Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in a Changing Climate

Attribution science seeks to quantify how human-induced climate change alters the frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as heatwaves, heavy rainfall, droughts and tropical cyclones. Drawing on large ensembles of climate model simulations, observational records and hydrological or impact assessments, researchers compare realised events with counterfactual scenarios in which anthropogenic greenhouse-gas concentrations and aerosol emissions are held at pre-industrial levels. This enables estimates of changes in event likelihood, intensity and associated societal costs. Beyond advancing fundamental understanding of climate dynamics, these insights inform adaptation planning, risk management, insurance strategies and loss-and-damage finance. By revealing both the direct thermodynamic amplifications from warming and indirect or lagged effects—such as antecedent soil moisture deficits—attribution studies underpin evidence-based policymaking and strengthen public communication of climate risks worldwide.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have estimated the global economic burden of climate-attributable extreme events by synthesising results from event attribution analyses with data on human fatalities, infrastructure damage and lost productivity. These assessments suggest that, over the past two decades, around US$143 billion per year of losses can be linked to anthropogenic climate change, with the majority arising from increased mortality. Such findings indicate that integrated assessment models may substantially understate the true societal costs of warming. In parallel, hydrological and land-surface simulations paired with observations have revealed that the 2022 European summer drought was intensified by over 30 per cent through human-driven warming and enhanced evaporation. A further 14–41 per cent of the impact was mediated by pre-existing soil drying from earlier warming, underscoring the importance of accounting for lagged climate change effects when evaluating drought risk.

Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in a Changing Climate publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in attribution of extreme weather events in a changing climate across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Extreme Event Attribution: The process of quantifying how anthropogenic climate change has altered the probability and intensity of a specific extreme weather event.

Anthropogenic Forcing: Human-induced changes to the climate system arising from emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols.

Return Period: The average interval, often expressed in years, between occurrences of an event of a given magnitude in a stationary climate.

Storyline Approach: A method that constructs physically plausible sequences of events to assess impacts without assigning explicit probabilities to the scenarios.

References

1. Disentangling the contributions of anthropogenic climate change, greenhouse gases, and aerosols to heat-related mortality in Great Britain: a climate change impact attribution study. The Lancet Planetary Health (2025).
2. The global costs of extreme weather that are attributable to climate change. Nature Communications (2023).
3. Direct and lagged climate change effects intensified the 2022 European drought. Nature Geoscience (2024).
4. Storylines: an alternative approach to representing uncertainty in physical aspects of climate change. Climatic Change (2018).
5. A Common Framework for Approaches to Extreme Event Attribution. Current Climate Change Reports (2016).
6. Extreme weather impacts of climate change: an attribution perspective. Environmental Research Climate (2022).
7. Quantitative attribution of climate effects on Hurricane Harvey’s extreme rainfall in Texas. Environmental Research Letters (2018).