3. Race against time

Despite the advances in attribution science, some experts argue that climate scientists still underestimate the impact of their conclusions - an important factor in enabling attribution science to move out of academic circles and into public processes such as court trials. A related problem is that the evidence cited in court often lags behind the latest scientific advances. In a 2021 study in Nature Climate Change, Autor and her collaborators examined 73 climate lawsuits from around the world and found that the climate evidence cited in the cases was 10 years out of date. "I know it takes some time for new scientific advances to filter through to the courtroom," Otto added, "but it should be faster."

The WWA's work has influenced at least one court decision. The team's study of Australia's 2019-2020 wildfires suggests that climate change has increased the overall risk of seasonal fires by eight times. In 2021, when an Australian court found that the NSW Environmental Protection Department had failed to effectively protect the environment, they cited this finding and ordered the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Extreme weather is becoming more frequent, but keeping up with and adapting to this change is not easy. This past winter, a series of powerful atmospheric river storms brought heavy rain and snow to the U.S. state of California, killing more than 20 people. However, the WWA decided not to study these events, in part because the demand for attribution research far exceeded their current capacity. "It's a small organization with limited financial support," said Michael Weiner, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the United States.

Like WWA, Weiner and collaborator Kevin Reed of Stony Brook University in the United States tried to give attribution analysis in almost real time. They analyzed Hurricane Ian in September 2022, when it was still raging in Florida. They completed their analysis quickly, in part because they had just published a paper on the 2020 hurricane season, which found that climate change caused the season to be 5 percent wetter than usual. All they had to do was put the data about "Ian" into the previous numerical model. In the end, the team decided to skip the lengthy peer review process and publish the report in the first place, which claimed that climate change may have increased Ian's rainfall by 10 percent.

Weiner often had to turn down requests, which led him to publish a paper in the journal plos Climate in 2022 arguing that many attribution studies could now be considered routine and should bravely move out of academia. Attribution science is mature, and "it should be businesslike like weather forecasting," Weiner said. Otto also welcomes the change. "I would really like this project to be taken over by NOAA," she said, "or by the European Union's Earth observation program, the Copernicus program." Not only will this allow the scientific community to do more, but it will also influence national decisions more directly."

In the United States, NOAA recently launched a pilot project, led by David Easterlin, to develop the application potential of attribution science. NOAA's advantages are clear: it has access to real-time data from weather stations across the country and can use climate models from Princeton University's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. Because of NOAA's good reputation, Easterlin wants "NOAA to announce to the public: 'Climate change made this event 15 percent worse.'" This will likely change the minds of many climate change skeptics."

Susan Moser, a social scientist and consultant who focuses on climate adaptation, said that as attribution science continues to evolve, it has an important role to play in helping society deal with a variety of increasing risks, from informing building codes to warning about carbon reductions. Professional engineering societies have moved in the direction of climate-resilient design, such as building wider seawalls to accommodate rising sea levels. She noted that states like California are looking at how to incorporate climate information into their infrastructure planning, a reform that will play an important role in the state's rebuilding efforts after recent floods.

For some countries, it will be easier than others to mobilize funds to fight climate change. To this end, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) established a "loss and damage" fund in 2022, hoping to help low-income countries with relatively small greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible. However, a clear definition of "climate-induced damage" is still lacking.

If the science of attribution had been developed decades ago, when the problem of climate change was just becoming known to the general public, using attribution science to explain today's extreme weather events might not have been as daunting as it is now, Otto said. Today, her work has become like a race against time, after all, "people are suffering and there is nothing they can do about the consequences."

(Translation: Du Yixin, an engineer at the Shaanxi Institute of Meteorological Science, mainly engaged in atmospheric environment research and meteorological science popularization)

Guangming Daily (Page 14, August 17, 2023)

3. Race against time

Despite the advances in attribution science, some experts argue that climate scientists still underestimate the impact of their conclusions - an important factor in enabling attribution science to move out of academic circles and into public processes such as court trials. A related problem is that the evidence cited in court often lags behind the latest scientific advances. In a 2021 study in Nature Climate Change, Autor and her collaborators examined 73 climate lawsuits from around the world and found that the climate evidence cited in the cases was 10 years out of date. "I know it takes some time for new scientific advances to filter through to the courtroom," Otto added, "but it should be faster."

The WWA's work has influenced at least one court decision. The team's study of Australia's 2019-2020 wildfires suggests that climate change has increased the overall risk of seasonal fires by eight times. In 2021, when an Australian court found that the NSW Environmental Protection Department had failed to effectively protect the environment, they cited this finding and ordered the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Extreme weather is becoming more frequent, but keeping up with and adapting to this change is not easy. This past winter, a series of powerful atmospheric river storms brought heavy rain and snow to the U.S. state of California, killing more than 20 people. However, the WWA decided not to study these events, in part because the demand for attribution research far exceeded their current capacity. "It's a small organization with limited financial support," said Michael Weiner, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the United States.

Like WWA, Weiner and collaborator Kevin Reed of Stony Brook University in the United States tried to give attribution analysis in almost real time. They analyzed Hurricane Ian in September 2022, when it was still raging in Florida. They completed their analysis quickly, in part because they had just published a paper on the 2020 hurricane season, which found that climate change caused the season to be 5 percent wetter than usual. All they had to do was put the data about "Ian" into the previous numerical model. In the end, the team decided to skip the lengthy peer review process and publish the report in the first place, which claimed that climate change may have increased Ian's rainfall by 10 percent.

Weiner often had to turn down requests, which led him to publish a paper in the journal plos Climate in 2022 arguing that many attribution studies could now be considered routine and should bravely move out of academia. Attribution science is mature, and "it should be businesslike like weather forecasting," Weiner said. Otto also welcomes the change. "I would really like this project to be taken over by NOAA," she said, "or by the European Union's Earth observation program, the Copernicus program." Not only will this allow the scientific community to do more, but it will also influence national decisions more directly."

In the United States, NOAA recently launched a pilot project, led by David Easterlin, to develop the application potential of attribution science. NOAA's advantages are clear: it has access to real-time data from weather stations across the country and can use climate models from Princeton University's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. Because of NOAA's good reputation, Easterlin wants "NOAA to announce to the public: 'Climate change made this event 15 percent worse.'" This will likely change the minds of many climate change skeptics."

Susan Moser, a social scientist and consultant who focuses on climate adaptation, said that as attribution science continues to evolve, it has an important role to play in helping society deal with a variety of increasing risks, from informing building codes to warning about carbon reductions. Professional engineering societies have moved in the direction of climate-resilient design, such as building wider seawalls to accommodate rising sea levels. She noted that states like California are looking at how to incorporate climate information into their infrastructure planning, a reform that will play an important role in the state's rebuilding efforts after recent floods.

For some countries, it will be easier than others to mobilize funds to fight climate change. To this end, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) established a "loss and damage" fund in 2022, hoping to help low-income countries with relatively small greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible. However, a clear definition of "climate-induced damage" is still lacking.

If the science of attribution had been developed decades ago, when the problem of climate change was just becoming known to the general public, using attribution science to explain today's extreme weather events might not have been as daunting as it is now, Otto said. Today, her work has become like a race against time, after all, "people are suffering and there is nothing they can do about the consequences."

(Translation: Du Yixin, an engineer at the Shaanxi Institute of Meteorological Science, mainly engaged in atmospheric environment research and meteorological science popularization)

Guangming Daily (Page 14, August 17, 2023)