Covering Attribution Science — Covering Climate Now

Welcome to Locally Sourced, a biweekly Covering Climate Now newsletter for journalists working to localize the climate story. Share this newsletter with colleagues and journalism students interested in localizing the climate story. Vea la versión en español de “Fuentes locales.”

Story Spark: Attribution Science

Research shows that many of this year’s biggest environmental disasters, from Hurricane Helene to summer heat waves, were made more likely and deadly due to climate change. Attribution science, a rapidly evolving field of climate science, makes these findings possible.

This science has advanced by leaps and bounds since the first attribution study was published in 2004. With stronger climate signals today compared to 20 years ago, more computing power, and the sharing of data among climate scientists across the world, attribution studies can now be done faster and more often. Today, academic groups such as World Weather Attribution and Climate Central are able to explore and quantify climate change’s influence on an individual weather event, often in the immediate aftermath of a weather disaster.

So how is this done? By using climate models and observational weather data, researchers can simulate a weather event in “two virtual worlds.” One mirrors our world with human-induced global warming, the other models a fictional world with all of our greenhouse gas emissions removed. By comparing the two, scientists can see what effect those emissions had on the likelihood and severity of heatwaves, floods, droughts, hurricanes, or other forms of extreme weather.

While not every attribution study finds a climate connection, speaking to the natural variability present in our weather, the vast majority (83%) of studies do find a link. Reporting on these findings is critical not only to bring to light the immediate, local impacts of climate change but to also help communities plan and prepare for the future with a better sense of what lies ahead.

Stories We Like

• The Japan Times highlights how rapid attribution studies are conducted and how they can help answer the question that comes after every extreme weather event, “Was this because of climate change?”
• Attribution science may provide a way to measure the damage caused by disasters made worse due to climate change and charge those responsible, Stateline reports.
• 11Alive Atlanta dives into a recent Climate Central attribution study which found that every 2024 hurricane was made more destructive due to climate change.
• Earlier this year, during one of the hottest summers on record, Canada’s federal weather service became the first in the world to conduct rapid analyses of climate-driven heat events, Montreal Gazette reports.
• Grist explores what attribution science can tell us about climate’s influence on heat waves, which are responsible for more deaths than any other type of extreme weather event.
• As smoke from Canadian wildfires brings hazy skies to Minnesota, WCCO uses attribution science to explain the climate connection happening thousands of miles away.
• In the aftermath of devastating floods in Spain, Maldita outlines the results of several attribution studies to estimate if climate change made the event more likely or intense.

Expert Tips

Clair Barnes, a research associate at World Weather Attribution and Imperial College London, offers tips to help journalists understand attribution science and report on extreme weather. Recently examining extreme droughts in the Amazon, she investigates the impacts of climate change on individual extreme weather events across Earth. 

Talk about fossil fuels. While most people know about some of the expected impacts of a warmer atmosphere — loss of ice sheets, rising sea levels, more intense extreme weather — some still don’t understand what’s causing climate change.

Spell out the direct link between fossil fuels, climate change, and extreme weather in your reporting on attribution science. Readers need to understand that changes to heat waves, wildfires, droughts, floods, are caused directly by human activities. It’s also important to highlight how we can stop these changes from worsening by focusing on renewable energy.

You don’t always need attribution study. World Weather Attribution’s guide to reporting on extreme weather has a simple message: You don’t always need an attribution study to link an extreme weather event with climate change. This guide, which we’re updating early next year, includes expert-backed tips and statements that can be reliably made about extreme weather events around the world.

Focus on why people are harmed by extreme weather. Climate change makes many extreme weather events worse, but it isn’t the sole reason so many people keep losing their lives in heat waves, droughts, fires, storms, and floods. Disasters happen when people aren’t prepared.

Focusing on who was harmed and why helps readers understand that lost lives or damaged infrastructure is not inevitable, but often something that can be avoided. That’s why every World Weather Attribution study includes an assessment of vulnerability and exposure.

Helpful Links

Resources/Maps

Recommended Experts:

Before We Go…

The next Locally Sourced will highlight heat pumps. Have you reported stories about heat pumps as a climate solution? Send them to us at local[at]coveringclimatenow[dot]org. We’d love to consider them for the next edition of Locally Sourced and our media trainings and social platforms.

Want more tips on how to cover attribution science? Watch CCNow’s recent webinar “How Do We Know Climate Change Fueled That Storm“ with experts from Climate Central and World Weather Attribution.

The Climate Station is a free-of-cost training program from CCNow that equips local TV station newsrooms in the US, including journalists, producers, and meteorologists, to cover climate news more effectively. For inquiries, please email Elena González at elena[at]coveringclimatenow[dot]org. Or apply here.

Know someone who might be interested in this newsletter? Forward Locally Sourced to a colleague!

_{Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.}