‘I am an optimistic person’: the scientist who studies climate catastrophes

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The heat was very high and the humidity was very low. She said that if there was a single spark, London would burn again.

Otto spent her working life looking into the apocalypse of extreme weather, the homes it destroys, the lives it takes, the children it leaves orphans, and she found herself inside one of her own studies.

The world's only rapid reaction force of climate scientists is led by Otto and a small group of researchers. They target extreme weather across the world almost as it happens, reach out to local people on the ground, and carry out deep, rigorous statistical analysis, which is transforming our understanding of how human-caused global warming is affecting the planet and our lives.

It has been difficult for scientists to say whether a single weather event is related to global warming. The connection between the string of disasters the world is suffering and global warming is much clearer thanks to Otto's work. She was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people.

Otto is a senior lecturer at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College in London, where she wears a striped blazer, leggings, and pink sneakers. A physics graduate with a PhD in the philosophy of science, she moved to London with her son just over a year ago from Oxford University.

It was Allen who gave her the gift that unlocked her future. I was told to do something with the large ensemble of climate models here.

I was given a large amount of data and was able to build statistics about rare and extreme events.

Otto and her colleague Geert Jan van Oldenborgh were able to create the world's first climate attribution unit due to the information they had.

The journey from the creation of the World Weather Attribution unit to its current iteration started with a paper written by Otto and Oldenborgh. The paper was peer reviewed and published after the event.

It was a breakthrough moment when the chief scientist at the Climate Central suggested that the work would be more powerful if it could be done more quickly. Otto said there was no reason for it to take so long. The methodology that we used doesn't take a lot of time to run, so we were able to do it.

Otto's conclusions are still written within the structure of scientific rigor and the available evidence. It is important that we communicate the dangers of extreme weather and the message that it is being created by us.

Otto was looking into the dark center of many disasters, including the tropical storms in Africa, the heat waves in India and Pakistan, and the floods in Brazil.

She was drawn to the starkness of the study. The floods in Nigeria were one of the biggest scientific surprises of the year. Climate change made them more likely. There is a lot that we don't understand in Africa.

Otto says that an extreme weather event becomes a human disaster if the population and region are vulnerable.

The population of west Africa is so dependent on regular rain that any change is very dangerous.

In 2022, there are floods in Germany. People died because of the vulnerability.

The country has an early warning system. She said that it was a source of hope that the vulnerability of a population would drive how much of an impact each event would have.

Otto tries to stay out of the way of the climate crisis.

I am positive. It makes me want to do more to make a difference so that the changes we need will happen.

Otto could be similar to the character in Don't Look Up. An asteroid will hit the planet in six months, but no one wants to listen to him.

Otto didn't like the film's metaphor. If only we could invest in technology to fix it, there would be no need for the analogy.

Climate change is different from that. If we invest in social systems, make our societies more resilient, and change our economic system from burning fossil fuels, we will be able to deal with this social issue.

She would like to see Climate Attribution used more frequently by forecasters to give a more complete understanding of the role of climate change.

The interplay between the social drivers of things like population vulnerability and the climate system could be focused on by my team.