Recent scientific advances make it possible to assign extreme events to human-induced climate change and historical emissions. These developments allow losses and damage associated with such events to be assigned country-level responsibility.
References
Adoption of the Paris Agreement Article 8 (UNFCCC, 2015).
Adoption of the Paris Agreement Article 52 (UNFCCC, 2015).
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Article 1 (UN, 1992).
Thompson, A. & Otto, F. E. L. Climatic Change 133, 439–451 (2015).
Mace, M. J. & Verheyen, R. Rev. Eur. Comparative Int. Environ. Law 25, 197–214 (2016).
Mechler, R. & Schinko, T. Science 354, 290–292 (2016).
Fuglestvedt, J. S. & Kallbekken, S. Nat. Clim. Change 6, 19–20 (2016).
Skeie, R. B. et al. Env. Res. Lett. 12, 024022 (2017).
Thornton, J. & Covington, H. Nat. Geosci. 9, 3–5 (2016).
Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change (National Academies, 2016).
Herring, S. C. et al. (eds) Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 97 (Special Suppl.), S1–S145 (2016).
Hannart, A., Vera, C., Otto, F. E. L. & Cerne, B. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 96 (Special Suppl.), 41–45 (2015).
Schaller, N. et al. Nat. Clim. Change 6, 627–634 (2016).
Chronology — Loss and Damage (UNFCCC, 2017); http://go.nature.com/2hMKVog
How rare were the unusually high temperatures around the North Pole in November–December 2016 and how were they influenced by anthropogenic climate change? Climate Central (21 December 2016).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
F.O., M.A. and J.F. had the idea for the paper. F.O., R.S., J.F. and T.B. designed the experiments. F.O. and R.S. conducted the experiments. All authors wrote the paper.
Corresponding author
Supplementary information
Supplementary information
Supplementary Figures and Tables (PDF 440 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Otto, F., Skeie, R., Fuglestvedt, J. et al. Assigning historic responsibility for extreme weather events. Nature Clim Change 7, 757–759 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3419
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3419
- Springer Nature Limited
This article is cited by
-
Influence of large-scale circulation and local feedbacks on extreme summer heat in Argentina in 2022/23
Communications Earth & Environment (2024)
-
National contributions to climate change due to historical emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide since 1850
Scientific Data (2023)
-
Information about historical emissions drives the division of climate change mitigation costs
Nature Communications (2023)
-
Quantifying generational and geographical inequality of climate change
Scientific Reports (2023)
-
2022 early-summer heatwave in Southern South America: 60 times more likely due to climate change
Climatic Change (2023)