Compound climate risks to European ports

Abstract

Ports are exposed to multiple climate hazards, including windstorms, floods, and intense rainfall. These hazards often occur simultaneously, thereby amplifying their overall effects. Here, we develop a compound risk assessment that incorporates the probabilities of the joint occurrence of climate hazards and their compound effects on port infrastructure systems. We evaluated the direct infrastructure damages, revenue losses due to disruptions, and operational downtime. Furthermore, we analysed the temporal dependence of climate hazards across multiple ports to understand how compound events trigger economic impacts at the continental scale, tracing the dependency structure from hazards to impacts. This methodology was applied to the European port system, where the results show the importance of considering compound effects when evaluating climate risks. Consideration of compound effects on a continental scale adds up to €360 million in additional direct damages (35% of the annual average direct damages) and €10 million due to loss of service (6% of annual average losses). Moreover, failure to account for the interactions between co-occurring impacts results in an underestimation of €100 million in expected annual losses across European ports.

Published 19 December 2025.