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Multiple perspectives on the attribution of the extreme European summer of 2012 to climate change

Journal Article · · Climate Dynamics
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [1];  [6];  [1];  [1]
  1. Univ. of Reading (United Kingdom)
  2. Univ. Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette (France)
  3. Federal Inst. of Technology, Zurich (Switzerland)
  4. Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter (United Kingdom)
  5. Royal Netherlands Meteorological Inst. (KNMI), De Bilt (Netherlands)
  6. Univ. of Edinburgh, Scotland (United Kingdom)
+ Show Author Affiliations
Summer 2012 was very wet in northern Europe, and unusually dry and hot in southern Europe. We use multiple approaches to determine whether anthropogenic forcing made the extreme European summer of 2012 more likely. Using a number of observation- and model-based methods, we find that there was an anthropogenic contribution to the extremes in southern Europe, with a qualitative consensus across all methodologies. There was a consensus across the methodologies that there has been a significant increase in the risk of hot summers in southern Europe with climate change. Most approaches also suggested a slight drying, but none of the results were statistically significant. The unusually wet summer in northern Europe was made more likely by the observed atmospheric circulation pattern in 2012, but no evidence was found for a long-term trend in circulation.
Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF)
Sponsoring Organization:
European Research Council (ERC); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER) (SC-23)
OSTI ID:
1565641
Journal Information:
Climate Dynamics, Journal Name: Climate Dynamics Journal Issue: 9-10 Vol. 50; ISSN 0930-7575
Publisher:
Springer-VerlagCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (5)

Verification of extreme event attribution: Using out-of-sample observations to assess changes in probabilities of unprecedented events journal March 2020
Recent trends in climate variability at the local scale using 40 years of observations: the case of the Paris region of France posted_content April 2019
Evaluation of the HadGEM3-A simulations in view of detection and attribution of human influence on extreme events in Europe journal April 2018
Behind the veil of extreme event attribution journal July 2018
Recent trends in climate variability at the local scale using 40 years of observations: the case of the Paris region of France journal January 2019

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Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Attribution
Drought
Precipitation