What Is Climate Attribution? | ClimaTwin Science
Climate attribution estimates how human-caused warming alters the probability or intensity of an extreme event class by comparing the observed world with a counterfactual world. A key distinction is that attribution quantifies a shift in odds or severity rather than proving that climate change alone causes a single storm, flood, or heatwave (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine [NASEM], 2016; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], 2021). For decision-makers, this framing reframes extreme-event analysis as a question of changing baseline risk rather than as the interpretation of one-off anomalies (NASEM, 2016; IPCC, 2021).
References
- National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2016). Attribution of extreme weather events in the context of climate change. The National Academies Press. doi:10.17226/21852.
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2021). Climate change 2021: The physical science basis. Cambridge University Press.