Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

The political (in)significance of extreme weather events

Project description

How extreme weather events do (not) impact climate crisis politics

Climate change is arguably the biggest crisis that many countries across the globe face during the 21st century. It threatens people worldwide with food and water scarcity, extreme heat, increased flooding and economic loss. However, many of the biggest consequences are not immediate. This makes it hard to ensure that governments sign international climate agreements which citizens live up to. In this context, the EU-funded Weather Events project will investigate whether the occurrence of extreme weather events like floods and heatwaves influences climate crisis perceptions and actions, analysing the political impact of such events in American, Dutch and Austrian public spheres. The findings will benefit policymakers and governments, helping them better handle the climate crisis through their responses to extreme weather events.

Objective

Tackling the climate crisis in an appropriate way - making governments sign international climate agreements and letting citizens live up to them - proves difficult. A much-given explanation for this problem is the fact that many of the crisis' consequences are only about to happen in a distant future complicates making them visible and tangible in the present. However, extreme weather events (e.g. floods, heatwaves, hurricanes) might have the potential to break this pattern. This project investigates this potential, through analyzing the political impact of extreme weather in the American, Dutch, and Austrian public spheres. It will include three sub-studies: 1) mixed-method analyses (computational and qualitative investigations) of a wide variety of extreme weather events in newspapers, parliamentary debates, and policy documents from the three country contexts, to research to what extent, how, and why they impact political perceptions of the climate crisis; 2) a comparison of these results to analyses (based on similar data and methods) of the impact of terrorist events, occurrences which often seem to invoke more immediate and substantial political impact than extreme weather events; 3) interviews with public actors (journalists, politicians, scientists), to research the cultural and institutional opportunities and constrains they face in the (non-)creation of extreme weather event impact. All together, this project adds to two relatively under-developed sociological fields: environmental sociology and the sociology of events. On a societal level, it can potentially help politicians and policy makers with how they can, through their responses to extreme weather events, better handle the climate crisis.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01

See all projects funded under this call

Coordinator

KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 175 920,00
Address
OUDE MARKT 13
3000 LEUVEN
Belgium

See on map

Region
Vlaams Gewest Prov. Vlaams-Brabant Arr. Leuven
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data
My booklet 0 0