Attribution of extreme weather to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions: Sensitivity to spatial and temporal scales

Angélil, Oliver; Stone, Dáithí A.; Tadross, Mark; Tummon, Fiona; Wehner, Michael; Knutti, Reto

doi:10.1002/2014gl059234

Attribution of extreme weather to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions: Sensitivity to spatial and temporal scales

Journal Article · Tue Mar 11 00:00:00 EDT 2014 · Geophysical Research Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/2014gl059234· OSTI ID:1671761

Angélil, Oliver ^[1]; Stone, Dáithí A. ^[2]; Tadross, Mark ^[3]; Tummon, Fiona ^[1]; Wehner, Michael ^[2]; Knutti, Reto ^[1]

Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule, Zurich (Switzerland)
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP-GEF), New York, NY (United States)

Recent studies have examined the anthropogenic contribution to specific extreme weather events, such as the European (2003) and Russian (2010) heat waves. While these targeted studies examine the attributable risk of an event occurring over a specified temporal and spatial domain, it is unclear how effectively their attribution statements can serve as a proxy for similar events occurring at different temporal and spatial scales. Here we test the sensitivity of attribution results to the temporal and spatial scales of extreme precipitation and temperature events by applying a probabilistic event attribution framework to the output of two global climate models, each run with and without anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Attributable risk tends to be more sensitive to the temporal than spatial scale of the event, increasing as event duration increases. Globally, correlations between attribution statements at different spatial scales are very strong for temperature extremes and moderate for heavy precipitation extremes.

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

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

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231

OSTI ID:: 1671761

Journal Information:: Geophysical Research Letters, Journal Name: Geophysical Research Letters Journal Issue: 6 Vol. 41; ISSN 0094-8276

Publisher:: American Geophysical UnionCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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On the nonlinearity of spatial scales in extreme weather attribution statements Angélil, Oliver; Stone, Daíthí; Perkins-Kirkpatrick, Sarah Climate Dynamics, Vol. 50, Issue 7-8 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-017-3768-9	journal	June 2017
CMIP5: a Monte Carlo assessment of changes in summertime precipitation characteristics under RCP8.5-sensitivity to annual cycle fidelity, overconfidence, and gaussianity Sperber, Kenneth R.; Annamalai, H.; Pallotta, Giuliana Climate Dynamics, Vol. 54, Issue 3-4 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-019-05082-8	journal	January 2020
A hierarchical collection of political/economic regions for analysis of climate extremes Stone, Dáithí A. Climatic Change, Vol. 155, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02479-6	journal	June 2019
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
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Changing population dynamics and uneven temperature emergence combine to exacerbate regional exposure to heat extremes under 1.5 °C and 2 °C of warming Harrington, Luke J.; Otto, Friederike E. L. Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 13, Issue 3 https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aaaa99	journal	February 2018
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Marine heatwaves under global warming Frölicher, Thomas L.; Fischer, Erich M.; Gruber, Nicolas Macmillan Journals Ltd. https://doi.org/10.7892/boris.122785	text	January 2018

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