Climate Word to Know: Attribution
To stay climate literate in 2023 you should know the term attribution, as in attribution science.
Attribution science determines how likely weather was impacted by human-caused climate change. For example, we can now say with high confidence when heat waves were virtually impossible without climate change.
The process and math in attribution science is complex, but essentially it compares weather patterns with and without human activity to find anomalies that can’t be explained otherwise.
The first attribution study seems to be from 2004.
World Wide Attribution has done many of the studies. The Climate Attribution Database links to more.
Climate Central has real-time maps that show the climate impact on current and forecasted air temperature.
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