The Science of Climate Attribution
"The weather is becoming increasingly more extreme. "
But how are we sure about it?
And how are we sure this is directly connected to anthropogenic influence on climate change?
In the last 40 years, the number of extreme weather events has been constantly increasing with further growth predictions in the next decades. It has always been difficult to classify these events between weather anomalies or actual climate change induced hazards. However, scientist almost unanimously agree that human induced climate change exists and it's happening right now. Based on this assumption, we are able to study and analyse the boundary conditions of different climates in order to predict the likelihood of extreme weather events as well as identifying which human activities influence it the most.
On this matter, attribution science has become very popular in the recent years: by being able to correctly identify and classify a weather event and its root causes, we will be able as well to draft more appropriate adaptation as well as loss and damage policies in order to correctly tackle the riskiness and vulnerability deriving from future environmental hazards. Attribution science has been enabled by latest science and technology development through which historical real data on weather/extreme events is elaborated and thanks to computer models can be compared to the same case scenario with or without climate change. Once the local or national governments start to cooperate with the scientific community, we will be able to create accurate adaptive plans for future events in order to mitigate damages and losses both ecologically as well as economically.
Moreover, Loss and Damage Fund has been a major talking point during the recent COP 27 which occured in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt during November 2022. An historic event, 24 UN Countries consolidated a plan to create a mutual fund in the next months with the goal of financing those vulnerable developing countries most affected by "negative consequences that arise from the unavoidable risks of climate change, like rising sea levels, prolonged heat waves, desertification, the acidification of the sea and extreme events, such as bushfires, species extinction and crop failures. The discussion now will continue on the application of such decision: how will the fund be financed? Who will be the main contributors? Based on which parameters will the receiving countries be selected?
In order for climate attribution to be effective, the right question must be asked so that we are not only answering to the scientific dilemma but especially the social one. The goal for academics must be to create the most efficient and strategic overview of the data at our disposal in order to develop a consistent and accessible action tool for policy makers. We must strive at correctly assessing the projected risks resulting from climate change especially in those countries where the focus has always been minimal, for example in the African continent. Given the rarity of these events' occurrence and thus the limitation of data availability, it is not easy to create a predictive model on the matter. Nonetheless, ensembles of climate model experiments provided us recently with more accurate predictions which can be afterwards utilized by probabilistic event attribution science to further assign the extent of human induced climate change impact. This happens centrally by "removing climate driver from the model simulations", however "the decisions on which drivers to remove will significantly influence the result of an attribution study" (Otto 2015). These drivers, such as solar energy, precipitation, SLR, SST, might as well has a significantly different weighted impact on one region from another, which leads to more reason for boosting a stronger collaboration between the scientific community and the policy makers. This participation will definitely be required during the above mentioned negotiation on the actualization of the Loss and Damage Fund from COP 27.
"Co-production of knowledge between scientists and users is vital to avoid pre-defined event definitions that do not take account of the perspectives and priority needs of users of event attribution studies" (Stott et al. 2013).
References:
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/what-you-need-know-about-cop27-loss-and-damage-fund
Otto, F.E., E. Boyd, R.G. Jones, R.J. Cornforth, R. James, H.R. Parker and M.R. Allen ‘Attribution of extreme weather events in Africa: a preliminary exploration of the science and policy implications’, Climatic Change 132(4) 2015, pp.531–543.
Otto, F., R. James and M. Allen The science of attributing extreme weather events and its potential contribution to assessing loss and damage associated with climate change impacts, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford.
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