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Climate-Informed Decision-Making and Risk Management

This four-week course will give you the skills to assess physical climate risk and analyze climate vulnerabilities to inform climate-related decision-making and compliance in any sector or industry.

Course level: Introductory
Course starts: Oct 24, 2024
Enrollments close: Oct 23, 2024
Live sessions: Thursdays 8:00am - 9:30am PT

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Taught by

Alison Smart

Executive Director, Probable Futures

Spencer Glendon

Founder, Probable Futures

  • 4 weeks / 4 hours per week
  • Complete a climate risk assessment
  • Class recordings available
  • 100% online
  • Completion certificate

About this course

Climate change creates a risk of adverse consequences across communities and industries, highlighting the urgent need for professional training on climate risk assessment. In this course, Probable Futures will leverage accessible climate science along with practical risk frameworks and processes to teach fellows the essential skill of assessing physical climate risk for decision-making and compliance. Fellows will become familiar with the legacy of climate stability in our daily lives, explore granular projections of physical climate impacts in various locations, and learn how to utilize climate model data for risk analysis. 

Fellows will then apply risk and vulnerability frameworks to climate case studies, first as a group and then independently, assessing physical climate risk in real-world scenarios in their industry or workplace. At the end of the course, fellows will be prepared to analyze the physical risk and vulnerability of an asset, organization, region, or industry, use climate data to inform decisions related to supply chain, policy, assets, insurance, and more, and assess risk for disclosure purposes.

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Who is this program for?

Senior Leadership

Gain a functional understanding of climate and its relevance to modern society and apply frameworks for climate risk thinking and management.

Sustainability professionals

Understand a new perspective on climate change and how climate underpins society, and learn a decision-making framework to manage climate risks.

Supply chain managers

Assess physical climate risk across supply chains using climate data.

Heads of operations, procurement, or strategy

Assess physical climate risk across a business or organization’s operations.

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What climate skills you'll learn

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Navigate climate data

Leveraging an understanding of climate science and warming scenarios, responsibly evaluate and use climate model data to analyze projections of future climate conditions.

Climate risk assessment

Utilize climate-risk frameworks and processes to analyze climate risks and vulnerabilities in your work and industry and incorporate risks into decision-making.

webinar concluded

Exploring place-based climate risk with Probable Futures

  • Oct 3, 2024
  • 8:00am - 9:00am PT
Join Spencer Glendon and Alison Smart from Probable Futures for a discussion of recent instances of place-based climate risk and its intersection with society. They will dive into some case studies highlighting the physical impacts of climate change and the risks associated with climate’s underpinning of modern society.
Watch recording

Course partner

Probable Futures is a non-profit climate literacy initiative that makes practical tools, stories, and resources available online to everyone, everywhere.

Meet the course creators

Alison Smart

Executive Director, Probable Futures

Alison Smart came to the issue of climate change after serving in leadership roles at world-class arts and cultural organizations for over a decade. As Vice President for Strategy and Advancement at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, Alison helped transform the organization’s funding model, branding, and communications strategy. Today, as Executive Director of Probable Futures, she is committed to providing opportunities for people worldwide to deeply understand climate change and take action to prepare for its impacts. In her role, she convenes leaders across science, design, technology, business, and culture to develop useful, resonant, and beautiful climate change tools and resources.

Spencer Glendon

Founder, Probable Futures

Spencer Glendon is working to make the consequences of climate change more vivid, intuitive, and useful. For 18 years, Spencer was a Macroanalyst, Partner, and Director of Investment Research at Wellington Management, a firm with more than $1 trillion in client assets. In that role, he endeavored to understand issues that could affect markets but that fell outside of the typical silos in finance, eventually focusing on climate change. Spencer founded Probable Futures in 2020 to help democratize climate science and build bridges between climate science and other disciplines. In addition to his role at Probable Futures, Spencer serves as a senior fellow at Woodwell Climate, spends time as a pro bono consultant and public speaker across industries and communities, and is an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School. Spencer holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.

Course schedule

Week One: Climate stability and instability
  • Readings/viewing: Climate Handbook (Probable Futures): Stability, Heat; Human niche, human behavior, and human nature(The Royal Society)
  • Assignment: Identify examples of assumptions of climate stability in society
  • Readings/viewing: Climate models (Probable Futures); Wet-bulb heat map explainer (Probable Futures); Degrees of warming
  • Assignment: Exercise and demonstrate good use of climate data
  • Readings/viewing: Climate Handbook (Probable Futures): Risk, Water; Visualizing our Changing Climate with Probable Futures (Harvard Business School)
  • Assignment: Identify and assess relevant physical climate risk
  • Readings/viewing: Climate Handbook (Probable Futures): Complexity, Land
  • Assignment: Complete a climate risk assessment for a sector or region of your choice

Pricing and expected commitment

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Four-week (4 hours per week) online learning experience

The program will be offered from Oct 24 to Nov 14, 2024

Enrollments close on Oct 23, 2024

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Frequently asked questions

The course is four weeks long and will be offered from Oct 24 to Nov 14, 2024. Live sessions will run on Thursdays from 8:00 am – 9:30 am PT and are structured with 60 minutes of content delivery and 30 minutes of discussion. Attendance is strongly encouraged, but recordings will also be made available.

This course is an essential foundation for any professional looking to navigate a changing climate future and make better, more climate-aware decisions to minimize bad outcomes. Specifically, anyone whose job involves decision-making around risk will learn essential skills for incorporating climate data into their day-to-day responsibilities.

Yes. No prerequisites are required for this course, and we welcome participants from all backgrounds and regions worldwide to participate.

Several organizations have learning or professional development budgets for their employees. We encourage you to enquire about and utilize this budget to attend the course. Terra.do will help you get reimbursed for the course by providing an invoice, a certificate, and any other documentation you need. If you have your company’s approval, we can arrange for your company to pay directly.

We expect to run more cohorts given the ongoing demand for this course.

Financial aid is not available for this course.

If you have a question about this course that isn’t covered in the FAQ, please email us at climateriskmanagement@terra.do

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