Residents of islands nations are increasingly finding themselves threatened as sea level rise and more frequent and intense extreme weather events combine to form what are known as “compound risks” to the island nations. Moving forward, it is important for residents of these nations to take these compound risks into consideration when planning for the future. 

At the University of Delaware, Shuai Wang, an assistant professor of meteorology and climate science in the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, is trying to help island and coastal communities do just that, as he most recently presented to residents of Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, at a workshop hosted by the International Monetary Fund. 

Wang explained that compound risks occur when a single extreme weather event, such as an intense coastal storm, or multiple sequential events, like sea level rise, interact and compound the negative effects to a coastal community or island nation. 

Having arrived at UD in August of 2023, Wang was trained as a meteorologist, received his doctorate from the Imperial College London in the United Kingdom and went on to earn his postdoctoral degree at Princeton University. 

His focus is on extreme weather and climate events, with an interest in hurricanes and flooding. 

“I look at extreme weather events and I try to combine them with the long-term climate risk,” said Wang. “For example, if there is a hurricane that makes landfall, then we will have extreme precipitation and there will be a high storm surge. Then, this high storm surge is also on top of the slow growth of a rising sea level. I try to combine all those extreme conditions at different time scales to analyze the compound risks, which have increased in recent years in certain areas of the country and the world.” 

Recently, he has started to look at regions within 200 kilometers to any coastal line and has found a significant increase, globally, in tropical cyclone frequency. 

“That means the cyclones are getting closer to us and so this increase in the coastal offshore region is a very dangerous signal because the energy of a hurricane comes from the warm ocean and that if we see more cyclone activity near the coast and over the ocean, that means cyclone can continue grabbing energy from the warm ocean,” said Wang. “That means they have a continuous energy source. They gather energy from the ocean and at the same time, they dump their energy over the coastal region.” 

For an area like the Seychelles, this compound effect could prove disastrous. 

Wang served as a technical assistant at the workshop provided by the International Monetary Fund. The workshop was required by the Central Bank of Seychelles to look at residential stress tests and a climate risk analysis. Wang said sea-level rise, on top of an extreme weather event such as a hurricane that makes landfall, would increase the water level and pose an extreme threat to the nation. 

When it comes to this type of climate work, Wang said it is important to bridge the gap between scientists and end users. This workshop helped him to get a much better understanding of the bigger picture issues facing the residents of the Seychelles. Having previously provided data for a workshop in the Maldives, Wang enjoyed the opportunity to be more involved in this latest workshop. 

“I got this opportunity to see what it is like from the beginning of the story in the Seychelles, which involved climate predictions, all the way to stress testing,” said Wang. “I also got to talk to the end user to see what kind of data they need and or how they use the data. I think if we understand how they use the data, then we will have a clearer idea of how we should prepare it.” 

Wang said he believes there is a good market out there for induvial to interact with scientists, especially around climate related issues. 

“Everyone wants to understand what is happening with climate change because of government regulations or just their own concern: they want to understand the potential risk due to their own property or assets,” said Wang. “They want to understand it, but they don't know where to find the data. For the scientific community, we've been working on producing lots of data on this for many years, so we need to find a good connection between scientists and the public. I think this workshop helped me find a good place to apply what we are doing every day.” 

When he returned from the Seychelles, Wang adjusted his curriculum to better show the intersection between climate and economics. 

He believes that there is an opportunity for more collaboration between the economic and meteorological field and said there are a few students in his classes that actually switched directly from economics to studying meteorology. 

“Those students are still very interested in the financial world, and I think it’s great when you can combine your knowledge [of meteorology] with your financial knowledge and I think UD is a very good place to do that,” said Wang. “I think this is a rapidly growing area and one of my students told me that he didn’t know if he made the right choice in changing from economics to meteorology. He has always been very interested in both areas and now that I am teaching a little bit of both, he thinks this is the perfect place to use what he has learned.”