Introduction to explaining extreme events of 2014 from a climate perspective
Date
2015
Authors
Herring, Stephanie C.
Hoerling, Martin P.
Kossin, James P.
Peterson, Thomas C.
Stott, Peter A.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Abstract
The field of event attribution faces challenging questions. Can climate change influences on single events be reliably determined given that observations of extremes are limited and implications of model biases for establishing the causes of those events are poorly understood? The scientific developments in this report—now in its fourth year—as well as in the broader scientific literature, suggest that “event attribution” that detects the effects of long-term change on extreme events is possible. However, because of the fundamentally mixed nature of anthropogenic and natural climate variability, as well as technical challenges and methodological uncertainties, results are necessarily probabilistic and not deterministic.
As the science advances, other questions are emerging. For what types of events can event attribution provide scientifically robust explanations of causes? Is near-real-time attribution possible? And, how useful are science-based explanations of extremes for society? We consider these questions in more detail.
Description
Keywords
UN SDG 13: Climate Action
Citation
Herring, S. C., Hoerling, M. P., Kossin, J. P., Peterson, T. C., & Stott, P. A. (2015). Introduction to explaining extreme events of 2014 from a climate perspective. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 96(12), S1- S4. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-ExplainingExtremeEvents2014.1