Lessons Learned from Evaluating the Climate Change Risk on a Company’s Supply Chain

Abstract Every economic sector in the United States is directly or indirectly impacted by weather and climate events. Although the assessment of climate change risk is not a novel concept, the majority of such assessments for individual companies are not published in the peer-reviewed literature. This makes it difficult to evaluate the robustness of these analyses and to determine best practices for effectively evaluating climate change risk at the company level. Here, we outline how we collaborated with a Fortune 500 company to assess the physical risks of climate change to their supply chain. Utilizing state-of-the-art climate models, we provide a template for developing climate change report cards and climate risk maps for all of suppliers, as well as the transportation routes between them. The purpose of these evaluations is to communicate risk to local facility managers and company leadership. By sharing our experiences, we hope that climate scientists may gain insights into quantifying and communicating climate risk to the private sector, potentially assisting them in making more informed climate adaptation decisions.