Rising waterFlooding
Heavy rain and overwhelmed drainage can quickly turn streets, homes, and services into flood-risk zones.
Listen to climate risks in cities
Climate risks are often described through numbers, maps, and reports. This section starts with something more immediate: the sounds of urban hazards.
Heat stressExtreme heat
Heatwaves become more dangerous in dense cities, where buildings and roads store heat and slow night-time cooling.
Breathing stressAir pollution
Heat, traffic fumes, wildfire smoke, and stagnant air can combine into a serious urban health risk.
Strong windStorms
Strong winds and intense rainfall can disrupt transport, power, buildings, and public space.
Fire and smokeWildfire
Wildfire smoke and nearby burning landscapes can affect urban air quality, health, and emergency systems.
Compound impactsMore cascading risks
Climate hazards can interact across health, energy, transport, housing, water, and emergency systems.
Explore more risksClimate tipping points in cities
Climate risks in cities do not always increase smoothly. Heat, flooding, air pollution, and infrastructure pressure can accumulate quietly, then suddenly cross a threshold where everyday systems begin to fail.
Accumulating pressure
Climate stress builds up across the city through heat, flooding, air pollution, and pressure on infrastructure.
Explore this stageCrossing thresholds
When stress exceeds the capacity of urban systems, small changes can trigger disproportionate impacts.
Explore this stageCascading urban impacts
These impacts can cascade across health, mobility, energy, housing, and social inequality.
Explore this stageEvery fraction matters
Explore how rising global temperatures reshape pressures on urban health, water and food systems, coasts, and infrastructure.
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