Attribution of extreme weather and climate‐related events

Abstract

Extreme weather and climate‐related events occur in a particular place, by definition, infrequently. It is therefore challenging to detect systematic changes in their occurrence given the relative shortness of observational records. However, there is a clear interest from outside the climate science community in the extent to which recent damaging extreme events can be linked to human‐induced climate change or natural climate variability. Event attribution studies seek to determine to what extent anthropogenic climate change has altered the probability or magnitude of particular events. They have shown clear evidence for human influence having increased the probability of many extremely warm seasonal temperatures and reduced the probability of extremely cold seasonal temperatures in many parts of the world. The evidence for human influence on the probability of extreme precipitation events, droughts, and storms is more mixed. Although the science of event attribution has developed rapidly in recent years, geographical coverage of events remains patchy and based on the interests and capabilities of individual research groups. The development of operational event attribution would allow a more timely and methodical production of attribution assessments than currently obtained on an ad hoc basis. For event attribution assessments to be most useful, remaining scientific uncertainties need to be robustly assessed and the results clearly communicated. This requires the continuing development of methodologies to assess the reliability of event attribution results and further work to understand the potential utility of event attribution for stakeholder groups and decision makers. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:23–41. doi: 10.1002/wcc.380
For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Full text

Overview
Attribution of extreme weather
and climate-related events
Peter A. Stott,
1
*
Nikolaos Christidis,
1
Friederike E. L. Otto,
2
Ying Sun,
3
Jean-Paul Vanderlinden,
4
Geert Jan van Oldenborgh,
5
Robert Vautard,
6
Hans von Storch,
7
Peter Walton,
2
Pascal Yiou
8
and Francis W. Zwiers
9
Edited by Eduardo Zorita, Domain Editor, and Mike Hulme, Editor-in-Chief
Extreme weather and climate-related events occur in a particular place, by defi-
nition, infrequently. It is therefore challenging to detect systematic changes in
their occurrence given the relative shortness of observational records. However,
there is a clear interest from outside the climate science community in the extent
to which recent damaging extreme events can be linked to human-induced cli-
mate change or natural climate variability. Event attribution studies seek to
determine to what extent anthropogenic climate change has altered the probabil-
ity or magnitude of particular events. They have shown clear evidence for human
influence having increased the probability of many extr emely warm seasonal
temperatures and reduced the probability of extremely cold seasonal tempera-
tures in many parts of the world. The evidence for human influence on the prob-
ability of extreme precipitation events, droughts, and storms is more mixed.
Although the science of event attribution has developed rapidly in recent years,
geographical coverage of events remains patchy and based on the interests and
capabilities of individual research groups. The development of operational event
attribution would allow a more timely and methodical production of attribution
assessments than currently obtained on an ad hoc basis. For event attribution
assessments to be most useful, remaining scientific uncertainties need to be
robustly assessed and the results clearly communicated. This requires the conti-
nuing development of methodologies to assess the reliability of event attribution
results and further work to understand the po tential utility of event attribution
for stakeholder groups and decision makers.
© 2015 The Authors. WIREs Climate Change
published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
How to cite this article:
WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:23– 41. doi: 10.1002/wcc.380
*Correspondence to: peter.stott@metoffice.gov.uk
1
Hadley Centre, Met Office, Exeter, UK
2
Centre for the Environment, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
3
National Climate Center, China Meteorological Adminstration,
Beijing, China
4
Observatoire de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines for Univer-
sity of Versailles, Versailles, France
5
Weather and Climate Modeling, Koninklijk Nederlands Meteoro-
logisch Instituut, De Bilt, Netherlands
6
Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement for
Centre National de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Paris, France
7
Institut für Küstenforschung, Geesthacht, Germany
8
Extrèmes : Statistiques, Impacts et Régionalisation in the Labora-
toire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environment, Gif-sur-Yvette,
France
9
Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, Victoria, Canada
Conflict of interest: The authors have declared no conflicts of inter-
est for this article.
Volume 7, January/February 2016 23
© 2015 The Authors.
WIREs Climate Change
published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in
any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

INTRODUCTION
A
nthropogenic climate change provides a key
challenge for mankind. The Fifth Assessment
report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli-
mate Change (IPCC) concluded that ‘human influ-
ence on the climate system is clear’ and that ‘changes
in many extreme weather and climate events have
been observed since about 1950’.
1
Societies around
the world are faced with increasing climate change
risks. Reduc ing such risks, which requires a consider-
ation of vulnerability and exposure to climate-related
hazards, can be achieved through a combination of
adaptation to those hazards that are unavoidable
and climate change mitigation by reduction of green-
house gas emissions.
Attribution of climate change has been defined
as ‘the process of evaluating the relative contributions
of multiple causal factors to a change or event with an
assignment of statistical confidence.’
2
Therefore attri-
bution is a key aspect of the understanding of climate
change risks, many of which are associated with the
occurrence of extreme weather or climate events. Such
events have been defined as ‘discrete episodes of
extreme weather or unusual climate conditions, often
associated with deleterious impacts on society or natu-
ral systems, defined using some metric to characterize
either the meteorological characteristics of the event
or the consequent impacts.’
3
Events can occur on a
wide range of timescales from minutes to seasons or
longer and on a wide range of spatial scales from a
few kilometers to the size of continents. Therefore
attribution can be applied to an extreme that could be
classed as a weather extreme, such as a very high daily
rainfall total, or an extreme that could be classed as a
climate-related extreme, such as a very high seasonal
mean temperature.
Often in the immediate aftermath of extreme
events, there is great media and public interest in
what caused them. There can be a tendency in some
quarters to want to confidently attribute extremes to
anthropogenic climate change in the absence of scien-
tific consensus or to argue that it isn’t possible to link
individual extreme events with anthropogenic climate
change, neither of which is correct. Given that many
extreme weather and climate events have occurred
before substantial anthropogenic modification of the
climate system has been clearly detected in many
regions, an over simplistic attribution to human
causes could be costly. For example, based on the
occurrence of a particularly damaging extreme event,
plans could made to adapt to an increasing frequency
of such events in future when in fact this is not what
is expected.
There is a basic expectation that climate change
will alter the occurrence of some extremes. Extremely
hot temperatures are expected to become more fre-
quent where mean temperatures increase. A simple
shift in the mean without any change in the distribu-
tion will suffice although changes in the distribution
can enhance or reverse this tendency.
4
For example,
land surface feedbacks can exacerbate temperature
extremes as soils dry out and fail to provide evapora-
tive cooling to moderate temperatures, thereby
broadening the distribution of summer maximum
daily temperatures in continental interiors.
5
Atmos-
pheric warming increases the moisture holding capac-
ity of the atmosphere potentially increasing the
prevalence of extreme rainfall events. These changes
in temperature and rainfall extremes expected from
thermodynamic considerations have been detected in
the observed record
6,7
and climate models show that
an increased occurrence of extreme temperature and
rainfall events worldwide can be attributed to
anthropogenic forcings.
7– 9
At regional scales and for individual extreme
events, global statistics and thermodynamic argu-
ments may no longer apply if the occurrence and
evolution of climate extremes in a particular place is
influenced by the atmospheric or oceanic circulation
or when there are large external forcings on regional
climate such as from tropospheric aerosols. While cli-
mate models appear to capture thermodynamic
changes well, they may struggle to simulate circula-
tion changes
10
and questions remain about what con-
trols convection, changes in which can affect
extremes,
11
and the position of the storm tracks and
the tropical rain belts.
12
In the light of these difficul-
ties, it could be decided to ignore dynamical changes
and concentrate instead on how human-induced ther-
modynamic changes have affected extremes.
13
How-
ever, many event attribution studies consider how
the probability of an even t is changing. This forces
consideration of both dynamical and thermodynamic
influences because both can play a role in the chan-
ging probability of an event. Taking account of
dynamical changes requires physical understanding
to support attribution assessments and climate mod-
els used in such analyses need to be able to capture
the salient physical features. Testing our understand-
ing and our models against observed events helps to
improve pred ictions of future changes through
improved models and a deeper appreciation of why
changes are occurring. The science of event attribu-
tion has developed considerably in recent years in
response to a growing demand to explain recent
extreme events from a climate perspective. Event
attribution studies have sought to determine whether
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anthropogenic climate change has altered the proba-
bility or the magnitude of a particular event. Early
examples include the European summer heat wave of
2003 that killed many thousands of people
14,15
and
the flooding in the UK in autumn, 2000.
16
A position paper presented to the World Cli-
mate Research Programme (WCRP) Open Science
Conference in 2011 argued that there was a need to
further develop carefully calibrated physically based
assessments of observed weather and climate events.
3
Since then many other extreme events from around
the world have been investigated including in an
annual report explaining extreme events of the previ-
ous year from a climate perspective.
17– 20
Such events
are often selected for their severe and widespread
impacts and the interest and capability of scientific
groups in investigating them. Studies show clear evi-
dence for human influence on some events and little
evidence for human influence on others
19,20
and in
some cases draw seemingly conflicting conclusions
due to differences in the way the attribution question
has been framed.
21
This article discusses the challenges facing this
newly emerging science of event attribution. Many of
the current studies have focused on the meteorologi-
cal nature of events, which we focus on here, rather
than their impacts.
Methodologies section reviews the event attri-
bution and Evaluation section considers the evalua-
tion of attribution results in order to ensure they are
reliable. The following section considers the influence
of framing on attribution results. Over time, the
regional coverage of event attribution studies has
increased and this is discussed in the fifth section.
Operational weather services have long provided cur-
rent weather and weather forecasts to a variety of
customers. More recently the operational provision
of seasonal forecasts providing probabilistic predic-
tions of future seasonal climate anomalies has
become established. In a similar way there is the
potential to deliver routine assessments of climate
risks in an operational attribution system,
3
which is
discussed in the sixth section. Stakeholder Perspec-
tives section prov ides details of some stakeholder per-
spectives whereas the following section concludes
with a brief summary.
METHODOLOGIES
Event attribution assessments seek to quantify to
what extent anthropogenic or natural influences have
altered the probability or magnitude of a particular
type of event having occurred. Any climate event
under consideration, for example, a heat wave,
drought, or flood, has evolved in its own unique way
and is therefor e, in principle, attributable to a unique
set of causes that is not applicable to any other event.
However, event attribution assessments typically
have wider applicability by considering some metric
to characterize the extreme nature of the event in
question. Therefore, event attribution assessments
typically have relevance for the occurrence of similar
types of events in future.
The concept of fraction attributable risk
(FAR)
22
was first applied in 2004 in an analysis of
the European heat wave of 2003.
14
This was the first
instance of an event attribution study providing a
direct link between anthropogenic climate change
and an individual extreme climate event. To achieve
this result, the probability (P
1
) of a record warm
summer in a particular European region was com-
pared with its probability (P
0
) had anthropogenic
influences on climate been absent. This approach is
shown schematically in Figure 1. These probabilities
were determined from coupled climate model simula-
tions calibrated to observations using optimal detec-
tion techniques.
14
The study concluded that human
influence had very likely (probability >90%) more
than doubled the probability of a record warm sum-
mer. Therefore, having calculated the probabilities of
the event in the presence and absence of anthropo-
genic climate change, P
1
and P
0
, the results can be
expressed as a probability ratio, P
1
/P
0
, i.e., in this
case a doubling of probability. Alternatively they can
be expressed as a FAR, calculated as 1-P
0
/P
1
where a
0.4
Actual world
Actual world
(future)
Natural world
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0
Threshold
P
0
P
1
Climate variable
Normalized likelihood
FIGURE 1
|
An illustration of the Probability Density Functions
(PDFs) of a climatic variable with (solid red line) and without (green
line) the effect of human influence on the climate. The corresponding
probabilities of exceeding a prespecified threshold (P
1
and P
0
) are
represented by the hatched areas of the same color. The red-dashed
line illustrates how the PDF of the actual world may change in a
changing climate.
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FAR of more than 0.5, as in this case, indicates its
probability has more than doubled. This is equivalent
to half of the instances of such events being attributa-
ble to anthropogenic climate change. An analogy
is with a loaded die in which throwing a six is twice
as likely as for an unloaded die. On repeated throws,
a FAR of 0.5 corresponds to half the sixes being
attributed to the loading of the die rather than to
chance.
Subsequent research has shown that continued
warming in Europe has increased the probability of
such an extreme seasonal temperature event as seen
in 2003 further (dashed line in Figure 1
) and demon-
strated the robustness of the earlier findings.
23
Despite this reaffirmation of the robustness of
the result, this early attribution finding shares with
later studies using climate models a reliance on the
fidelity of the models used. Climate models have
errors that could invalidate attribution results. For
example, tropospheric aerosol con centrations, which
in recent years have reduced in Europe and increased
in Asia, are potentially very important for regional
climate change but also highly uncertain. There is
further discussion of the evaluation of attribution
results in Evaluation section. Clearly, all attribution
assessments are contingent on our current under-
standing and are therefore liable to be updated as sci-
entific understanding develops.
Confidence in attribution results can be
enhanced where independent methods lead to similar
conclusions. A variety of approaches have been taken
to event attribution, differing in their use of observa-
tions and models, and in their framing of the attribu-
tion question being asked. We now describe the main
methods used in event attribution.
Coupled Model Approaches
Coupled general circulation models (GCMs) of
increasing complexity, which often include not only
atmosphere, ocean, and land but also biological and
chemical processes, provide the most comprehensive
simulations of the climate system. Data from model
experiments with different forcing combinations are
readily available from the archive of the World Cli-
mate Re search Programme’s Coupled Model Inter-
comparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5)
24
and can be
utilized in analyses of extreme events. This typically
involves pooling data from multimodel ensembles of
simulations with and without anthropogenic influ-
ences and so generating large samples of the relevant
climatic variable (e.g. temperature, if investigating a
heat-wave event). The distribution of the variable in
the ‘actual’ world and the counterfactual ‘natural’
world without human influence on climate can thus
be constructed, from which estimates of the FAR for
the event under investigation are obtained. A number
of studies of recent temperature and rainfall extreme
events in Australia have employed this approach
25– 28
and have shown that anthropogenic forcing s have
led to manifold increases in the likelihood of
Australian heat waves, although their influence on
rainfall extremes is less robustly identified. For such
attribution assessments, it is important that the mod-
els employed in studies are rigorously evaluated
against observations
29
(see Evaluation section).
Coupled model approaches have been
employed to provide fast-track assessments, available
as soon as an extreme event is observed. The chan-
ging likelihood of extremes is estimated with refer-
ence to prespecified thresholds, e.g., the temperature
associated with a heat-wave event. By precomp uting
such estimates over a range of thresholds, attribution
information becomes readily available when a new
event occurs. This approach has been applied to
annual and seasonal mean temperature extremes
in subcontinental regions around the world by using
an improved representation of the regional tempera-
ture distributions and introducing observational
constraints from a global optimal fingerprinting
analysis.
30
An application of such a fast-track attribution
methodology enabled the Met Office to issue an attri-
bution statement on the record temperatures seen in
2014 in the UK (back to 1910) and Central England
(back to 1659). Precomputed estimates of the FAR
measuring the human-induced change in the likeli-
hood of getting annual-mean temperatures in the UK
above certain thresholds from the climatological
mean to five standard deviations above it are illus-
trated in Figure 2
. It is estimated that human influ-
ence has increased the likelihood of record-breaking
temperatures in the UK by a factor of about 10 (best
estimate of the FAR ~0.9). In a complementary
study, the chances of the smaller region of England
experiencing a record-breaking warm year, as seen in
2014, were found to have been made more than
13 times more likely as a result of anthropogenic cli-
mate change.
31
In some cases, investigations are carried out
into the attribution of events conditional on particu-
lar features of the climatic conditions present at the
time of the event. For example, event attribution
studies have investigated how anthropogenic influ-
ence under La Niña conditions has affected the likeli-
hood of extreme rainfall seen in 2011– 2012 over
south-Eastern Australia
32
and the likelihood of
extreme drought seen in 2011 over Texas.
33
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Sea Surface Temperature Forced
Atmosphere Only Model Approaches
Another way of conditioning results on aspects of the
climatic conditions present at the time of the event is
to prescribe observed sea surface temperature (SST)
anomalies into an atmosphere only climate model.
Thus, many event attribution studies contrast
atmosphere-only general circulation model (AGCM)
simulations representing the ‘actual’ world including
the observed evolution of SSTs with simulations of
the counterfactual ‘natural’ world, a ‘world that
might have been,’ had there been no human influence
on climate.
16,34
As with coupled model approaches, this meth-
odology also requires the availability of sufficiently
large model datasets to simulate the statistics of the
events in question, and relies on the model’s ability
to reliably simulate the clim ate conditions generating
the extreme event. Prescribing SSTs in an AGCM
rather than using coupled models can reduce model
biases and enables more ensemble members to be
simulated because they are cheaper to run, poten-
tially resulting in a better representation of extreme
events, and improved signal-to-noise ratio. However,
this approach does not represent atmosphere– ocean
coupling and so could lead to a worse representation
of extreme events strongly affected by such coupling.
While removing the anthropogenic greenhouse
gas forcing from the modeled atmosphere is straight-
forward, estimating the pattern of warming to be
removed from the observed SSTs and sea ice is not.
In the majority of studies, the warming patterns to be
removed are obtained from coupled GCM simula-
tions by subtracting ‘Historical’ SST simulations
which include both anthropogenic and natural for-
cings (e.g., volcanoes and solar fluctuations) and the
‘Natural’ simulations which include only natural for-
cings. Figure 3
shows an example in which the
assessment of the anthropogenic influence on the
event is sensitive to differences in these patterns,
hence in this case, it is important to use more than
one counterfactual SST pattern. This can be a major
uncertainty in attribution assessments and an alterna-
tive is to use SST patterns based on observations
rather than models.
36
Further experiments can be made using
AGCMs to diagnose in more detail the anthropo-
genic influence on extreme events. For example, diag-
nostic simulations have been carried out in which
SSTs and anthropogenic forcings from greenhouse
gases and troposph eric aerosols have been varied sep-
arately to show that the hot dry summer in western
Europe in 2013 was influenced substantially by
anthropogenic forcing, whereas North Atlantic SSTs
were shown to be an important factor explaining the
contrast between the very dry summer of 2013 and
the very wet summer of 2012.
37
Analogue-Based Approaches
A further way of conditioning results on aspects of
the climatic conditions present at the time of the
event is to consider the observed circulation charac-
teristics. Circulation analogs
38
have been designed to
estimate climatic conditions in previous times under
the same large-scale circulation as today.
39,40
Poten-
tially it is one way to investigate how secular climate
change has affected unusual climatic events.
13
An
illustration of this approach is applied here to the
Fall/Winter of 2006/2007, which was one of the
warmest in Europe since 1500,
41
and the second
warmest in France since the beginning of the 20th
century. Euro-Atlantic sea-level pressure (SLP)
anomalies from the 20CR reanalysis
42
for the
1900– 2011 period and over the (80

W– 60

E; 30

–
70

N) domain are used to characterize the circulation
type for each day starting from the beginning of the
20th century. The ‘analogues’ are found from the 20
days over the observed record which have similar cir-
culation characteristics and the temperatures over
these analogues are averaged. From a statistical per-
spective, the analogue temperatures are random
‘replicates’ of the temperature at the day conditioned
by the atmospheric circulation. This allows a
Threshold
UK precomputed FAR estimates
Record
T
CLIM
+2σ +4σ
1. 0
0.4
0.6
0.8
0.2
0.0
FAR
FIGURE 2
|
Estimates of the fraction attributable risk (FAR) in the
UK region (10

W– 5

E, 48– 60

N) over a range of temperature
thresholds in units of standard deviation above the climatological
(1961– 1990) annual mean temperature. The colored area marks the
5– 95% uncertainty range of the estimated FAR. The black vertical line
corresponds to the UK record temperature.
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determination of the probabilit y distributions of tem-
perature variability driven by the atmospheric
circulation.
Having derived circulation-dependent tempera-
ture distributions one can calculate the probability of
the event in question, as measured in this illustration
by the frequency of days within the cold season for
which the observed temperature is above all analogue
temperatures. This statistic was a record in
2006– 2007 (Figure 4
).
The probability P
0
of observing the record dur-
ing the period 1900– 1960 is estimated to be about
0.0007 compared to a probability P
1
during the
period 1970– 2011 of about 0.03, which indicates a
more than 40-fold increase in probability between
the two periods, implying a FAR of about 0.97 (esti-
mated to be between 0.87 and 0.98 with a bootstrap
estimate of uncertainty). Unlike the methods
described in Coupled Model Approaches section and
the following section, which explicitly model the
world that might have been absent anthropogenic
forcings, these analogue-based approaches provide a
probabilistic attribution of an extreme event to the
overall climate change over the period considered,
howsoever caused, with the assumption that periods
considered are long enough to cancel any low-
frequency natural climate variability.
Empirical Approaches
Empirical approaches applied to observations directly
have been used to estimate how climate change is
affecting the probability or return times of particular
classes of events. The odds of record-breaking tem-
peratures can be related to increasing mean tempera-
tures
43,44
and the odds of record-breaking daily
rainfall events can be related to atmospheric warming
and the associated increased water holding capac-
ity.
45
Resultant estimates that long-term warming
has caused a fivefold increase in the number of local
record-breaking monthly temperature extremes
worldwide
43,44
and has led to 12% more record-
breaking rainfall events
45
are broadly consistent with
estimates using climate models that about 18% of
2 5 10 100 1000 10000
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Return time
Precipitation mm/day
Return periods of 4−day average precipitation Elbe catchment
2013 "all forcings"
2013 "natural" single ensembles
2013 "natural" combined
FIGURE 3
|
Return time (years) for the maximum 4-day precipitation average during May to June in the HadRM3P model for the upper Elbe
catchment. The red dots indicate May to June possible 4-day maximum precipitation events in a large ensemble of HadRM3P simulations of the
year 2013, while the light blue dots indicate possible May to June 4-day maximum precipitation events in 25 different large ensembles of
simulations of the year 2013 as it might have been without climate change where each of the 25 ensembles has a different sea surface
temperature (SST) pattern to represent the anthropogenic change in SSTs. The dark blue dots represent the 25 natural ensembles aggregated
together. The error bars correspond to the 5– 95% confidence interval estimated with a nonparametric bootstrap. (Reprinted with permission from
Ref 35. Copyright 2014 American Meteorological Society)
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moderate daily precipitation extremes, and about
75% of moderate daily hot extremes, currently
occurring over land, are attributable to warming.
9,46
Empirical approaches can thus serve as a check on
model results and are often appreciated by the users
who are skeptical of the veracity of climate models,
even though it necessarily also makes assumptions.
They can also be employed for events that cannot yet
be represented well by climate models used for attri-
bution, such as extreme summer convective events.
An empirical approach to event attribution by
fitting observed data to statistical distributions has
been used to show that climate change did not play a
major role in the 2011 floods in Thailand.
47
A non-
significant downward trend in rainfall in the upper
Chao Praya basin in Thailand found in this analysis,
agreed with a similar lack of increasing trends in cli-
mate models.
Other such analyses show positive results. For
example, the cold waves in the United States
observed in early 2014 are found to be signifi cantly
less likely
48
although they are still not uncommon,
with a return time in 2014 of about 12 years
compared to a return time in 1950 of about every 4
years (Figure 5
). For spatially small events such as
summer thunderstorms data from stations that are
close enough to be identically distributed and far
enough apart to be reasonably independent can be
pooled. The methods used to derive the results shown
in Figure 5 have been incorporated into the public
climate analysis website KNMI Climate Explorer.
Broad-Scale Approaches
While the analogue and statistical methods described
in sections Analogue-Based Approaches and Empiri-
cal Approaches consider the overall effects of climate
trends, attributing such changes to anthropogenic or
natural causes requires the use of a climate model as
described in the section Couple d Model Approaches
and the following section.
Climate models additionally come into their
own in describing the global statistics of similarly
defined events over the globe. Several studies have
adapted detection and attribution methods
49
used to
attribute changes in the mean state of the climate
100 150
−5
Days since 2006−09−01
TN anom (K)
September(a)
(b)
October November December January February
Obs. TN
Max analogue TN
Years
% days TN > TN ana
500
0
5
10
0
10
20
30
40
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
p= 0.5
p= 0.1
p= 0.01
p= 0.001
p= 0.0001
p= 0.5
p= 0.1
p= 0.01
p= 0.001
FIGURE 4
|
Example of an analogue-based approach. (a) Temperature mean anomalies of minimum daily temperature (Paris, Toulouse, and
Besançon) between September 2006 and February 2007 (black line). Maxima of analogue temperatures (red line). (b) variations of the fraction of
observed temperatures above all analogue temperatures between September and February. The red circle indicates the record of 2006/2007. The
horizontal-dashed lines indicate the quantile values of a binomial distribution that is fitted to an unperturbed period (1900– 1960) and perturbed
period (1970– 2011).
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system
50
to analyses of changes in the frequency or
intensity of specific types of extreme events. Such
studies are sometimes able to provide information
that is relevant to event attribution, particularly for
predefined events and on larger spatial scales.
One such example considered observed
changes in the annual minimum and maximum
extremes of daily minimum and maximum tempera-
ture over 1961– 2000 to show that, globally, extreme
annual minimum daily minimum and maximum tem-
peratures (i.e., the temperatures of the coldest night
and coldest day annually) that would have been
expected to recur once every 20 years on average in
the 1960’s had become substantially more unlikely to
occur due to human influence on the climate system.
6
Expected recurrence times were estimated to have
increased to 35 and 30 years, respectively, in the
1990s. In contrast, anthropogenic forcing was esti-
mated to have increased the likelihood of extreme
warm even ts (hottest night and hottest day of the
year) by a sim ilar factor, with expected recurrence
times having decreased to 10 and 15 years,
respectively.
Changes in the extremes of annual maximum
1-day and 5-day precipitation accumulations have
also been shown to have been caused by human
influence.
7,8
Over the period 1950– 2005 for a
Northern Hemisphere land domain, the increase in
the intensity of annual extreme 1-day precipitation
attributed to human influence has a sensitivity of
change per degree of warming in global mean tem-
perature that is consistent with the Clausius–
Clapeyron relation (that expresses how moisture
increases in a warming atmosphere when relative
humidity stays constant). By interpreting the attribu-
ted change in terms of a reduction in the waiting time
for a 20-year extreme event in the 1950s to approxi-
mately 15-years now, the FAR of such extreme
events is 0.25. In contrast, for annual and seasonal
mean regional temperatures that would have been 1-
in-10-year events in an unperturbed climate, esti-
mates of FAR have been found that are often well in
excess of 0.75 or higher, both for annual and JJA
mean temperatures.
30
For comparison, an analysis of
extreme thresholds of daily temperatures and daily
rainfall totals in models including those expected to
occur once in 1000 days (about once every 3 years)
in an unperturbed climate, finds that about 75% of
these moderate daily hot extremes and about 18% of
moderate daily precipitation extremes over land are
attributable to warming.
9
These approaches demonstrate the strong link
between conventional detection and attribution and
event attribution. They avoid selection bias since
event definitions are not driven by impacts that have
just been exp erienced (and may have received high
media profiles). Being based on detection and attribu-
tion methods, they also allow projections of future
risk to be observationally constrained.
51
However,
they also have a number of limitations. Detection
and attribution techni ques for extremes are not yet
fully developed, and detection and attribution
remains difficult on regional and smaller scales, par-
ticularly for variables other than temperature, such
as precipitation, for which evidence of a human influ-
ence is only just beginning to accumulate.
–45
–40
–35
–30
–25
–20
–15
–10
2 5 10 100 1000 10000
Min Tn [C]
Return period [years]
Trends in extremes of annual min Tn Chicago Midway 1928:2013
GEV shift fit 1951
GEV shift fit 2014
observed 2014
FIGURE 5
|
Generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution fit to the coldest temperature of the year at Chicago Midway station 1928– 2013
compared to the value observed in 2014. The distribution of the temperature is assumed to shift with the smoothed global mean temperature. The
red lines indicate the fit for the climate of 2014, the blue lines indicate the fit for an earlier climate. The observations have been drawn twice,
once shifted up with the fitted trend to the current climate, once down to the climate of 1951.
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EVALUATION
As many of the methods for attri bution of extreme
events rely largely on climate model simulations, pro-
viding evidence that the models employed in a study
are fit for purpose is essential in order to demonstrate
the degree of confidence one can have in the results.
A model is likely to have different skill in reprodu-
cing different types of extremes in different regions
and therefore its evaluation assessment needs to be
tailored to the event under consideration. The synop-
tic circulation prevalent at the time of an extreme
event may play a key role in its development and
models need to be able to reproduce the same kind
of circulation patterns with a realistic frequency to
be suitable for an attribution study. For example,
the heat wave in Russia in July 2010 was associated
with a quasi-stationary anticyclonic circulation which
needs to be reproduced by models used in an
attribution analysis of the heat wave.
34
The ability of
models to accurately simulate the physical processes
and mechanisms linked to extremes is also crucial.
For example, attri bution studies of the summe r heat
wave of 2012 in the United States, needs to account
for the effect of the stable atmosphere on the surface
energy budget, which led to a decrease in soil mois-
ture and surface evapotranspiration and an increase
in temperature.
52
Finally, models need to be assessed
in terms of their representation of modes of internal
variability that are known to be primary drivers of
regional extremes.
Evaluation assessment s are typically based on
comparisons between model data from a small
ensemble of multidecadal simulati ons of the actual
climate during a recent climatological period and
observations or reanalysis data. Figure 6
illustrates
some common tests
34
to examine whether
HadGEM3-A would be a suitable model for studies
1. 0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
10
1
10
2
10
3
10
4
300
280
260
240
220
200
180
160
0.0
110 1 10100
0.2 0.4
Forecast probability
Reliability diagram
Power spectrum Event return time
Period (years)
Return time (years)
(a)
Observed frequency
Variance (mm
2
)
Return level (mm)
0.6 0.8 1.0
0.012
0.010
0.008
0.006
0.004
0.002
0.000
50 100 150
Precipitation (mm)
UK DJF rainfall 1960–2010
K–S test: pval = 0.45
NCEP/NCAR
HadGEM3–A
NCEP/NCAR
HadGEM3–A
(b)
(c) (d)
Likelihood
200 250 300 350
FIGURE 6
|
Evaluation assessments of HadGEM3-A to determine whether the model is suitable for attribution studies of extreme winter
rainfall events in the UK. (a) Reliability diagram for wet events in the UK, defined relative to terciles of the 1960– 2010 climatology. (b) Normalized
distributions of the winter rainfall in the UK during 1960– 2010 produced with data from the National Center for Environmental Prediction/National
Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) reanalysis (red) and five HadGEM3-A experiments (blue). (c) Power spectra corresponding to winter
rainfall time series based on data from reanalysis (red) and five model simulations (blue). (d) Return time of winter rainfall events in the UK
estimated with order statistics, or, for extreme thresholds, with the generalized Pareto distribution. Results plotted in red correspond to the NCEP/
NCAR reanalysis and results plotted in blue to the five model simulations.
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of extreme winter rainfall in the UK region, similar
to the recent extreme event during the catastrophic
storms and floods of 2013/2014.
53
Five model simu-
lations of the climate in 1960– 2010 are used for this
assessment which were run with observed SST and
sea-ice data as boundary conditions and include all
(both natural and anthropogenic) major external for-
cings. A seasonal forecast reliability diagram
54
indi-
cates whether the model is able to capture the
predictable features of the event under consideration
(Figure 6(a)). Although the use of reliability is well
established for forecasting, its meaning for attribu-
tion is less clear
55
given that reliable attribution is
still possible when there is no inherent real-world
predictability.
For the example of extreme winter rainfall in
the UK, further tests can be undertaken to establish
whether the modeled statistics for this kind of event
are reliably reproduced with HadGEM3-A. Figure 6
(b)– (d) illustrates different aspects of the winter rain-
fall distribution and show how the model compares
with the reanalysis. A Kolmogorov– Smirnov test
indicates that there is no significant difference
between the distributions constructed with
HadGEM3-A and reanalysis data over period
1960– 2010 (Figure 6(b)). The power spectra of rain-
fall timeseries over the same period (Figure 6(c)) also
suggest that the simulated variability is generally con-
sistent with the observations, albeit possibly higher at
multidecadal timescales. Focussing on the warm tail
of the distributions, the return time of high rai nfall
events has been estimated with a generalized-Pareto
distribution (Figure 6(d)) and again the model is
found to agree well with the reanalysis. Although the
length of the simulations does not allow extrapola-
tions to rarer events, the above assessments provide
some evidence that HadGEM3-A would be suitable
for attribution studies of extreme rainfall events in
the UK region.
Model evaluation is subject to the availability
and quality of observations. Identification of a clear
signal of change in the observations often requires
long time series of homogenous data but an evalua-
tion of a model’s representation of the most relevant
processes for a particular event may be achieved with
high spatial resolution data that are not available
over long time frames. Thus, homogenized multide-
cadal datasets may be needed for some applications
such as signal detection whereas reanalyses or satel-
lite data may be appropriate for others such as model
verification.
Clear evidence for human influence on extreme
temperature events seen in many studies
20
benefits
from robust observational support, whereas mixed
evidence for human influence on extreme precipitation
events
20
can be affected by inadequacies in observa-
tions in many parts of the world,
56
as well as limita-
tions in models’ representation of cloud processes.
57
Evaluation methodologies similar to those dis-
cussed in this section have been routinely employed in
studies of extremes. In some cases, bias corrections
methods need to be applied to adjust modeled distri-
butions although such corrections can strongly influ-
ence the attribution assessment and hence should be
applied with caution.
58
Further development of evalu-
ation methodologies will support additional evidence
to stakeholders of the value of attribution products.
FRAMING OF THE
ATTRIBUTION QUESTION
The various approaches described in Methodologies
section are scientifically legitimate methods of fram-
ing attribution questions. But applying different
methods can lead to very different assessments
of change in risk even if the event considered is
the same. Hence, it is paramount to clearly state
the exact framing of the research question being
asked.
59
Attribution results can depend strongly on the
definition of the event. Any particular event will
never occur exactly the same way again so for an
attribution statement to say something relevant to
the future it has to be constructed for a class of
events of which the one that occurred is a representa-
tive. Typical definitions of an event are for tempera-
tures or rainfall averaged over a certain area and
time to be above or below a particular threshold.
Defining an event over a large area and long time-
scale reduces the natural variability and therefore
tends to give larger FARs than more impact-based
definitions focusing on small-scale extremes that may
be more closely related to damage. Defining a class
of events very close to the observed one tends to
gives very low probabilities of occurrence. For more
generalizable statements, a wider class of events
needs to be considered for which details such as
exact location or timing can differ.
Attribution results can also differ depending on
whether an event is attributed to the overall climate
change as in Analogue-Based Approaches and Empiri-
cal Approaches sections or to the change attributable
to anthropogenic factors (sections Coupled Model
Approaches and SST Forced Atmosphere).
The attribution of an anthropogenic contribu-
tion can be conditioned on the natural variability
being in a certain state. If the probability of this
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condition is itself changing, then the overall probabil-
ity of the event could be very different than the con-
ditional probability. For example, a study of the
extreme flooding in Colorado in September, 2013
concluded that the probability of such an extreme
5-day September rainfall event had likely decreased
due to climate change as a result of changes in
atmospheric circulation and vertical stability
60
in
apparent contradiction to an analysis focusing on the
effects of human influence (via increased SSTs and
increased atmospheric moisture) conditioned on the
atmospheric circulation regime during the event
13
Some attribution assessments that link events to
dynamically driven changes in circulation have been
criticized on the grounds that small signal-to-noise
ratios, modeling de ficiencies, and uncertainties in the
effects of climate forcings on circulation render con-
clusions unreliable and prone to downplaying the
role of anthropogenic climate change.
13
Instead, it is
argued, it is more useful to consider how changes in
the climate’s thermodynamic state have affected the
impact of a particular event.
13
The analogue-based
approaches are consistent with this approach in con-
sidering how climate change has affected events given
particular circulation characteristics. But a wider
variety of approaches as described in the rest of
Methodologies section are needed to tackle the whole
attribution problem which is important given that
changes in global SLP patterns and corresponding
circulations have been detected.
61
By always finding
a role for human-induced effects, attribution assess-
ments that only consider thermodynamics could
overstate the role of anthropogenic climate change,
when its role may be small in comparison with that
of natural variability, and do not say anything about
how the risk of such events has changed.
The importance of such framing issues mean
that clear communication of results from such attri-
bution studies is vital else apparently contradictory
findings can result. For example, whereas the
Russian heat wave of 2010 has been found to
have been made much more likely by anthropogenic
climate change,
43
its magnitude has been found to
be largely attributable to natural variability
62
an
apparent contradiction that can be resolved by con-
sidering the changing distribution of temperature
extremes under a warming climate
21
as shown in
Figure 7
.
REGIONAL PERSPECTIVE
As the science of event attribution has developed,
there has been an increase in the geographical
coverage of such studies. This is important for the
development of the field, not only in applying such
science in new areas but also in developing scientific
understanding by considering regions with different
dominant modes of internal variability and different
responses to external climate forcings.
Since 2012, a series of annual reports have been
published in the Bulletin of the American Meteoro-
logical Society (BAMS) explaining extreme events of
the previous year from a climate perspective.
17– 20
They provide an early example of how the develop-
ment of the underpinning science of event attribution
is being applied to answer topical questions about
real-life events around the world. Geographical cov-
erage in the first three reports was far from uniform
(Figure 8
) with a greater concentration of studies into
events in Europe and North America and some gaps
in South America and much of Africa. However, the
latest report expla ining extreme events of 2014
includes a much wider geographical spread in its
32 studies with events from South America and
Africa being considered in additional to events from
Europe, North America, Australasia, and Asia.
20
10% 1%
Return time (years)
Monthly temperature equivalent in °C
July temperatures, Western Russia
1 10 100
13
15
17
19
21
23
25
27
29
2000−2009
1960−1969
FIGURE 7
|
Return periods of temperature-geopotential height
conditions in the model for the 1960s (green) and the 2000s (blue)
and in ERA-Interim for 1979– 2010 (black). The vertical black arrow
shows the anomaly of the Russian heat wave 2010 (black horizontal
line) compared to the July mean temperatures of the 1960s (dashed
line). The vertical red arrow gives the increase in the magnitude of the
heat wave due to the shift of the distribution whereas the horizontal
red arrow shows the change in the return period.
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Asia is one region where there has been a
strong growth in interest in event attribution.
As an example, the 2013 summer saw extraor-
dinarily high temperatures in the region with record
warm temperatures observed over an extended
region including Eastern China, Korea, and J apan.
There was interest therefore in placing this event in
the context of climate variability and change given
that anthropogenic influence has been detected in
changes in annual extremes of daily maximum and
minimum temperat ures in China.
6,63
An event attri-
bution study of the hot summer of 2013 in Eastern
China found that anthropogenic influence caused a
more than 60-fold increase in its probability.
51
This
result indicates that the increasing frequency of
extreme summer heat in Eastern China is primarily
attributable to the anthropogenic emission of green-
house gases with rapid urbanization and the expan-
sion of urban heat islands contributing as a
secondary factor. With continued emissions 50% of
summers could be hotter than the 2013 summer in
only two decades (Figure 9
).
Complementary studies have analyzed this
event from different perspectives using different
approaches and focusing on different countries.
Results show consistent and clear anthropogenic
Arctic sea ice minimum
September 2012
UK decreased cold
Boreal Spring 2013
UK cold
Boreal Winter 2010/2011
Europe heat
Boreal Summer 2013
Korea heat
Boreal Summer 2013
Japan heat
Boreal Summer 2013
China heat
Boreal Summer 2013
New Zealand drought
Austral Summer 2013
lndia rainfall
June 2013
Europe warm
Boreal Spring
and Autumn 2011
Iberia drought
Boreal Winter 2011/12
UK warm
November 2011
North Colorado
Decreased rainfall
2013
Hurricane Sandy
Inundation 2012
Texas heat
Boreal Summer 2011
US seasonal
rainfall
2013
US heat
Boreal Summer 2012
Australia heat
2012/2013
Heat
High precipitation Storms
Sea ice
Low precipitation
or drought
Cold
Australia rainfall
Austral Summer 2012
New Zealand
rainfall
December 2011
FIGURE 8
|
Events considered in the three reports explaining extreme events of 2011, 2012, 2013 (Ref 17– 19) indicating whether they are
heat, cold, high precipitation, low precipitation or drought, storms, or sea-ice events.
0
20
40
60
80
100
1960 1980 2000 2020 2040 2060
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
Frequency (%)
Temperature anomaly (°C)
Year
FIGURE 9
|
Time evolution of the frequency of summer
temperature anomalies above 1.1

C, relative to the 1955– 1984 mean,
in the reconstructed observations (1955– 2013) and in the
observationally constrained projections (2014– 2072) under RCP4.5
(plus) and RCP8.5 (cross) emission scenarios (left-hand scale). The
solid smooth curves are LOESS (local regression) fitting. The dashed
curves represent projected ensemble mean temperature changes under
the relevant emission scenarios (right-hand scale) and are shown here
for reference. Results for RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 are represented by red
and green, respectively. (Reprinted with permission from 51. Copyright
2014 Nature Publishing Group)
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influence on the probability of extreme temperatures
in Korea
64
and Japan
65
associated with this very
large-sale high temperature event, as well as also
highlighting the role of natural variability in contri-
buting to the magnitude of the extreme temperatures
recorded.
DEVELOPMENT OF OPERATIONAL
EVENT ATTRIBUTION
Given that there are often conflicting messages given
by scientists in the immediate aftermath of damaging
climate events about whether there is a link to cli-
mate change, well communicated assessments based
on carefully calibrated operational attribution sys-
tems have been proposed as a way forward to
address this confusion.
3
As well as providing more
timely assessments of events, operational systems
could address the selection effects inherent in the cur-
rent ad hoc nature of attribution studies, events often
being chosen based on scientists’ individual preferences
rather than any more objective criteria which has
resulted in uneven geographical coverage and which
has limited the potential to draw widespread conclu-
sions from the current collection of ad hoc studies.
An operational event attribution service would
provide regular updates using predetermined selec-
tion criteria for events and previously established
methodologies. It could provide assessments on a
range of timescales, during and immediately follow-
ing an event, monthly or seasonally, and for publica-
tion in annual assessments.
17– 20
Operational
attribution assessments should aim to synthesize the
available information including results from a range
of methods and incorporating physical understanding
in addition to models and statistics. A fast-track
capability for assessment on media timescales would
require the use of empirical statistical methods as
described in Empirical Approaches section, ensem-
bles of AGCMs with forecast SSTs or precomputed
results from coupled models
30
(see Coupled Model
Approaches section). More detailed assessments, con-
ditioned on details of the observed climate evolution,
and seeking to determine how aspects of the event in
question have been affected by particular compo-
nents of natural and anthropogenic influence, could
be made monthly based on operational modeling sys-
tems that prescribe relevant features, such as
observed SSTs
34
(see SST Forc ed Atmosphere sec-
tion). Studies that adopt more tailored approaches
could be published in the annual reports explaining
extreme events from a climate perspective
17– 20
or the
general literature.
An important requirement for any operational
attribution system is a clear communication of the
robustness of results and of how attribution ques-
tions have been framed (Attribution Question sec-
tion). Evidence with potential users of such
information has shown that clear communication of
scientific uncertainties supports rather than impedes
the credibility of assessments for decision making.
66
Furthermore the comprehensive approach of an oper-
ational system, no longer dependent on ad hoc
choices of research teams and subject to accusations
of selectivity in choice of events to study, is attractive
to users in enabling them to see how individual
events fit in to a wider picture of climate change.
66
While human influence on the climate system is clear,
carefully designed operational attributio n systems
should help societies understand how they are being
affected by climate change and how to avoid the
worst outcomes.
46
STAKEHOLDER PERSPECTIVES
The high volume of media enquiries received by cli-
mate scientists in the aftermath of many extreme cli-
mate events shows that there is a demand for event
attribution but that the whole range of possible uses
for such information is not yet fully understood.
66,67
Better information about climate risks could be of
potential use to the insurance industry, to regional
managers developing climate adaptation strategies, to
litigators, to policy makers and for disaster risk
reduction.
3
But profitable use of such information
requires a dialogue between stakeholders and scien-
tists that allows the development of trust as a way to
develop the credibility, saliency, and legitimacy of
scientific findings.
66,68
The credibility of event attribution is aided by
objective communication of the links between cli-
matic changes and the impacts of extreme events.
66
Successful communication of scientifi c findings
requires the use of language adapted to lay under-
standing, noting that some terms such as extreme
event may not be widely understood or such as ‘attri-
bution’ may not translate easily into other languages
such as German.
69,70
The legitimacy of event attribu-
tion for stakeholders is affected by their values and
beliefs,
66,71
which may be influenced by vested inter-
ests in welcoming or rejecting climate of anthropo-
genic climate change and may reflect different risk
cultures. The saliency of event attribution assess-
ments for users depends on whether they provide
knowledge that is relevant to them.
66
If the statistical
rarity of attaining a threshold for a specific physical
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measure makes a specific event salient to a climate
scientist, saliency for a stakeholder may be associated
with impact-related dimensions as well. A shift of the
probability of extremes in terms of casualties, eco-
nomic losses, or redistribution of wealth, could be
‘attributed’ to multiple factors associated with cli-
mate, vulner ability, and exposure. Extreme event
identification by stakeholders may therefore be
dependent upon the causal chain they are mobilizing
(see Figure 10
).
When stakehold ers consider that attribution is
multifactorial, this potentially complicates the ‘attri-
bution statement.’ Human influence may be per-
ceived as a nested set of behaviors, some originating
locally (e.g., land use plans), some nationally (e.g.,
health policy), and some internationally (e.g., anthro-
pogenic climate change, private financing of recon-
struction efforts). The interest in extreme event
attribution is not solely a climatic enquiry and attri-
bution assessments need to take this into account.
Nevertheless an attribution methodology that identi-
fies changes in the meteorologically related hazard
component of climate risk can be regarded as highly
useful by stakeholders who may have extensive
understanding of exposure and vulnerability but little
information on changes in hazard.
66
Experience of meetings between attribution
scientists and stakeholders representing sectors faced
with decision making in the context of climate
variability and change have demonstrated a keen
interest from stakeholders in understanding how
information gleaned from event attribution science
could be applied.
66,67
But there is no simple recipe
for user engagement. Each sector potentially has dif-
ferent uses for such information and therefore has
different requirements.
66,67
Whatever challenges
attribution science may pose to potential users, it
appears clear that such science should not be ignored
or seen as a distraction, but rather scientists and sta-
keholders should work together to ensure the science
supports stakeholder needs.
72
The robust link of only
a small fraction of excessive deaths in a heat wave to
human-made climate change could have widespread
implications for such discussions. The recognition of
such losses in the broader context of climate justice
has an ethical dimension.
73
A continuous dialogue
between scientists and stakeholders is required to
facilitate the pull through of knowledge into
informed decision making.
66– 68
This should include
an ongoing discussion of the merits and risks of
application of such knowledge in particular
contexts.
74,75
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
This article has reviewed the current status of
research into the attribution of extreme weather and
FIGURE 10
|
Representation of a grounded theory of attribution in terms of causal chain and the potential interest in attribution by
stakeholders.
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climate-related events and discussed the variety of
different methodological approaches that have been
taken. This diversity of approaches represents the
strength of this field of research. No one particular
approach provides the best answer for all purposes.
The robustness of findings is enhanced when different
approaches provide consistent results which are sup-
ported by a firm basis in physical understanding. But
when assessments synthesize current evidence based
on a multiplicity of approaches, it is important
that the framing of those approaches is clearly articu-
lated. Otherwise, users of such information may be
confused by apparently contradictory conclusions
resulting from the different framing of attribution
questions.
In an emerging field of research, there remain
many challenges in communicating clearly findings of
event attribution studies in a way that facilitates
effective decision making by stakeholders. The
annual reports in BAMS explaining extreme events
of the previous year provide one means for dissemi-
nating results of attribution studies.
17– 20
An advan-
tage of initiative s like this is that they encourage the
development of the underpinning science while also
prompting developments in the translational science
needed to communicate findings to a wider audience
than the specialist scientific community. Other such
initiatives include the European research project
EUCLEIA (European Climate and Weather Events:
Interpretation and Attribution; www.eucleia.eu)
which is developing an operational attribution system
for Europe, and the World Weather Attribution proj-
ect (http://www.climatecentral.org/wwa) which aims
to provide early, science-based assessments of the
extent to which global warming caused by green-
house gas emissions played a role in a weather or cli-
mate event’s probability. A continuous dialogue
between stakeholders and scientists is required to
enable effective decision making based on such
information.
Research to date has shown much clearer evi-
dence for human influence on extreme temperature
events than extreme precipitatio n events, droughts,
and storms. High confidence in attribution of
extreme temperature events results from a robust
observational basis, the ability of climate models to
represent the relevant processes and confirmatory
studies replicating results. The FAR for many conti-
nental and subcontinental scale temperature extreme
events exceeds 0.75 consistent with findings that the
majority of daily hot extremes occurring around the
world can be attributed to anthropogenic climate
change.
9,30,46
For extreme precipitation events,
droughts, and storms, the evidence is much more
mixed. The observational basis is less secure, climate
models can struggle to capture relevant features of
the events, and differen t methods of framing attribu-
tion questions can produce contrasting results. How-
ever, both thermodynamic and dynamical changes
need to be considered in event attribution studies
because both can influence the probability and mag-
nitude of extreme events. As climate modeling capa-
bility improves and our understanding of the
dynamical causes of extreme events develops,
the potential for making holistic event attribution
statements that consider all facets of the event in
question will improve. In turn, developing the scien-
tific understanding of extreme events and testing
the ability of climate models to represent them, will
help to improve predictions of future changes in
extreme events and thereby inform adaptation
planning.
The annual BAMS reports explaining extreme
events provide an early example of how underpin-
ning science is being applied to answer topical ques-
tions about real-life events. But even though the
production of peer-reviewed reports for publication
in September of the following year places considera-
ble demands on authors, reviewers, and editors, these
reports appear too late to be relevant on the time-
scales when the media are asking questions about the
causality of damaging weathe r and climate events.
Also attribution assessments included in the report
have so far been carried out on a largely ad hoc
basis, motivated largely by scientific teams’ capacity
and interest in analyzing particular impactful events.
As a result, geographical coverage has been far from
uniform and the ad hoc selection of events limits the
ability to draw wider conclusions for the year in
question.
For event attribution to fulfill its potential to
inform a wider group of stakeholders throughout the
world, there needs to be the development of the capa-
bility to carry out operational attribution. This
would provide regularly updated attribution assess-
ments based on predefined and tested methodologies
and event selection criteria. It would include the
capability to carry out event attribution studies on a
range of timescales including very quickly so as being
able to inform the public during the course of
extreme events. This requires the continuing develop-
ment of methodologies to assess the reliability of
event attribution results and further work to under-
stand the potential utility of event attribution for
stakeholder groups and decision makers. There needs
to be the development of regional capacity to carry
out such studies throughout the globe building on
local knowledge. And there needs to be a greater
WIREs Climate Change Attribution of extreme weather and climate-related events
Volume 7, January/February 2016 © 2015 The Authors.
WIREs Climate Change
published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 37

capability to incorporate the impacts of extreme
weather into event attribution studies so that the
risks of such events can be better understood, by
including the effects of exposure and vulnerability in
addition to meteorological hazard.
Event attri bution science is still relatively
young. Many questions still remain as to current cap-
abilities to robustly attribute the contribution of
anthropogenic climate change to the risk of many
extreme weather and climate events. Further progress
needs to be made in understanding how best to com-
municate the findings of event attribution studies to a
wide range of possible users. But there has been rapid
progress of this science in the last few years. For
example, the first annual BAMS reports into events
of 2011 contained analyses of six events restricted to
heat waves, cold spells, flood, and droughts. The
fourth report 3 years later contained 32 contributions
and in addition to heat waves, floods, and droughts
in 2014 included tropical cyclones, snow storms, and
unusual sea ice extent.
It is important that climate models continue to
be assessed and improved and, that, methods for
assessing the reliability of attribution results continue
to be developed. In particular, where attribution
assessments are based on a solid foundation of physi-
cal understanding, they are more likely to be robust.
As the science continues to mature, event attribution
should be seen as an integral component of climate
services to inform adaptation and mitigation pro-
grams around the world and to support climate risk
management.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The research leading to these results has received funding under the EUCLEIA (EUropean Climate and weather
Events: Interpretation and Attribution) project under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme
[FP7/2007-2013] under grant agreement no 607085 (PAS, NC, J-V, HvS, GvO, RV, PW, PY) PAS was par-
tially supported by the UK-China Research & Innovation Partnership Fund through the Met Office Climate
Science for Service Partnership (CCSP) China as part of the Newton fund. PAS and NC were partially sup-
ported by the Joint UK DECC/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme (GA01101). PY acknowl-
edges support from ERC Grant No. 338965-A2C2. Y. Sun is supported by Chinese programs 2012CB417205
and GYHY201406020
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