Ethical and normative implications of weather event attribution for policy discussions concerning loss and damage

Journal article

Extreme weather events, at least in the short term, will arguably cause more damage and thus adversely affect society more than long term changes in the mean climate that are attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. While it was long perceived as impossible to directly link a singular event with external climate drivers the emerging science of probabilistic event attribution render it possible to attribute the fraction of risk caused by anthropogenic climate change to particular weather events and their associated losses. Even with high uncertainty the robust link of only a small fraction of excessive deaths in, e.g., a heatwave to man-made climate change is from an ethical point of view very significant and we argue that this has widespread implications, e.g. for pending policy decisions concerning the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage and the recognition of such losses in the broader context of climate justice.

Authors: Thompson, A; Otto, F

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Springer
• Journal: Climatic Change
• Volume: 133
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 439-451
• Publication date: 2015-06-12
• Acceptance date: 2015-05-17
• DOI: 10.1007/s10584-015-1433-z
• EISSN: 1573-1480
• ISSN: 0165-0009
• Keywords: event attribution; climate impacts; climate justice; extreme events