Attribution of extreme weather and climate-related events Stott, Peter A.; Christidis, Nikolaos; Otto, Friederike E. L. ...
Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Climate change,
January/February 2016, Letnik:
7, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Extreme weather and climate‐related events occur in a particular place, by definition, infrequently. It is therefore challenging to detect systematic changes in their occurrence given the relative ...shortness of observational records. However, there is a clear interest from outside the climate science community in the extent to which recent damaging extreme events can be linked to human‐induced climate change or natural climate variability. Event attribution studies seek to determine to what extent anthropogenic climate change has altered the probability or magnitude of particular events. They have shown clear evidence for human influence having increased the probability of many extremely warm seasonal temperatures and reduced the probability of extremely cold seasonal temperatures in many parts of the world. The evidence for human influence on the probability of extreme precipitation events, droughts, and storms is more mixed. Although the science of event attribution has developed rapidly in recent years, geographical coverage of events remains patchy and based on the interests and capabilities of individual research groups. The development of operational event attribution would allow a more timely and methodical production of attribution assessments than currently obtained on an ad hoc basis. For event attribution assessments to be most useful, remaining scientific uncertainties need to be robustly assessed and the results clearly communicated. This requires the continuing development of methodologies to assess the reliability of event attribution results and further work to understand the potential utility of event attribution for stakeholder groups and decision makers. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:23–41. doi: 10.1002/wcc.380
This article is categorized under:
Paleoclimates and Current Trends > Detection and Attribution
Climate Models and Modeling > Knowledge Generation with Models
Climate change is causing wide-ranging effects on ecosystem services critical to coastal communities and livelihoods, creating an urgent need to adapt. Most studies of climate change adaptation ...consist of narrative descriptions of individual cases or global synthesis, making it difficult to formulate and test locally rooted but generalizable hypotheses about adaptation processes. In contrast, researchers in this study analyzed key points in climate change adaptation derived from coordinated fieldwork in seven coastal communities around the world, including Arctic, temperate, and tropical areas on four continents. Study communities faced multiple challenges from sea level rise and warmer ocean temperatures, including coastal erosion, increasing salinity, and ecological changes. We analyzed how the communities adapted to climate effects and other co-occurring forces for change, focusing on most important changes to local livelihoods and societies, and barriers to and enablers of adaptation. Although many factors contributed to adaptation, communities with strong self-organized local institutions appeared better able to adapt without substantial loss of well-being than communities where these institutions were weak or absent. Key features of these institutions included setting and enforcing rules locally and communication across scales. Self-governing local institutions have been associated with sustainable management of natural resources. In our study communities, analogous institutions played a similar role to moderate adverse effects from climate-driven environmental change. The findings suggest that policies to strengthen, recognize, and accommodate local institutions could improve adaptation outcomes.
•The methodology can be applied to any tidal coastal zone.•The entire study area is vulnerable to micro-plastic pollution.•On Lanzarote, the pollution reached a maximum of 109g of plastic in 1l of ...sediment.
Coastal zones and the biosphere as a whole show signs of cumulative degradation due to the use and disposal of plastics. To better understand the manifestation of plastic pollution in the Atlantic Ocean, we partnered with local communities to determine the concentrations of micro-plastics in 125 beaches on three islands in the Canary Current: Lanzarote, La Graciosa, and Fuerteventura. We found that, in spite of being located in highly-protected natural areas, all beaches in our study area are exceedingly vulnerable to micro-plastic pollution, with pollution levels reaching concentrations greater than 100g of plastic in 1l of sediment. This paper contributes to ongoing efforts to develop solutions to plastic pollution by addressing the questions: (i) Where does this pollution come from?; (ii) How much plastic pollution is in the world’s oceans and coastal zones?; (iii) What are the consequences for the biosphere?; and (iv) What are possible solutions?
This article focuses on the social representations of permafrost thaw among people who were born in different regions of the Sakha Republic (Russia) and live in the regional capital city of Yakutsk. ...Our research aims to obtain a better understanding of the new risk patterns associated to permafrost thaw through the collection and subsequent analysis of narratives of personal experiences in order to identify the main concerns, how these are defined and which coping strategies are considered by local inhabitants. Our respondents insightfully characterized the nature of the multiple interrelated processes and associations that they identified. According to locals' grasp, climate change and permafrost thaw's impacts exceed the merely physical and material dimensions, unchaining simultaneous and deep transformations in their culture. More specifically, physical degradation threatens their symbolic representations, the material practices and the emotional ties that they have developed in that specific land. They also expressed the need for potential mitigation strategies at both a regional and local scale.
2020 marked the 10th anniversary of the Xynthia storm that hit Western Europe at the end of February 2010. In France it triggered an unprecedented coastal flooding event, with most human and material ...damage concentrated on the Atlantic coast in the Vendée and Charente Maritime region. A range of reforms and measures followed to manage the risk of coastal flooding at the local and national levels.
What conclusions can be drawn from these actions 10 years later? Did Xynthia mark a turning point in the doctrine of coastal flood risk management in France, in a similar way the 1953 storm and associated floods did for the Netherlands?
To answer these questions we carried out a two-step analysis. First we compiled, classified and analysed all the recommendations and other “lessons learned” that were made public following the Xynthia storm. Second we looked into local risk management plans and strategies and conducted a series of semi-structured interviews in Charente Maritime to identify current flood risk mitigation practices. We analysed these in light of the identified recommendations.
These analyses allow us both to take stock of the past ten years and to identify the acceleration effects attributable to storm Xynthia as well as the effects of lock-in and other elements hindering a more in-depth reform of coastal flood risk management in France.
More importantly these analyses allow us to reflect on the process of stocktaking itself, its potential pitfalls and the need for the development of an analytical corpus. Learning to take stock of events that are considered “extraordinary” today is a necessary step to manage climate risks on the coast that are likely to become “ordinary” in the future.
Since Allen (Nature 421(6926):891–892,
2003
)’s seminal article, the community of extreme event attribution (EEA) has grown to maturity. Several approaches have been developed: the main ones are the ...“risk-based approach” — estimating how the probability of event occurrence correlates with climate change — and the “storyline approach” — evaluating the influence of climate change on thermodynamic processes leading to the event. In this article, we map the ways to frame attribution used in a collection of 105 case studies from five BAMS (Bulletin of American Meteorological Society) special issues on extreme events. In order to do so, we propose to define EEA, based on two corpora of interviews conducted with researchers working in the field, as follows: EEA is the ensemble of scientific ways to interpret the question “was this event influenced by climate change?” and answer it. In order to break down the subtleties of EEA, we decompose this initial question into three main problems a researcher has to deal with when framing an EEA case study. First, one needs to define the event of interest. Then, one has to propose a way to link the extreme event with climate change, and the subsequent level of conditioning to parameters of interest. Finally, one has to determine how to represent climate change. We provide a complete classification of BAMS case studies according to those three problems.
The Paris agreement recognizes “the importance of averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, including extreme weather events and slow ...onset events”. Hence, it raises the question of discriminating extreme events between those influenced and not influenced by climate change. Extreme event attribution (EEA) is the ensemble of scientific ways to interpret and answer the question “was this event influenced by climate change”. The relevance of EEA for climate negotiations was debated before the adoption of the Paris Agreement and is still discussed in post Paris Agreement literature. To inform this debate, we propose a phenomenological approach based on interviews. Parker et al. (2017) analyzed interviews from a mix of loss and damage stakeholders at COP 19, and highlighted a variety of opinions regarding the relevance of EEA for loss and damage. We propose to go further by focusing on two distinct groups of stakeholders: EEA scientists and loss and damage delegates (or their advisers). We find that delegates perceive EEA as a useful tool for awareness raising. We outline a number of hurdles raised by both groups, which may hinder EEA to be part of a practical loss and damage mechanism.
Knowledge quality assessment (KQA) has been developed in order to analyze the role of knowledge in situations of high stakes and urgency when characterized by deep uncertainty and ignorance. ...Governing coastal flood risk in the face of climate change is typical of such situations. These are situations which limit the ability to establish objective, reliable, and valid facts. This paper aims to identify the moral frameworks that stakeholders use to judge flood risk situations under climate change, and infer from these knowledge legitimacy criteria. Knowledge legitimacy, defined as being respectful of stakeholders' divergent values and beliefs, is one of the three broad quality criteria that have been proposed in order to assess knowledge quality in such situations; credibility (as scientific adequacy) and salience (relevance to the needs of decision makers) being the two others. Knowledge legitimacy is essentially the subject of a literature analyzing,
ex-post
(once knowledge has been deployed), how stakeholders' participation is a factor contributing to knowledge legitimacy. Very little is known about
ex-ante
characteristics (i.e.: that can be observed, determined, before knowledge is deployed) that would make some types of knowledge more legitimate (i.e., respectful of stakeholders' divergent values and beliefs) than others. We see this as a significant blind spot in the analysis of knowledge and its role under deep uncertainty. In this paper we posit that this blind spot may be addressed, in part. In order to achieve this we first identify the ethical frameworks that stakeholders use to judge a situation of risk under rapidly changing conditions. We then associate these ethical frameworks to characteristics of knowledge. We tested this conceptualization through a case study approach centered on flood risk on the French Atlantic coast. We have adopted a narrative approach to the analysis of two diachronic corpora consisting of interviews conducted in 2010–2012 (33 interviews) and 2020 (15 interviews). These were approached as narratives of a risk situation. We thematically coded these along themes considered as metanarratives. These metanarratives are associated with predefined (deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics) and emerging (discourse ethics, connection ethics, and a naturalistic ethic) ethical theories. Our results show that, when faced with flood risks, stakeholders tell stories that mobilizes several metaethical frameworks as guiding principles in the form of both procedural and substantive injunctions. In order to respect what we interpret as manifestations of the moral stances of stakeholders, our results indicate that knowledge legitimacy may be assessed against the following criteria: lability, debatability and adaptability; degree of co-production invested; place-based approach; ability to include lessons that would be given by nature. The operationalization of these criteria is promising in a time when the knowledge that is used for decision making under certainty is increasingly contested on the ground of its legitimacy.
The acceleration of ice sheet melting has been observed over the last few decades. Recent observations and modeling studies have suggested that the ice sheet contribution to future sea level rise ...could have been underestimated in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. The ensuing freshwater discharge coming from ice sheets could have significant impacts on global climate, and especially on the vulnerable tropical areas. During the last glacial/deglacial period, megadrought episodes were observed in the Sahel region at the time of massive iceberg surges, leading to large freshwater discharges. In the future, such episodes have the potential to induce a drastic destabilization of the Sahelian agroecosystem. Using a climate modeling approach, we investigate this issue by superimposing on the Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5 (RCP8.5) baseline experiment a Greenland flash melting scenario corresponding to an additional sea level rise ranging from 0.5 m to 3 m. Our model response to freshwater discharge coming from Greenland melting reveals a significant decrease of the West African monsoon rainfall, leading to changes in agricultural practices. Combined with a strong population increase, described by different demography projections, important human migration flows could be potentially induced. We estimate that, without any adaptation measures, tens to hundreds million people could be forced to leave the Sahel by the end of this century. On top of this quantification, the sea level rise impact over coastal areas has to be superimposed, implying that the Sahel population could be strongly at threat in case of rapid Greenland melting.
The goal of this paper is to analyze how and with what results place-based climate service co-production may be enacted within a community for whom climate change is not a locally salient concern. ...Aiming to initiate a climate-centered dialogue, a hybrid team of scientists and artists collected local narratives within the Kerourien neighbourhood, in the city of Brest in Brittany, France. Kerourien is a place known for its stigmatizing crime, poverty, marginalization and state of disrepair. Social work is higher on the agenda than climate action. The team thus acknowledged that local narratives might not make much mention of climate change, and recognized part of the work might be to shift awareness to the actual or potential, current or future, connections between everyday non-climate concerns and climate issues. Such a shift called for a practical intervention, centered on local culture.
The narrative collection process was dovetailed with preparing the neighbourhood’s 50th anniversary celebration and establishing a series of art performances to celebrate the neighbourhood and its residents. Non-climate and quasi-climate stories were collected, documented, and turned into art forms. The elements of climate service co-production in this process are twofold. First, they point to the ways in which non-climate change related local concerns may be mapped out in relation to climate change adaptation, showing how non-climate change concerns call for climate information. Secondly, they show how the co-production of climate services may go beyond the provision of climate information by generating procedural benefits such as local empowerment – thus generating capacities that may be mobilized to face climate change. We conclude by stressing that “place-based climate service co-production for action” may require questioning the nature of the “services” rendered, questioning the nature of “place,” and questioning what “action” entails. We offer leads for addressing these questions in ways that help realise empowerment and greater social justice.
PDF
