Head of Impacts, Adaptation and Loss & Damage Team (m/f/d)

Job Description

Job description About the Team The Impacts, Adaptation and Loss & Damage Team is Climate Analytics’ scientific and strategic home for work on climate impacts, adaptation, loss and damage, and related economic analysis. The team generates rigorous, policy-relevant and decision-useful evidence on the risks of climate change, adaptation needs and limits, loss and damage, resilience-building, and the economic and social implications of climate impacts, particularly for Small Island Developing States (SIDS), Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and other climate-vulnerable contexts. The team brings together expertise across adaptation science, climate risk, loss and damage, climate economics, and science-policy-diplomacy engagement. Its core purpose is to ensure that the organisation’s work on climate risk, adaptation, and loss and damage is scientifically robust, strategically coherent, relevant to the public and directly useful to decision-makers, particularly in SIDS and LDCs. Our objective is to deliver the science that those most exposed to climate change need to adapt, respond to losses and damage, and shape ambitious, equitable climate action in an era of likely 1.5°C overshoot. The team works in close partnership with the Earth System Science and 1.5°C Overshoot Team, the Diplomacy Team, the Implementation Strategies Team and the regional offices, to ensure that Climate Analytics’ work is grounded in the best available climate science and translated into policy-relevant insights. The Head of the Impacts Adaptation and Loss & Damage Team will be expected to actively maintain this connection so that Climate Analytics’ science remains coherent, integrated and policy-relevant. The Impacts, Adaptation and Loss & Damage Team and the Earth System Science and 1.5°C Overshoot Team are expected to work closely together as connected parts of one integrated science function in the organisation. The Head of this team will be responsible for maintaining strong links with the organisation’s science function, including through shared planning, early joint project and proposal design, coordinated quality assurance, and clear workflows on cross-cutting areas such as 1.5°C overshoot, climate risk, adaptation limits, loss and damage, science synthesis, tools, datasets, and IPCC and UNFCCC support. About the Position The Head of the Impacts, Adaptation and Loss & Damage Team provides strategic, scientific and organisational leadership. The Head is responsible for shaping the team’s scientific direction, strengthening its external profile, ensuring high-quality delivery, building a strong funding pipeline, and supporting group leads and senior experts to produce work that is scientifically cutting-edge and practically relevant. The Head will further develop Climate Analytics’ leading role on climate impacts, adaptation, and loss and damage in an era of increasing climate impacts and likely 1.5°C overshoot, with a particular focus on SIDS and LDCs. They will ensure that the team’s work connects robust science with the needs of countries, institutions and communities on the frontlines of climate change, and contributing to international debates and processes. This role requires a senior scientist and strategic leader with a strong publication record, recognised expertise in climate impacts, adaptation, loss and damage, climate risk, and/or climate economics or a closely related field, and the ability to build an ambitious, high-quality and financially sustainable body of work. Responsibilities Strategic Leadership and Strategy Define and drive the strategic direction of the team, ensuring alignment with Climate Analytics’ mission, organisational priorities and evolving thematic focus areas. Lead the development of a coherent team strategy across adaptation, loss and damage, climate impacts, climate risk and related economics work. Provide intellectual and scientific leadership across the team’s areas of expertise, identifying priority scientific and policy questions where Climate Analytics can make distinctive, high-impact contributions Maintain an active personal research agenda and strengthen the team’s publication record, including peer-reviewed papers, flagship reports, policy-relevant assessments, tools, datasets and high-profile analytical products. Promote innovative methods and approaches for assessing climate risks, adaptation needs, loss and damage, vulnerability, limits to adaptation, economic costs and distributional impacts. Support interdisciplinary analysis that connects physical climate risk, socio-economic vulnerability, adaptation feasibility, financing needs, institutional capacity and implementation pathways. Establish and encourage linkages to the Earth System Science and 1.5°C Overshoot Team to facilitate collaboration and workflows on from climate science to impacts and resilience. Ensure that uncertainty, limits to adaptation, residual risk, non-economic losses and irreversible impacts are treated with scien