differing from other attempts to assess vulnerability to climate change our assessment only considers the expected impact of climate change on physical variables these variables are of course likely to have socioeconomic consequences but they are not socioeconomic variables the rationale behind such an index is twofold second this physical index does not involve an assessment of the expected impact of climate change on variables such as health and agriculture which unavoidably is highly uncertain and debatable the physical index can simply be seen as an intermediary step to assess the link between climate change and these economic variables