Impacts Of Climate Change – Foreseeable Or Unforeseeable? Drafting Force Majeure Clauses In The Era Of Climate Uncertainty

According to the American Meteorological Society's State of the Climate in 2017 publication, 2017 was one of the hottest years in recorded history.¹ With an increasing number of heat-related events occurring around the world this summer – from raging fires in California to Arctic Sweden and down to Greece on the sunny Mediterranean, as well as record-breaking heat in Japan, Korea and parts of Europe – scientists are now able to measure the impacts of human-induced climate change on extreme weather events, using a combination of observation, current information from weather stations and historical data. In a recent study, atmospheric scientists have concluded that, as a result of climate change, extreme heat events will become more frequent in the coming decades and occur over a much greater portion of the planet.²