ROBERT MUIR-WOOD is chief research officer of Risk Management Solutions. He is also a visiting professor at University College London’s Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction. He is an acknowledged international expert in the forensics of disasters and catastrophe risk modeling. He has a PhD in earth sciences from Cambridge University, where he was also a research fellow. Beyond serving as a lead author on two IPCC reports, he was a technical adviser to “Risky Business,” a 2014 study sponsored by Michael Bloomberg, Henry Paulson, and Thomas Steyer that explores the future costs of climate change in the United States. Since 2007, he has been vice chair of a high-level OECD panel advising on catastrophes. He has also been a writer and journalist, was once editor of the Cambridge University student magazines Broadsheet and Granta, and has been the author of many feature articles for New Scientist. He was founding editor of the European earth science journal Terra Nova. CREDIT: CATHY MASSER