Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences
Tohoku University

The societal impacts of extreme climate events have become a critical global challenge. At the same time, demographic structure is rapidly changing in the world, with young populations surging in Africa while Japan and Europe face rapid aging. The combination of environmental and demographic changes creates complex impacts of climate changes.

I examine how age, gender, and socioeconomic status shape vulnerability to environmental stress and shock. Using integrated global datasets and fine-scale regional data with spatial-temporal analysis, I have shown that small floods in Africa can trigger large population displacement, that water insecurity disproportionately affects women, and that heat-related mortality rises where population aging coincides with increasing temperatures. In Mongolia, household panel data reveal that an extreme winter disaster widen economic inequality among herders for years after the shock. Building on these findings, I develop climate-induced migration models to identify who is most at risk, where, and under what conditions. This work bridges environmental science and demography to show spatial and temporal patterns of vulnerability and support targeted and equitable climate adaptation.