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Climate Science for Serving Society pp 307–337Cite as

Attribution of Weather and Climate-Related Events

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Abstract

Unusual or extreme weather and climate-related events are of great public concern and interest, yet there are often conflicting messages from scientists about whether such events can be linked to climate change. There is clear evidence that climate has changed as a result of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, and that across the globe some aspects of extremes have changed as a result. But this does not imply that human influence has significantly altered the probability of occurrence or risk of every recently observed weather or climate-related event, or that such events are likely to become significantly more or less frequent in the future. Conversely, it is sometimes stated that it is impossible to attribute any individual weather or climate-related event to a particular cause. Such a statement can be interpreted to mean that human-induced climate change could never be shown to be at least partly responsible for any specific weather event, either the probability of its occurrence or its magnitude. There is clear evidence from recent case studies that individual event attribution is a feasible, if challenging, undertaking.

We propose a way forward, through the development of carefully calibrated physically-based assessments of observed weather and climate-related events, to identify changed risk of such events attributable to particular factors including estimating the contributions of factors to event magnitude. Although such event-specific assessments have so far only been attempted for a relatively small number of specific cases, we describe research under way, coordinated as part of the international Attribution of Climate-related Events (ACE) initiative, to develop the science needed to better respond to the demand for timely, objective, and authoritative explanations of extreme events. The paper considers the necessary components of a prospective event attribution system, reviews some specific case studies made to date (Autumn 2000 UK floods, summer 2003 European heatwave, annual 2008 cool US temperatures, July 2010 Western Russia heatwave) and discusses the challenges involved in developing systems to provide regularly updated and reliable attribution assessments of unusual or extreme weather and climate-related events.

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Acknowledgements

 The authors acknowledge the support of the UK FCO in funding meetings of the Attribution of Climate-related Events initiative. The authors acknowledge the support of the International Detection and Attribution Group by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Program Office. DAS received funding from Microsoft Research. PAS and NC were supported by the Joint DECC/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme (GA01101). CH acknowledges the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology Science Budget.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Met Office/Hadley Centre, FitzRoy Road, Exeter, EX1 3PB, UK

    Peter A. Stott & Nikolaos Christidis

  2. School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, OX1 3QY, Oxford, UK

    Myles Allen

  3. NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO, 80305, USA

    Randall M. Dole & Martin Hoerling

  4. Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Maclean Lane, Crowmarsh Gifford, Wallingford, Oxon, OX10 8BB, UK

    Chris Huntingford

  5. ETH Zurich, Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, Zurich, Switzerland

    Pardeep Pall

  6. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Berkeley Lab, MS 50B4230, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA, 94720-8150, USA

    Pardeep Pall & Dáithí Stone

  7. Physical Sciences Division, NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO, 80305, USA

    Judith Perlwitz

  8. University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    Judith Perlwitz

  9. University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, Western Cape, South Africa

    Dáithí Stone

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  1. Peter A. Stott
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  2. Myles Allen
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  3. Nikolaos Christidis
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  4. Randall M. Dole
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  5. Martin Hoerling
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  6. Chris Huntingford
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  7. Pardeep Pall
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  8. Judith Perlwitz
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  9. Dáithí Stone
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Correspondence to Peter A. Stott .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. World Climate Research Programme, World Meteorological Organization, bis, Avenue de la Paix 7, Geneva 2, 1211, Switzerland

    Ghassem R. Asrar

  2. Earth System Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Center Green Drive 3090, Boulder, 80301, Colorado, USA

    James W. Hurrell

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Stott, P.A. et al. (2013). Attribution of Weather and Climate-Related Events. In: Asrar, G., Hurrell, J. (eds) Climate Science for Serving Society. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6692-1_12

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