water scarcity. Although pathways offer a useful framework to address multiple adaptation challenges, other supporting conditions are needed for the successful implementation of adaptation, such as establishing legitimacy and buy-in through collaboration of various actors and effective governance. Ultimately, adaptation will be increasingly more complex and constrained in a warmer world, increasing risks of losses and damages to people and nature.

The mountains of Central Asia support many environmental functions and ecosystem services. The mountain environments and their services are affected by climate change and climate change adaptation (CCA) actions are required to increase resilience of regional communities. This paper is a systematic review of the English and Russian-language literature published between 2013 (IPCC AR5) and May 2021 (IPCC AR6) focusing on CCA in the Central Asian mountains. In all, 52 publications have been reviewed. Criteria defining incremental and transformative adaptation were established and the reviewed studies were assigned to one of these approaches. The relatively low number of publications shows that the extent of CCA knowledge represented in academic literature is limited in comparison to other mountainous regions. There is a disparity between the growing body of publications addressing climate change and limited and decreasing number of academic publications focusing on adaptation in the region. Only 11 publications reported transformative adaptation actions. Most of the reviewed papers (55%) focus on water resources and future water availability; 15% focus on land degradation, 10% on changes in vertical zonation of plant species, 7% on loss of plant species, 3% on impacts of hazardous events, and 10% on multiple impacts of climate change. The awareness of the importance of CCA among the regional actors should be improved through closer collaboration between researchers, international organizations focusing on sustainable development and adaptation which have recently become more active in the region, practitioners, and local communities and co-production of knowledge on the development and implementation of CCA. This article is categorized under: Trans-Disciplinary Perspectives > Humanities and the Creative Arts Trans-Disciplinary Perspectives > Humanities and the Creative Arts Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Institutions for Adaptation Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Observed Impacts of Climate Change This article is categorized under: Trans-Disciplinary Perspectives > Humanities and the Creative Arts Trans-Disciplinary Perspectives > Humanities and the Creative Arts Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Institutions for Adaptation Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Observed Impacts of Climate Change

This study addresses the critical need for documented adaptation progress in mountain regions by reviewing recently implemented or ongoing adaptation solutions collected from the Adaptation at Altitude Solutions Portal (A@A Solution Portal). Using a data driven approach, the research explores the characteristics, feasibility, and transformative potential of these solutions. Findings reveal a predominant focus on addressing droughts and floods, aligning with the IPCC’s emphasis on water-related impacts in mountains. Notably, watershed management practices emerge as popular solutions, showcasing their capacity to address multiple concerns beyond climate impacts. Education and awareness, along with land use practices, dominate the types of solutions, reflecting their positive impact on project acceptability and low associated risk of maladaptation. Agricultural land and forests are the main ecosystems where solutions are reported, with an evident association with education and awareness and land use change solutions. Most SDGs and Sendai targets are found to be addressed by the solutions emphasising the importance of documenting project experiences as way to bridge previously reported gaps between policy frameworks and on-the-ground implementation. Despite community involvement being high in many of the solutions, challenges such as gender inequality persists. While solutions often demonstrate local relevance and depth of change, upscaling remains challenging, with limited evidence of mainstreaming and replication. Sustainability criteria are moderately met, incorporating inclusive decision-making but with uncertainty regarding long-term plans. Furthermore, findings underscore the significance of co-developing and maintaining adaptation solution portals, illustrating how this approach enriches our understanding of adaptation progress in mountains. Moreover, this research contributes to broadening the scope of systematic adaptation assessments by providing a nuanced perspective that integrates local needs and diverse knowledge systems. In essence, this study makes a valuable contribution to the evolving landscape of adaptation research, emphasizing the importance of practical insights and collaborative efforts to address the complex challenges posed by climate-related impacts and corresponding adaptation efforts.

Advances in research on current and projected heat-related risks from climate change and the associated responses have rapidly developed over the past decade. Modelling architectures of climate impacts and heat-related health risks have become increasingly sophisticated alongside a growing number of experiments and socioeconomic studies, and possible options for heat-related health adaptation are increasingly being catalogued and assessed. However, despite this progress, these efforts often remain isolated streams of research, substantially hampering our ability to contribute to evidence-informed decision making on responding to heat-related health risks. We argue that the integration of scientific efforts towards more holistic research is urgently needed to tackle fragmented evidence and identify crucial knowledge gaps, so that health research can better anticipate and respond to heat-related health risks in the context of a changing climate. In this Personal View, we outline six building blocks, each constituting a research stream, but each needed as part of a more integrated research framework—namely, projected heat-related health risks; adaptation options; the feasibility and effectiveness of adaptation; synergies, trade-offs, and co-benefits of adaptation; adaptation limits and residual risks; and adaptation pathways. We outline their respective importance and discuss their benefits for health-related research and policy.

Abstract Risiken für die Gesellschaft, die aufgrund einer Kombination von meteorologischen Extremereignissen ausgelöst und durch Prozesskaskaden verstärkt werden, sind schwierig zu analysieren und noch kaum erforscht, insbesondere auch im Kontext von Klimaanpassung. In diesem Beitrag stellen wir die Ergebnisse einer Fallstudie vor, deren Ziel es war, Wissenslücken und «blinde Flecken» in Bezug auf kombinierte Klimarisiken zu schliessen. In einer semiquantitativen Analyse wurde als Ausgangslage die Kumulation von zwei aufeinanderfolgenden sehr trockenen und warmen Jahreszeiten angenommen und die möglichen Auswirkungen auf den Schutzwald im Misox (GR) untersucht. In einer umfangreichen Befragung schätzten 29 Fachpersonen aus Praxis, Forschung und Verwaltung die Wahrscheinlichkeit für einen Verlust der Schutzfunktion in verschiedenen Gefährdungsszenarien ein. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass einzelne Gefahren, die durch das Extremereignis ausgelöst werden können (z.B. Trockenheit, Borkenkäferbefall, Sturm), die Schutzfunktion des Waldes wahrscheinlich nicht beeinträchtigen. In Szenarien, in denen Gefahren kombiniert auftreten, erwarten die meisten Fachpersonen zumindest einen teilweisen Verlust der Schutzfunktion. Sie favorisieren Massnahmen, welche die Waldstruktur durch Verbesserung der Verjüngung stärken, insbesondere eine Reduktion des Wildbestandes. Um die Widerstandsfähigkeit der alpinen Schutzwälder gegenüber dem Klimawandel zu gewährleisten, ist es von entscheidender Bedeutung, dass Anpassungsplanung und Präventionsmassnahmen das Risiko kombinierter Extremereignisse und der damit verbundenen Gefahren berücksichtigen, welche die Wälder durch kumulative und kaskadenartige Effekte bedrohen können.