Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change

Stott, Peter A.; Christidis, Nikolaos; Otto, Friederike E. L.; Sun, Yonghe; Vanderlinden, Jean-Paul; Oldenborgh, Geert Jan van; Vautard, Robert; Storch, Hans von; Walton, Peter; Yiou, Pascal; Zwiers, Francis W.

doi:10.17226/21852

Cited by 174 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 230 publications

(363 reference statements)

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“…This is due to a general increase in storminess in the same season during El Niño years when the polar jet stream flows farther south allowing more frontal systems to reach Florida (e.g., Douglas and Englehart 1981). The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has a similar influence on Florida climate as ENSO, but on longer decadal time scales (Misra et al 2011). …”

Section: Floods and Climate Variabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Future changes in precipitation extremes during the summer season are closely linked to changes in tropical cyclones (Misra et al 2011), as the latter contributes significantly to the number of extreme rainfall events observed throughout the state. For a high greenhouse gas emission scenario (Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5) and the target year 2050, Gao et al (2012) found an increase of ~20% (302 mm/yr to 365 mm/yr) in the annual total of daily extreme precipitation, but smaller changes (~5% increase) in the frequency of daily extreme events.…”

Section: Outlooks Into the Futurementioning

confidence: 99%

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Climate and Weather Extremes

Collins¹,

Paxton²,

Wahl³

et al. 2017

Florida’s Climate: Changes, Variations, &Amp; Impacts

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Key Messages• The state of Florida is prone to various types of weather extremes, with tropical cyclones being the most dangerous in terms of impact potential.• Most types of extreme events exhibit a seasonal cycle making it more likely for them to occur at certain times of the year. Many of them are also sensitive to large-scale climate variation resulting in strong interannual to multidecadal variability. The most important climate indicator for extreme weather in Florida is the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).• Strong spatial variability of extreme events and related hazards exists across the state, with certain areas more susceptible to particular weather hazards than others. Maps of observed frequencies of the different types of events in the past can help identify hot spots.• Attribution of climatic extremes is challenging because of insufficient observational records (with strong variability) and limitations in models with regards to resolution and complexity of the processes involved in the genesis of extreme events. This is also the reason for large uncertainties in future projections of most types of extreme events.• There is, however, agreement that changes in the mean, which are better represented in climate models, will also affect the extremes (e.g., increasing mean sea level will affect storm surge heights and frequency).

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Section: Floods and Climate Variabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Outlooks Into the Futurementioning

confidence: 99%

Climate and Weather Extremes

Collins¹,

Paxton²,

Wahl³

et al. 2017

Florida’s Climate: Changes, Variations, &Amp; Impacts

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“…Stakeholders from different sectors (insurance, policy making, media, legal) have a variety of different uses for such information . The US National Academy of Sciences recently assessed the validity of event attribution (NAS 2016) and concluded that Bit is now often possible to make and defend quantitative statements about the extent to which human-induced climate change (or another causal factor, such as a specific mode of natural variability) has influenced either the magnitude or the probability of occurrence of specific types of event or event classes.^The report noted that event attribution science Bhas advanced a great deal in recent years and is still evolving rapidly.^This was due to two main reasons: Bone, the understanding of the climate and weather mechanisms that produce extreme events is improving, and two, rapid progress is being made in the methods that are used for event attribution.D espite this progress, the approaches described above have been criticised for being flawed in two basic respects (Trenberth et al 2015;Mann et al 2017). First, it is argued that the reliance of event attribution studies on climate models makes standard approaches unreliable (Trenberth et al 2015).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second flaw, it is argued, is that standard event attribution approaches require significance testing in which the null hypothesis of no human influence must first be ruled out at a sufficiently high significance level (typically 5%) (Trenberth et al 2015;Mann et al 2017). Mann et al 2017 (see also Trenberth et al 2015) suggest that such a testing-based approach is Bconservative^and argue that an approach in which event likelihoods are estimated via Bayesian methods would be better both empirically and ethically.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Is the choice of statistical paradigm critical in extreme event attribution studies?

2017

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The science of event attribution meets a mounting demand for reliable and timely information about the links between climate change and individual extreme events. Studies have estimated the contribution of human-induced climate change to the magnitude of an event as well as its likelihood, and many types of event have been investigated including heatwaves, floods, and droughts. Despite this progress, such approaches have been criticised for being unreliable and for being overly conservative. We argue that such criticisms are misplaced. Rather, a false dichotomy has arisen between Bconventional^approaches and new alternative framings. We have three points to make about the choice of statistical paradigm for event attribution studies. First, different approaches to event attribution may choose to occupy different places on the conditioning spectrum. Providing this choice of conditioning is communicated clearly, the value of such choices depends ultimately on their utility to the user concerned. Second, event attribution is an estimation problem for which either frequentist or Bayesian paradigms can be used. Third, for hypothesis testing, the choice of null hypothesis is context specific. Thus, the null hypothesis of human influence is not inherently a preferable alternative to the usual null hypothesis of no human influence.

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Contribution of urbanization to the increase of extreme heat events in an urban agglomeration in east China

Yang

Leung

Zhao

et al. 2017

Geophysical Research Letters

168

116

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The urban agglomeration of Yangtze River Delta (YRD) is emblematic of China's rapid urbanization during the past decades. Based on homogenized daily maximum and minimum temperature data, the contributions of urbanization to trends of summer extreme temperature indices (ETIs) in YRD are evaluated. Dynamically classifying the observational stations into urban and rural, this study presents unexplored changes in temperature extremes during the past four decades in YRD and quantifies the amplification of the positive trends in ETIs by the urban heat island effect. Overall, urbanization contributes to more than one third of the increase of intensity of extreme heat events in the region, which is comparable to the contribution of greenhouse gases. Compared to rural stations, more notable shifts to the right in the probability distribution of temperature and ETIs are found in urban stations. The rapid urbanization in YRD has resulted in large increases in the risk of heat extremes.

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Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change

Abstract: CoThis Ch subs wi Attribution ext of Climate Although the t and citations he National e s

Cited by 174 publications

References 230 publications

Climate and Weather Extremes

Climate and Weather Extremes

Is the choice of statistical paradigm critical in extreme event attribution studies?

Contribution of urbanization to the increase of extreme heat events in an urban agglomeration in east China

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