Static hazard maps tell you where climate risks are today. They don’t tell you how fast those risks are escalating - or how differently they escalate depending on how much the world warms.

That distinction is the subject of this episode.

We examine why treating physical risk as a snapshot rather than a trajectory creates blind spots for anyone making long-horizon decisions about fixed assets; why severity and frequency need to be tracked as separate dimensions; and why the choice of warming pathway - RCP2.6 versus RCP8.5 - can produce materially different exposure profiles for the same location by mid-century.

The episode draws on Emmi’s latest research: global, location-based projections of how acute physical hazards - wildfire, tropical cyclones, coastal flooding, and fluvial flooding - are expected to evolve across climate scenarios and time horizons from 2030 to 2080. We cover how physical hazard change is translated into Average Annual Loss, the normalisation choices that preserve meaningful scenario comparison, and where trajectory-based assessment matters most.

Access the full white paper at https://emmi.io/resource/climate-hazard-maps-physical-risk

Research by Dr. Nicholas Pittman

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