Research brief: New protocol aims to improve the quality and communication of extreme event attribution

This paper aims to catalogue the steps the authors have found make up a successful framework for event attribution analyses. The hope is that this paper will be useful for those considering how to undertake such work themselves and to highlight some of the potential issues and pitfalls that can arise along the way.

Picture (above): Drought. Credit: Ian Turnell (Pexels).

In recent years, extreme event attribution analyses have become more common alongside a growing demand for an understanding of the human influence on extreme weather events. Through performing several of these event attribution studies this team of authors learnt lessons about the attribution part of the process and a range of other steps along the way.

A suitable event definition and a plan for communicating results were found to be vital, but these have often been an afterthought in the past. This paper aims to catalogue the steps the authors have found make up a successful framework for event attribution analyses. The hope is that this paper will be useful for those considering how to undertake such work themselves and to highlight some of the potential issues and pitfalls that can arise along the way.

Paper: Philip, S., S. Kew, G. J. van Oldenborgh, F. Otto, R. Vautard, K. van der Wiel, A. King, F. Lott, J. Arrighi, R. Singh, and M. van Aalst, 2020: A protocol for probabilistic extreme event attribution analyses. Adv. Stat. Clim. Meteorol. Oceanogr., 6, 177–203, https://doi.org/10.5194/ascmo-6-177-2020.