Introducing Clair Barnes and Christian Huggel, new Section Editors for Climate Impacts and Attribution at PLOS Climate

We are delighted to introduce Clair Barnes (Imperial College London, UK) and Christian Huggel (University of Zurich, Switzerland) as the Section Editors for PLOS Climate‘s new section on Climate Impacts and Attribution. In this blog post, we hear about their background and their aspirations for their section of the journal.

Could you tell us about your research background and your current work?

Clair: My background is in statistics – or as I prefer to think of it, statistical science. I’m currently a researcher with the World Weather Attribution group, based at Imperial College London. We carry out rapid attribution studies to evaluate whether, and to what extent, climate change has contributed to extreme weather events. We aim to study events with major humanitarian or ecological impacts, and we try to cover regions and hazards that are currently under-represented in the literature, especially in the Global South. We work closely with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre to ensure that our reports don’t only focus on the extreme weather, but also assess aspects of vulnerability and exposure that combine to turn an extreme weather event into a disaster.

Christian: My research is guided by the recognition that the challenges related to climate change need an interdisciplinary approach. My research group EClim at the Departments of Geography of the University of Zurich studies climate impacts, related hazards and risks and how we can adapt to changing social-environmental systems. The focus of our work is mainly on mountain regions, often where cryosphere plays a role. For instance, we’re investigating hazards and disasters in these regions (e.g. landslides, floods) and how they are related to climate change, or we research how water resources change as glaciers are melting, and what adaptation options are available, feasible and effective.

Why did you decide to join PLOS Climate as a Section Editor? What excites you about the new Climate Impacts and Attribution section of the journal?

Clair: I prefer to work with journals that align with my values – I believe that science should be as open and widely accessible as possible, and I see that prioritised in PLOS journals, so I’m very happy to have been asked to join the team. This new section draws together two fields that are often considered separately, but that are in fact closely related – attribution science can tell us how our weather is changing, but to understand what that really means for people’s lives and livelihoods, we need to understand the resulting changes in the impacts as well. As a Section Editor, I’m looking forward to finding ways to encourage submissions from diverse author groups working across disciplines, to give us a deeper understanding of the challenges arising from climate change, and how we can prepare to face them.

Christian: There are several reasons why I want to engage as a PLOS Climate Section Editor: first, I want to engage with a publisher with whose perspectives and philosophy I can identify, and hence is not a publisher with a hyper-commercial profile. The interdisciplinary profile of PLOS Climate is also important for me.

I like the role of a Section Editor as it brings along some creative power to positively influence a field of research, launch interesting projects, and work with the scientific community to flesh out the research results in attractive and maybe uncommon ways.

I feel climate impacts and attribution is a fascinating field of research, since my first deep dive into it when I started working as a Lead Author for the 5^th Assessment Report of the IPCC more than 15 years ago. While at that time impact attribution was poorly developed, we’ve seen now impressive progress over the past years. I’m excited to take this forward and explore and foster new research directions or facets in this field.

What kinds of submissions would you like to see to the Climate Impacts and Attribution section of PLOS Climate?

Clair: When it comes to understanding the impacts of climate change, an interdisciplinary approach is vital. We need to bring together not only experts in weather, climate, and impact modelling, but also in evaluating the many other socio-economic factors affecting people’s vulnerability and exposure to climate change, even though those factors may not be so easily quantified. I’m looking forward to finding ways to support and encourage that kind of holistic, inter-disciplinary research, which it can sometimes be hard to find a home for.

Personally, I’m also particularly interested in new methodologies for evaluating and attributing the impacts of climate change – particularly in data-sparse regions that are currently under-represented in the literature.

Christian: Climate impacts and attribution is an interdisciplinary field of research and therefore I would like to see submissions with a clear interdisciplinary approach. There is still quite a bit of work to further develop methods for impact attribution, as climate impacts is such a wide field. So methodological work will be important. On the other hand, this is also a field of top relevance for real-world cases, and I see an enormous potential to bring this out.

This can include, for instance, submissions studying how multiple driving factors, including climate change, shape outcomes. Or there is a whole large field emerging around climate litigation where much still needs to be clarified concerning the role of climate attribution.

Ready to submit your work to PLOS Climate? Follow our step-by-step guide to the submission process.