Frequently Asked Questions

Climate Insights has been developed by the most experienced private sector climate modelling and risk assessment team in the world.

We work directly with enormous raw climate projection data and assess every model and data source before its application.

You can talk directly with the Climate Insights team and thus get clear, precise and experienced answers to any technical questions you may have.

The team that developed Climate Insights has applied climate model data they processed and analysed in hundreds of projects around the world – many with and for trusted, returning corporate entities, insurance companies, banks, federal governments, local governments, international financial institutions (Asian Development Bank, World Bank) UN agencies, engineering companies, management consulting firms, universities, and individuals. The experience we have gained over nearly 20 years is unparalleled. Experience counts and accessible expertise is critical.

The team at CLIMsystems that has developed Climate Insights has worked with CMIP 1 and 2, CMIP3, CMIP5 and has processed over 60 variables applying the latest CMIP6 data. We know what data is available and what will become available and what limitations exist and what opportunities can be realised. We adhere to ethical standards in the climate data knowledge generation and will always be transparent and will thoroughly document all the data and methods applied.

The team that is responsible for managing the Climate Insights platform has many relationships with key international institutions. A critical link is membership on a five-member Board representing New Zealand in the ISO TC207 that includes over a dozen standards being written in the adaptation and GHG accounting area. The engagement with the international ISO community means that Climate Insights will continue to evolve with such international standards in mind. Scientists that work on Climate Insights are also registered under the Nairobi Work Programme of the UN. After one year of peer review CLIMsystems was awarded a seven-year position on the New Zealand Ministry of the Environments climate change science panel. We also maintain a membership with CTCN (Climate Technology Centre & Network) administered by the UN Environment Programme. We also are members of the Climate and Development Knowledge Network. The team has also won numerous awards including a Special Achievement Award in GIS with ESRI stemming from our work in making climate information accessible to the world. With over twenty years of experience we have developed extensive networks with experts around the world that form a strong, vibrant and collaborative community.

Two forms of risk are currently covered by Climate Insights. Firstly, physical risk is presented through the provision of baseline and climate change actual values for each location. Future climate model-derived values can also be generated as ‘change from baseline’ values. The latter is critical for assessing acute climate risk in contrast to slow-onset changes. Therefore, the platform is excellent for assessing physical risks for TCFD and other project-based assessments.

Secondly, the platform, based on physical risk options, has a seamless link with a tool for completing risk scores and risk rankings for assets in a portfolio. To our knowledge, no other platforms are available to provide access to climate change model values with risk scoring and ranking. Our financial risk product applying an innovative mathematical approach includes Value at Risk and Disruption to Service outputs that are derived from our off-line service that is driven by the Climate Insights database. With full documentation of the perils considered we lead the world in the direct link between country-level data, risk analysis, future changes in probability with a financial risk product. Our deep engagement with science is currently being directed toward upgrading our transition risk approach that has been developed with partners. These tools are driven by the superior climate data outputs generated by Climate Insights.

Climate Insights includes atmospheric, land and ocean variables and is the most comprehensive source of actionable and defensible climate information for decision making on the planet.

Over fifty variables are included and have been chosen through over twenty years of client engagement in conducting world-class physical risk assessments. New variables are generated through project work and to satisfy client demand. The currently available variables are broken down by group below:

Core Variables

Monthly Precipitation	Monthly Solar Radiation
Monthly Minimum Temperature	Monthly Relative Humidity
Monthly Mean Temperature	Monthly Wind
Monthly Maximum Temperature

Precipitation and Drought

Extreme Precipitation (24 hour)	One-month Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI)
Extreme Precipitation (48 hour)	Three-month Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI)
Extreme Precipitation (72 hour)	Six-month Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI)
	12-month Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI)
One-month Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI)	Six-month Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI)
Three-month Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI)	12-month Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI)

Temperature and Wind

Extreme Wind speed	Minimum temperature days lower 2degC
Days for TN90p when TN > 90th percentile	Days for TX90p when TX > 90th percentile
Days for TX10p when TX < 10th percentile	Days for TN10p when TN < 10th percentile
Normal Effective Temperature	Warm Spell Duration Index
Wind Chill Temperature	Cold Spell Duration Index
Apparent Temperature	Modified Discomfort Index
Yearly Cooling Degree Days	Yearly Growing Degree Days 10 degC
Yearly Heating Degree Days	Yearly Number of Maximum Temperature days > 35.0°C
Yearly Growing Degree Days 4 degC	Yearly Number of Maximum Temperature days > 25.0°C
Yearly Number of Maximum Temperature days > 20.0°C	Yearly Number of Maximum Temperature days > 40.0°C
Yearly Number of Maximum Temperature days > 30.0°C	Yearly Number of Maximum Temperature days > 50.0°C
Yearly Number of Maximum Temperature days > 45.0°C	Air Heat Wave Frequency
Air Heat Wave Days	Normal Effective Temperature
Frost days

Fire and Flood

Forest Fire Danger Index	Keetch Byram Drought Index
Flooded area - Australia and New Zealand

Livestock

Temperature Humidity Index for Cattle	Temperature Humidity Index for Comfort (Cattle)
	Temperature Humidity Index for Physiology (Cattle)

Marine Variables

Marine Variables
Coastal Mean Sea Level Rise with Vertical Land Movement	Coastal Extreme Still High Water-Level
Marine Heat Wave Frequency	Marine Heat Wave Days

As a world-leading supplier of actionable climate information, we have a range of output options available in the Climate Insights platform.

Each analysis is customisable for the range of CMIP6 Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs): SSP1-1.9, SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5. The time slices start from a baseline reference year of 2005 with five-year increments to 2100. Critically, Climate Insights offers the option of generating 5th, 50th and 95th percentile outputs from the super ensembles of GCM and RCM (when available) projection, which provides users with an excellent opportunity to discover the uncertainty range in climate variable outputs. For extremes such as rainfall and wind return period outputs (ARI- annual return interval) cover a range of time slices and are recognised as best-practice approaches to physical climate risk assessment. With Climate Insights such important analytical choices are at your fingertips.

Climate Insights provides a very user-friendly interface that allows you to import CSV format asset registers into the Platform and to create Project areas for storage of not only 1000s of assets but also the criteria you choose for analysis on a project-by-project basis. This is critical for saving not only time but also to guarantee a consistency in approach to physical risk assessments you may undertake. The Platform has been thoroughly audited for security and enterprise logins are available so that teams can work together and in a consistent manner.

Climate Insights offers multiple options for exporting results. Firstly, a default either graphical or tabular display is provided to allow you to query the results before choosing options for exporting. The raw physical risk data along with the relevant risk ranking and scoring data can be easily exported to Excel for further analysis. You can also export individual tables and graphs directly from the app. Furthermore, there is PDF and Word formatted reporting options. The experts at CLIMsystems can work with you to generate a highly customised reporting template for you or your enterprise.

Climate Insights’ development has been achieved through the excellent collaboration between climate modellers, and risk and adaptation experts with extensive experience gained through over 20 years of project work around the world. Quality data is at the heart of all our services. We focus on generating outputs that are robust, actionable, and defensible. Extensive experience means that we have learned what data is available, and appropriate for application to address very specific issues. That is how we are different from other groups generating climate information.

Climate Insights uses a tree structure to manage all spatial data and the global dataset is the root. Other datasets are trimmed into hierarchy branches depending on their spatially containing relationships, while the minimum spatial domain is the leaf of its parent branch. This kind of structure is a critical distinction. Take the country scale as an instance, when a client is using Climate Insights in the USA the data for extreme rainfall is Atlas 14 data, the national standard, that is applied in the USA. For baseline information we apply the USA baseline standard. Similarly, for Australia we apply Australian standards for baselines and use BOM data for extreme rainfall analysis. The bottom-line is this: we apply the best available data for the geographical site under interrogation. We also apply the latest GCM and RCM data available at the temporal scales of monthly, daily, and sub-daily for specific types of analysis.

We maintain the most thoroughly documented climate physical and risk ranking and scoring platform available. The accumulated knowledge of 20 years in the marketplace means we have learned some lessons and continue to strive to have the best and most up-to-date and well-documented data available.

Climate Insights strictly follows IPCC guidelines in data modelling and application. For any specific climate risk analysis, we always adopt peer-reviewed methods. All algorithms and data sets used in modelling are thoroughly documented and traceable. Again, the vast experience our experts have gained over the years means that what is available in Climate Insights is thoroughly tested and has been extensively peer-reviewed, not only by our Scientific Advisory Panel but through external professional reviews.

Climate Insights breadth and depth of knowledge has benefitted from decades of consulting experience. Said with no exaggeration, many tools and processes in Climate Insights have stemmed from consulting projects tasked with shedding light on distinctive problem from around the world. Our team continues to provide consulting services for a wide range of world-class companies. The work has been applied and has influenced the timing of global events (FIFA World Cup 2022) and infrastructure projects valued at over USD 1 billion dollars. Our team has worked in some of the most critical climate zones such as Southern Florida where our consulting experience has been praised for its quality and useability in setting policy and standards for flood assessments. We welcome the opportunity to work with you and to bring our pool of highly qualified partners together to solve whatever climate-related problem you face.

We can cost access to Climate Insights for single asset risk assessments to hundreds of thousands of assets. We can license access on an annual basis or to whatever length of time you require to satisfy your needs.