Working out whether human activity is supercharging extreme events, such as floods, storms, droughts and heatwaves, is one of the youngest branches of climate science. But it’s moving at breakneck pace.
So much so, that the US National Academy of Sciences has fast-tracked a report, published today, taking stock of the science and where it’s heading.
Event attribution is the field of science that asks if extreme weather around the world would look any different if we could replay the last 200 years or so, without human-caused greenhouse gases.
Today’s report is an overview, rather than a showcase for new results. And at about 150 pages long, it’s not a light read. But its weightiness is apt for a topic that has come to underpin climate conversations everywhere from flooding in the UK to climate change adaptation.
Carbon Brief has been speaking to key scientists in the world of attribution about how far the science has come, experimenting with communicating the nuances, and the thorny issue of making results public at lightning speed, often before peer review.
One thing is for sure, Dr Heidi Cullen, chief scientist at Climate Central and a contributor to today’s report, tells Carbon Brief:
‘A universal talking point’
Storms, droughts, heavy rain, heatwaves and other extreme weather events are of huge interest to society because of their often disastrous consequences for people and property.
As Prof Ted Shepherd, professor of climate science at the University of Reading in the UK, explains in a recent commentary in the journal Current Climate Change Reports:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
