Detection and attribution of climate extremes in the observed record

Easterling, David R.; Kunkel, Kenneth E.; Wehner, Michael F.; Sun, Liqiang

doi:10.1016/j.wace.2016.01.001

Detection and attribution of climate extremes in the observed record

Journal Article · Mon Jan 18 00:00:00 EST 2016 · Weather and Climate Extremes

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2016.01.001· OSTI ID:1379116

Easterling, David R. ^[1]; Kunkel, Kenneth E. ^[2]; Wehner, Michael F. ^[3]; Sun, Liqiang ^[2]

NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, Asheville, NC (United States). Center for Weather and Climate
Cooperative Inst. for Climate and Satellites (CICS-NC), Asheville, NC (United States); North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, NC (United States); NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, Asheville, NC (United States)
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

We present an overview of practices and challenges related to the detection and attribution of observed changes in climate extremes. Detection is the identification of a statistically significant change in the extreme values of a climate variable over some period of time. Issues in detection discussed include data quality, coverage, and completeness. Attribution takes that detection of a change and uses climate model simulations to evaluate whether a cause can be assigned to that change. Additionally, we discuss a newer field of attribution, event attribution, where individual extreme events are analyzed for the express purpose of assigning some measure of whether that event was directly influenced by anthropogenic forcing of the climate system.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER) (SC-23)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231

OSTI ID:: 1379116

Journal Information:: Weather and Climate Extremes, Journal Name: Weather and Climate Extremes Journal Issue: C Vol. 11; ISSN 2212-0947

Publisher:: ElsevierCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

References (61)

Coverage bias in the HadCRUT4 temperature series and its impact on recent temperature trends: Coverage Bias in the HadCRUT4 Temperature Series Cowtan, Kevin; Way, Robert G. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 140, Issue 683 https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.2297	journal	February 2014
Exposure, instrumentation, and observing practice effects on land temperature measurements: Exposure, instrumentation and observing practice effects on temperature Trewin, Blair Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, Vol. 1, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.46	journal	April 2010
Checking for model consistency in optimal fingerprinting Allen, M. R.; Tett, S. F. B. Climate Dynamics, Vol. 15, Issue 6 https://doi.org/10.1007/s003820050291	journal	June 1999
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to flood risk in England and Wales in autumn 2000 Pall, Pardeep; Aina, Tolu; Stone, Dáithí A. Nature, Vol. 470, Issue 7334 https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09762	journal	February 2011
Anthropogenic contribution to global occurrence of heavy-precipitation and high-temperature extremes Fischer, E. M.; Knutti, R. Nature Climate Change, Vol. 5, Issue 6 https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2617	journal	April 2015
Attribution of climate extreme events Trenberth, Kevin E.; Fasullo, John T.; Shepherd, Theodore G. Nature Climate Change, Vol. 5, Issue 8 https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2657	journal	June 2015
Global Land Surface Extremes of Precipitation: Data Limitations and Trends Kunkel, Kenneth E.; Frankson, Rebekah M. Journal of Extreme Events, Vol. 02, Issue 02 https://doi.org/10.1142/s2345737615500049	journal	December 2015
Extreme Cold Winter Temperatures in Europe under the Influence of North Atlantic Atmospheric Blocking Sillmann, Jana; Croci-Maspoli, Mischa; Kallache, Malaak Journal of Climate, Vol. 24, Issue 22 https://doi.org/10.1175/2011jcli4075.1	journal	November 2011
The effect of horizontal resolution on simulation quality in the Community Atmospheric Model, CAM5.1 Wehner, Michael F.; Reed, Kevin A.; Li, Fuyu Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 6, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1002/2013MS000276	journal	November 2014
The role of land use change in the recent warming of daily extreme temperatures: LAND USE CHANGE AND TEMPERATURE EXTREMES Christidis, Nikolaos; Stott, Peter A.; Hegerl, Gabriele C. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 40, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1002/grl.50159	journal	February 2013
A new method for detecting undocumented discontinuities in climatological time series Easterling, David R.; Peterson, Thomas C. International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 15, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.3370150403	journal	April 1995
A daily homogenized temperature data set for Australia Trewin, Blair International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 33, Issue 6 https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.3530	journal	June 2012
Estimating signal amplitudes in optimal fingerprinting, part I: theory Allen, M. R.; Stott, P. A. Climate Dynamics, Vol. 21, Issue 5-6 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-003-0313-9	journal	November 2003
Very extreme seasonal precipitation in the NARCCAP ensemble: model performance and projections Wehner, Michael F. Climate Dynamics, Vol. 40, Issue 1-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1393-1	journal	June 2012
The End-to-End Attribution Problem: From Emissions to Impacts Stone, Dáithí A.; Allen, Myles R. Climatic Change, Vol. 71, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-005-6778-2	journal	August 2005
Statistics of extremes in climate change Katz, Richard W. Climatic Change, Vol. 100, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-010-9834-5	journal	May 2010
Death toll exceeded 70,000 in Europe during the summer of 2003 Robine, Jean-Marie; Cheung, Siu Lan K.; Le Roy, Sophie Comptes Rendus Biologies, Vol. 331, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crvi.2007.12.001	journal	February 2008
Attribution and prediction of extreme events: Editorial on the special issue Seneviratne, Sonia I.; Zwiers, Francis W. Weather and Climate Extremes, Vol. 9 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2015.08.003	journal	September 2015
Global observed long-term changes in temperature and precipitation extremes: A review of progress and limitations in IPCC assessments and beyond Alexander, Lisa V. Weather and Climate Extremes, Vol. 11 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2015.10.007	journal	March 2016
A globally consistent reanalysis of hurricane variability and trends Kossin, J. P.; Knapp, K. R.; Vimont, D. J. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 34, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1029/2006GL028836	journal	January 2007
Counting Atlantic tropical cyclones back to 1900 Landsea, Christopher Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union, Vol. 88, Issue 18 https://doi.org/10.1029/2007EO180001	journal	May 2007
Was there a basis for anticipating the 2010 Russian heat wave?: THE 2010 RUSSIAN HEAT WAVE Dole, Randall; Hoerling, Martin; Perlwitz, Judith Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 38, Issue 6 https://doi.org/10.1029/2010GL046582	journal	March 2011
Reconciling two approaches to attribution of the 2010 Russian heat wave: RUSSIAN HEAT WAVE 2010 Otto, F. E. L.; Massey, N.; van Oldenborgh, G. J. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 39, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1029/2011GL050422	journal	February 2012
Liability for climate change Allen, Myles Nature, Vol. 421, Issue 6926 https://doi.org/10.1038/421891a	journal	February 2003
Human contribution to the European heatwave of 2003 Stott, Peter A.; Stone, D. A.; Allen, M. R. Nature, Vol. 432, Issue 7017 https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03089	journal	December 2004
Human contribution to more-intense precipitation extremes Min, Seung-Ki; Zhang, Xuebin; Zwiers, Francis W. Nature, Vol. 470, Issue 7334 https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09763	journal	February 2011
Little change in global drought over the past 60 years Sheffield, Justin; Wood, Eric F.; Roderick, Michael L. Nature, Vol. 491, Issue 7424 https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11575	journal	November 2012
Increasing drought under global warming in observations and models Dai, Aiguo Nature Climate Change, Vol. 3, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1633	journal	August 2012
Robust spatially aggregated projections of climate extremes Fischer, E. M.; Beyerle, U.; Knutti, R. Nature Climate Change, Vol. 3, Issue 12 https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2051	journal	November 2013
Estimates of the Regression Coefficient Based on Kendall's Tau Sen, Pranab Kumar Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 63, Issue 324 https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.1968.10480934	journal	December 1968
Use of models and observations in event attribution Hegerl, Gabriele C. Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 10, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/10/7/071001	journal	July 2015
Heightened tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic: natural variability or climate trend? Holland, Greg J.; Webster, Peter J. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol. 365, Issue 1860 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2007.2083	journal	July 2007
Climate Extremes: Observations, Modeling, and Impacts Easterling, D. R. Science, Vol. 289, Issue 5487 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.289.5487.2068	journal	September 2000
Global Land Surface Extremes of Precipitation: Data Limitations and Trends Kunkel, Kenneth E.; Frankson, Rebekah M. Journal of Extreme Events, Vol. 02, Issue 02 https://doi.org/10.1142/S2345737615500049	journal	December 2015
Urbanization: Its Detection and Effect in the United States Climate Record Karl, Thomas R.; Diaz, Henry F.; Kukla, George Journal of Climate, Vol. 1, Issue 11 https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0442(1988)001<1099:UIDAEI>2.0.CO;2	journal	November 1988
2000 Years of Drought Variability in the Central United States Woodhouse, Connie A.; Overpeck, Jonathan T. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 79, Issue 12 https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0477(1998)079<2693:YODVIT>2.0.CO;2	journal	December 1998
Explaining Extreme Events of 2013 from a Climate Perspective Herring, Stephanie C.; Hoerling, Martin P.; Peterson, Thomas C. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 95, Issue 9 https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0477-95.9.S1.1	journal	September 2014
Homogenization of Temperature Series via Pairwise Comparisons Menne, Matthew J.; Williams, Claude N. Journal of Climate, Vol. 22, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1175/2008JCLI2263.1	journal	April 2009
Estimating Annual Numbers of Atlantic Hurricanes Missing from the HURDAT Database (1878–1965) Using Ship Track Density Vecchi, Gabriel A.; Knutson, Thomas R. Journal of Climate, Vol. 24, Issue 6 https://doi.org/10.1175/2010JCLI3810.1	journal	March 2011
Anthropogenic Influence on Long Return Period Daily Temperature Extremes at Regional Scales Zwiers, Francis W.; Zhang, Xuebin; Feng, Yang Journal of Climate, Vol. 24, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1175/2010JCLI3908.1	journal	February 2011
Extreme Cold Winter Temperatures in Europe under the Influence of North Atlantic Atmospheric Blocking Sillmann, Jana; Croci-Maspoli, Mischa; Kallache, Malaak Journal of Climate, Vol. 24, Issue 22 https://doi.org/10.1175/2011JCLI4075.1	journal	November 2011
The Role of Human Activity in the Recent Warming of Extremely Warm Daytime Temperatures Christidis, Nikolaos; Stott, Peter A.; Brown, Simon J. Journal of Climate, Vol. 24, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1175/2011JCLI4150.1	journal	April 2011
Projections of Future Drought in the Continental United States and Mexico Wehner, Michael; Easterling, David R.; Lawrimore, Jay H. Journal of Hydrometeorology, Vol. 12, Issue 6 https://doi.org/10.1175/2011JHM1351.1	journal	December 2011
State of the Climate in 2014 Blunden, Jessica; Arndt, Derek S. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 96, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1175/2015BAMSStateoftheClimate.1	journal	July 2015
Monitoring and Understanding Trends in Extreme Storms: State of Knowledge Kunkel, Kenneth E.; Karl, Thomas R.; Brooks, Harold Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 94, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00262.1	journal	April 2013
Explaining Extreme Events of 2011 from a Climate Perspective Peterson, Thomas C.; Stott, Peter A.; Herring, Stephanie Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 93, Issue 7, p. 1041-1067 https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00021.1	journal	July 2012
Global Land-Based Datasets for Monitoring Climatic Extremes Donat, M. G.; Alexander, L. V.; Yang, H. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 94, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00109.1	journal	July 2013
Explaining Extreme Events of 2012 from a Climate Perspective Peterson, Thomas C.; Hoerling, Martin P.; Stott, Peter A. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 94, Issue 9 https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00085.1	journal	September 2013
Comments on “Monitoring and Understanding Trends in Extreme Storms: State of Knowledge” William Landsea, Christopher Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 96, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00211.1	journal	July 2015
Reply to “Comments on ‘Monitoring and Understanding Trends in Extreme Storms: State of Knowledge’” Kossin, James P.; Karl, Thomas R.; Knutson, Thomas R. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 96, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00261.1	journal	July 2015
Explaining Extreme Events of 2014 from a Climate Perspective Herring, Stephanie C.; Hoerling, Martin P.; Kossin, James P. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 96, Issue 12 https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-ExplainingExtremeEvents2014.1	journal	December 2015
Anatomy of an Extreme Event Hoerling, Martin; Kumar, Arun; Dole, Randall Journal of Climate, Vol. 26, Issue 9 https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00270.1	journal	May 2013
Multimodel Detection and Attribution of Extreme Temperature Changes Min, Seung-Ki; Zhang, Xuebin; Zwiers, Francis Journal of Climate, Vol. 26, Issue 19 https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00551.1	journal	October 2013
A Method of Homogenizing the Extremes and Mean of Daily Temperature Measurements Della-Marta, P. M.; Wanner, H. Journal of Climate, Vol. 19, Issue 17 https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI3855.1	journal	September 2006
Modeling the Recent Evolution of Global Drought and Projections for the Twenty-First Century with the Hadley Centre Climate Model Burke, Eleanor J.; Brown, Simon J.; Christidis, Nikolaos Journal of Hydrometeorology, Vol. 7, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM544.1	journal	October 2006
A Monte Carlo Assessment of Uncertainties in Heavy Precipitation Frequency Variations Kunkel, Kenneth E.; Karl, Thomas R.; Easterling, David R. Journal of Hydrometeorology, Vol. 8, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM632.1	journal	October 2007
An Overview of the Global Historical Climatology Network-Daily Database Menne, Matthew J.; Durre, Imke; Vose, Russell S. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, Vol. 29, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-11-00103.1	journal	July 2012
Stakeholder Perspectives on the Attribution of Extreme Weather Events: An Explorative Enquiry Sippel, Sebastian; Walton, Peter; Otto, Friederike E. L. Weather, Climate, and Society, Vol. 7, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-14-00045.1	journal	July 2015
Attributing weather extremes to ‘climate change’: A review Hulme, Mike Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment, Vol. 38, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1177/0309133314538644	journal	June 2014
Detection of Greenhouse Gas and Aerosol Influences on Changes in Temperature Extremes Shiogama, Hideo; Christidis, Nikolaos; Caesar, John SOLA, Vol. 2 https://doi.org/10.2151/sola.2006-039	journal	January 2006
Ch. 2: Our Changing Climate. Climate Change Impacts in the United States: The Third National Climate Assessment Walsh, J.; Wuebbles, D.; Hayhoe, K. https://doi.org/10.7930/J0KW5CXT	report	January 2014

Cited By (22)

Extreme temperature differences in the city of Lahti, southern Finland: Intensity, seasonality and environmental drivers Suomi, Juuso Weather and Climate Extremes, Vol. 19 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2017.12.001	journal	March 2018
Climate change and mental health: risks, impacts and priority actions Hayes, Katie; Blashki, G.; Wiseman, J. International Journal of Mental Health Systems, Vol. 12, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13033-018-0210-6	journal	June 2018
Impact of air–sea coupling on the probability of occurrence of heat waves in Japan Hasegawa, Akira; Imada, Yukiko; Shiogama, Hideo Progress in Earth and Planetary Science, Vol. 7, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40645-020-00390-8	journal	December 2020
Detecting and Attributing Health Burdens to Climate Change Ebi, Kristie L.; Ogden, Nicholas H.; Semenza, Jan C. Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 125, Issue 8 https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp1509	journal	August 2017
A protocol for probabilistic extreme event attribution analyses Philip, Sjoukje; Kew, Sarah; van Oldenborgh, Geert Jan Advances in Statistical Climatology, Meteorology and Oceanography, Vol. 6, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.5194/ascmo-6-177-2020	journal	January 2020
Spatiotemporal changes of heat waves and extreme temperatures in the main cities of China from 1955 to 2014 Li, Kuo; Amatus, Gyilbag Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, Vol. 20, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1889-2020	journal	July 2020
Attributable Human-Induced Changes in the Likelihood and Magnitude of the Observed Extreme Precipitation during Hurricane Harvey: CHANGES IN EXTREME PRECIPITATION IN TX Risser, Mark D.; Wehner, Michael F. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 44, Issue 24 https://doi.org/10.1002/2017gl075888	journal	December 2017
Hydrological severity assessment of extreme climate conditions Park, Jongmin; Baik, Jongjin; Choi, Minha International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 39, Issue 5 https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.5984	journal	January 2019
A new homogenized daily data set for temperature variability assessment in Italy Fioravanti, Guido; Piervitali, Emanuela; Desiato, Franco International Journal of Climatology, Vol. 39, Issue 15 https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.6177	journal	June 2019
The role of anthropogenic aerosols in future precipitation extremes over the Asian Monsoon Region Zhao, Alcide D.; Stevenson, David S.; Bollasina, Massimo A. Climate Dynamics, Vol. 52, Issue 9-10 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-018-4514-7	journal	October 2018
North American extreme precipitation events and related large-scale meteorological patterns: a review of statistical methods, dynamics, modeling, and trends Barlow, Mathew; Gutowski, William J.; Gyakum, John R. Climate Dynamics, Vol. 53, Issue 11 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-019-04958-z	journal	September 2019
Climate Change and Drought: From Past to Future Cook, Benjamin I.; Mankin, Justin S.; Anchukaitis, Kevin J. Current Climate Change Reports, Vol. 4, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40641-018-0093-2	journal	May 2018
Climate Change and Drought: a Perspective on Drought Indices Mukherjee, Sourav; Mishra, Ashok; Trenberth, Kevin E. Current Climate Change Reports, Vol. 4, Issue 2 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40641-018-0098-x	journal	April 2018
Quantifying the influence of global warming on unprecedented extreme climate events Diffenbaugh, Noah S.; Singh, Deepti; Mankin, Justin S. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 114, Issue 19 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1618082114	journal	April 2017
Changes in extreme events and the potential impacts on human health Bell, Jesse E.; Brown, Claudia Langford; Conlon, Kathryn Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, Vol. 68, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1080/10962247.2017.1401017	journal	November 2017
Improving Australia’s flood record for planning purposes – can we do better? Allen, Kj; Hope, P.; Lam, D. Australasian Journal of Water Resources, Vol. 24, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1080/13241583.2020.1745735	journal	January 2020
Temporal and spatial evaluation of stormwater engineering standards reveals risks and priorities across the United States Lopez-Cantu, Tania; Samaras, Constantine Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 13, Issue 7 https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aac696	journal	June 2018
Extreme weather and climate events with ecological relevance: a review Ummenhofer, Caroline C.; Meehl, Gerald A. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Vol. 372, Issue 1723 https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2016.0135	journal	May 2017
Error Analysis and Evaluation of the Latest GSMap and IMERG Precipitation Products over Eastern China Ning, Shaowei; Song, Fan; Udmale, Parmeshwar Advances in Meteorology, Vol. 2017 https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/1803492	journal	January 2017
A Global ETCCDI-Based Precipitation Climatology from Satellite and Rain Gauge Measurements Dietzsch, Felix; Andersson, Axel; Ziese, Markus Climate, Vol. 5, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.3390/cli5010009	journal	February 2017
Improving Australia’s flood record for planning purposes – can we do better? Allen, Kj; Hope, P.; Lam, D. Taylor & Francis https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12090636	text	January 2020
Improving Australia’s flood record for planning purposes – can we do better? Allen, Kj; Hope, P.; Lam, D. Taylor & Francis https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12090636.v1	text	January 2020

Similar Records

On the attribution of the impacts of extreme weather events to anthropogenic climate change

Journal Article · Tue Jan 25 19:00:00 EST 2022 · Environmental Research Letters · OSTI ID:1855366

Extreme Weather Events and Climate Change Attribution

Technical Report · Thu Mar 31 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · OSTI ID:1312845

On the nonlinearity of spatial scales in extreme weather attribution statements

Journal Article · Fri Jun 16 20:00:00 EDT 2017 · Climate Dynamics · OSTI ID:1379890

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Attribution
Detection
Extremes
Observed climate change

Detection and attribution of climate extremes in the observed record

Citation Formats

References (61)

Cited By (22)

Similar Records

Related Subjects