The Climate Risk Index is a long-running benchmark series, initiated in 2006, that provides a comparative, country-level view of exposure and vulnerability to extreme weather events. It is published annually and updated as new historical data become available across successive editions.

The purpose of the series is to place realised physical climate risks into a consistent analytical framework. It is designed to support understanding of how extreme weather events affect countries over time, and to inform climate-related discussions across policy, economic, and financial contexts.

Methodologically, the benchmark draws on internationally recognised disaster and socio-economic datasets to assess human and economic impacts from rapid-onset extreme weather events. It applies a standardised scoring approach that combines absolute and relative indicators, enabling cross-country comparison and analysis across both short-term and longer-term time horizons. The index is explicitly backward-looking and does not provide forward projections of climate impacts.

For finance professionals, the series can be used as a reference tool for assessing historical physical climate risk exposure at a sovereign or regional level. It supports high-level risk screening, contextualisation of climate-related financial risks, and integration into broader frameworks such as portfolio exposure analysis, sovereign risk assessment, and climate-related disclosure, when complemented with forward-looking risk tools.