Watch Fredi Otto discuss some of the major challenges in defining Loss and Damage and Dann Mitchell giving an example of
how event attribution can be done for variables beyond meteorology in the AGU on demand session.
Not exact matches
Attribution research is relatively new, and scientists are still learning
how to untangle the contribution of long - term global warming in a given weather
event.
In recent years, a brand of research called «climate
attribution science» has sprouted from this question, examining the impact of extreme
events to determine
how much — often in fractional terms — is related to human - induced climate change, and
how much to natural variability (whether in climate patterns such as the El Niño / La Niña - Southern Oscillation, sea - surface temperatures, changes in incoming solar radiation, or a host of other possible factors).
The new research differs from other so - called extreme
event attribution studies, not just in its broad - brush approach, but also in
how the term «extreme» is defined.
«The methodological frameworks were very much in their infancy at the time of Katrina in 2005,» said Noah Diffenbaugh, a Stanford climate researcher who performs climate change «
attribution» studies, seeking to determine
how the probability of various weather
events has changed as a result of the warming of the climate.
The study is the first to take so - called
event attribution a step further to investigate
how warming has increased the risks of flooding impacts, finding that it has likely put more properties at risk and raised the costs of such an
event.
Normally, with a single
event there isn't enough information to do any
attribution, but Pall et al set up a very large ensemble of runs starting from roughly the same initial conditions to see
how often the flooding
event occurred.
For example, after an extreme weather
event, scientists often carry out single
attribution studies to determine
how the likelihood of such an
event could have been influenced by climate change and short - term climate variability.
Project 5: 5a)
Event attribution with CMIP5 data 5b)
How does climate change alter the distribution of weather?
In the particular context of
event attribution, we address the question of
how to compare records between the so - called world as «it might have been been without anthropogenic forcings» and the «world that is».
The Met Office carries out
attribution studies to assess
how human influence has altered the chances of a particular
event.
The latest in so - called
attribution studies is to study each individual
event by itself, looking for
how climate change may have made it stronger or more likely.
Specifically, the science of
attribution — looking at
how much climate change increases the odds of any one particular
event occurring — has advanced remarkably.
It's an *
attribution * problem: the major effect is known, but it's unclear * why *, and specifically, whether or not a particular
event happened to trigger the effect, and
how.