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.

Rising waterFlooding

Heavy rain and overwhelmed drainage can quickly turn streets, homes, and services into flood-risk zones.

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.

Climate tipping points in cities

Tipping does not happen through one pathway. The Global Tipping Points Report 2025 distinguishes threshold-driven, shock- or noise-induced, and rate-induced mechanisms. These are useful conceptual lenses for urban systems, but they do not imply that every city has one universal tipping temperature or threshold.

Three-phase tipping process showing pre-tipping, reorganisation, and stabilisation

Threshold-driven tipping

A system can tip when the magnitude of forcing crosses a critical threshold and its previous stable state is lost.

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Shock/noise-induced tipping

When resilience is weakened, a shock or fluctuation can push a system into a different state even before average forcing reaches a fixed threshold.

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Rate-induced tipping

A system can tip when forcing changes faster than it can adjust, even if the static critical threshold has not yet been reached.

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Figure source: Global Tipping Points Report 2025, Figure 1.1.1; reprinted in the report from Milkoreit et al. (2024).

Every fraction matters

Explore how rising global temperatures reshape pressures on urban health, water and food systems, coasts, and infrastructure.

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