Friederike Otto

Climatologist

The extent to which a particular flood, heatwave, drought or storm is linked to climate change has never been well understood.

But Otto, one of the authors of the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is changing that. She is the driving force behind World Weather Attribution, an international project working to prove how far not only patterns in weather but specific events are influenced by climate change. It’s an innovative area of climate science that will have very real implications for insurance companies—as well as for countries arguing they deserve compensation for the climate-related devastation they are experiencing.