Unnatural disasters: how we can spot climate’s role in specific extreme events

Brussels residents gain some respite from
the 2003 heatwave, the event that launched
the science of climate attribution.

These days, after an extreme weather event like a cyclone, bushfire, or major storm, it’s common to find people asking: was it climate change?

We also often hear people saying it is impossible to attribute any single weather event to climate change, as former prime minister Tony Abbott and the then environment minister Greg Hunt said after the bushfires in New South Wales in 2013.

While this may have been true in the 1990s, the science of attributing individual extreme events to global warming has advanced significantly since then. It is now possible to link aspects of extreme events to climate change.

However, as I describe in an article co-written by Susan Hassol, Simon Torok and Patrick Luganda and published today in the World Meteorological Organization’s Bulletin, how we communicate these findings has not kept pace with the rapidly evolving science. As a result, there is widespread confusion about the links between climate change and extreme weather.

Read the thoughts of a Research fellow at the Australian National University, Sophie Lewis, on The Conversation - “Unnatural disasters: how we can spot climate’s role in specific extreme events.”