Recent scientific advances make it possible to assign extreme events to human-induced climate change and historical emissions. These developments allow losses and damage associated with such events to be assigned country-level responsibility.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Relevant articles
Open Access articles citing this article.
-
Quantifying generational and geographical inequality of climate change
Scientific Reports Open Access 25 May 2023
-
National contributions to climate change due to historical emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide since 1850
Scientific Data Open Access 29 March 2023
-
Information about historical emissions drives the division of climate change mitigation costs
Nature Communications Open Access 14 March 2023
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
Adoption of the Paris Agreement Article 8 (UNFCCC, 2015).
Adoption of the Paris Agreement Article 52 (UNFCCC, 2015).
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Article 1 (UN, 1992).
Thompson, A. & Otto, F. E. L. Climatic Change 133, 439–451 (2015).
Mace, M. J. & Verheyen, R. Rev. Eur. Comparative Int. Environ. Law 25, 197–214 (2016).
Mechler, R. & Schinko, T. Science 354, 290–292 (2016).
Fuglestvedt, J. S. & Kallbekken, S. Nat. Clim. Change 6, 19–20 (2016).
Skeie, R. B. et al. Env. Res. Lett. 12, 024022 (2017).
Thornton, J. & Covington, H. Nat. Geosci. 9, 3–5 (2016).
Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change (National Academies, 2016).
Herring, S. C. et al. (eds) Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 97 (Special Suppl.), S1–S145 (2016).
Hannart, A., Vera, C., Otto, F. E. L. & Cerne, B. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 96 (Special Suppl.), 41–45 (2015).
Schaller, N. et al. Nat. Clim. Change 6, 627–634 (2016).
Chronology — Loss and Damage (UNFCCC, 2017); http://go.nature.com/2hMKVog
How rare were the unusually high temperatures around the North Pole in November–December 2016 and how were they influenced by anthropogenic climate change? Climate Central (21 December 2016).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
F.O., M.A. and J.F. had the idea for the paper. F.O., R.S., J.F. and T.B. designed the experiments. F.O. and R.S. conducted the experiments. All authors wrote the paper.
Corresponding author
Supplementary information
Supplementary information
Supplementary Figures and Tables (PDF 440 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Otto, F., Skeie, R., Fuglestvedt, J. et al. Assigning historic responsibility for extreme weather events. Nature Clim Change 7, 757–759 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3419
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3419
This article is cited by
-
National contributions to climate change due to historical emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide since 1850
Scientific Data (2023)
-
Information about historical emissions drives the division of climate change mitigation costs
Nature Communications (2023)
-
Quantifying generational and geographical inequality of climate change
Scientific Reports (2023)
-
2022 early-summer heatwave in Southern South America: 60 times more likely due to climate change
Climatic Change (2023)
-
Overstating the effects of anthropogenic climate change? A critical assessment of attribution methods in climate science
European Journal for Philosophy of Science (2023)
