Kevin Korb

Many politicians and media personalities continue to cast doubt on the idea that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) – the primary driver of current global climate change – could possibly be behind the growing frequency and severity of extreme weather events – the droughts, heatwaves, flooding, etc. that are every year breaking 100 year or greater historical records. This takes the form not just of a straightforward denial of climate change, but also of a more plausible denial of a connection between climate change and individual extreme events. Until ten or five years ago, many climate scientists themselves would have agreed with rejecting such a connection, and some journalists and politicians have followed them and continue following them, even when they have stopped leading anyone in that direction (see box below). Climate scientists have stopped agreeing with this, because in the meantime a new subdiscipline has been developed specifically for attributing extreme weather events to AGW or to natural variation, depending upon the specifics of the case. While it may suit the political preferences of some commentators to ignore this development, it is not in the general interest. Here I present a brief and simple introduction to the main ideas in current work on attributing individual events to global warming. (An even simpler introduction to attribution science, emphasizing legal liability, can be found in Colman, 2019.)