National Academies Report Backs Climate Change Attribution Science

Key Points:

• The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released a report endorsing the field of extreme event attribution, which assesses how much climate change worsens specific extreme weather events.
• Extreme event attribution science has advanced significantly over the past two decades, enabling scientists to estimate the influence of global warming on particular heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and storms with greater precision.
• While the report does not prescribe legal or policy uses for attribution findings, it acknowledges their potential relevance in lawsuits against fossil fuel companies, such as the $50 billion case by Multnomah County citing climate change’s role in a 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave.
• Fossil fuel industry allies have criticized attribution scientists as activists and questioned the impartiality of the National Academies report, framing it as part of a litigation strategy against oil and gas producers.
• The report highlights improvements in data quality and analytical methods that increase confidence in distinguishing human-caused climate impacts from natural atmospheric variability in extreme weather events.