Climate Attribution: Quantifying the true perpetrators of natural disasters.

Written by Lois Parshley

When the Argentine government restricted wheat exports and warned people to stay home, a group of scientists from around the world logged on to Zoom, an online conferencing software - part of the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group. The Climate Research Collaboration, founded in 2014 by Friedrich Otto and Gert Jan van Aldenburg, wants to answer a fundamental question that has long vexed people: Is climate change exacerbating extreme weather events? If so, to what extent? The ultimate goal of WWA is to provide the public, the media, policymakers, emergency managers and urban planners with accurate analysis when a disaster occurs to help them understand how to prepare for and respond to the next one.

In 2021, for example, a heat wave swept across the Pacific Northwest of the United States, and less than a week later, the panel issued a comprehensive, detailed assessment based on the available science. The basic conclusion of the report is that these record-breaking disasters would hardly have been possible without human-caused climate change, and that temperatures would not have been "so extreme, even far outside the temperature range observed in historical observations." Another example is the spring of 2022, when large areas of India and Pakistan experienced heat waves that threatened the lives of local residents, and the panel estimated that climate change made heat waves here hotter and more likely to occur. And when large areas of Pakistan flooded last summer, the panel noted that climate change may have increased rainfall there by as much as 50 percent.

Today's scientists have made great strides in response speed and accuracy when analyzing extreme weather. A decade ago, many scientists were reluctant to talk about how climate change might affect specific extreme weather events. But now, the field "has completely changed," Otto - now a professor of global climate science at Oxford University, whose office walls are covered with maps of the world - told me. When describing the history of attribution science, she is very blunt: "In the beginning people would say, 'It can't be done,' 'the model isn't good enough,' and so on. But now we know what to do."

In 2014, attribution research was difficult to conduct or follow up on in a timely manner, in part because findings often required peer review for more than a year. To address this problem, WWA has designed a process for rapidly launching research and releasing the results directly to the public.

A decade ago, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said attribution science was not yet "fulfilling its intended purpose." In contrast, the IPCC report released in 2021 said attribution science was "robust" enough. The science of attribution is now able to quantify definitively how large the impact of climate change will be. This has transformed every aspect of society, from insurance claims and court trials to international negotiations. Otto also hopes the WWA report will show the government exactly why it wants to reduce carbon emissions. So last December, as high temperatures scorched Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, Otto and other members of the WWA were in action.

Climate Attribution: Quantifying the true perpetrators of natural disasters.

Written by Lois Parshley

When the Argentine government restricted wheat exports and warned people to stay home, a group of scientists from around the world logged on to Zoom, an online conferencing software - part of the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group. The Climate Research Collaboration, founded in 2014 by Friedrich Otto and Gert Jan van Aldenburg, wants to answer a fundamental question that has long vexed people: Is climate change exacerbating extreme weather events? If so, to what extent? The ultimate goal of WWA is to provide the public, the media, policymakers, emergency managers and urban planners with accurate analysis when a disaster occurs to help them understand how to prepare for and respond to the next one.

In 2021, for example, a heat wave swept across the Pacific Northwest of the United States, and less than a week later, the panel issued a comprehensive, detailed assessment based on the available science. The basic conclusion of the report is that these record-breaking disasters would hardly have been possible without human-caused climate change, and that temperatures would not have been "so extreme, even far outside the temperature range observed in historical observations." Another example is the spring of 2022, when large areas of India and Pakistan experienced heat waves that threatened the lives of local residents, and the panel estimated that climate change made heat waves here hotter and more likely to occur. And when large areas of Pakistan flooded last summer, the panel noted that climate change may have increased rainfall there by as much as 50 percent.

Today's scientists have made great strides in response speed and accuracy when analyzing extreme weather. A decade ago, many scientists were reluctant to talk about how climate change might affect specific extreme weather events. But now, the field "has completely changed," Otto - now a professor of global climate science at Oxford University, whose office walls are covered with maps of the world - told me. When describing the history of attribution science, she is very blunt: "In the beginning people would say, 'It can't be done,' 'the model isn't good enough,' and so on. But now we know what to do."

In 2014, attribution research was difficult to conduct or follow up on in a timely manner, in part because findings often required peer review for more than a year. To address this problem, WWA has designed a process for rapidly launching research and releasing the results directly to the public.

A decade ago, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said attribution science was not yet "fulfilling its intended purpose." In contrast, the IPCC report released in 2021 said attribution science was "robust" enough. The science of attribution is now able to quantify definitively how large the impact of climate change will be. This has transformed every aspect of society, from insurance claims and court trials to international negotiations. Otto also hopes the WWA report will show the government exactly why it wants to reduce carbon emissions. So last December, as high temperatures scorched Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, Otto and other members of the WWA were in action.