Tony Broccoli, Rutgers University

Abstract

Popular discourse about extreme weather events often invokes climate change as a cause.  But extreme weather events have occurred throughout the time for which high-quality records of weather and climate are available, including well before the global warming trend accelerated in the late 20th century.  Quantifying the effects of climate change on the likelihood of extreme events has been challenging, but methods have now been developed for determining the contribution of climate change to individual extreme events.  These "event attribution" methods will be briefly discussed along with some examples.