Attribution Science and Climate Fingerprints
Attribution science uses statistical methods to quantify whether and to what extent human-caused climate change altered the likelihood of specific weather events. Scientists are able to identify weather conditions that are becoming more common due to human-caused climate change, allowing the public to adapt, prepare for these conditions, and manage their impacts. It also emphasizes the urgent need to reduce carbon pollution in order to prevent climate-related impacts from growing worse. Our team works with global partners to develop techniques to quantify climate fingerprints in daily weather and extreme events worldwide, and to communicate these linkages. The goal is to inform people about the realities of climate change and to catalyze changes that reduce impacts in the near and long term. Climate Shift Index® The Climate Shift Index (CSI), Climate Central’s daily temperature attribution system, applies the latest peer-reviewed methodology to map the influence of climate change on temperatures across the globe, every day. Learn more here. Climate events analysis: Our team identifies, analyzes, and tracks notable climate events around the world. Find a collection of our recent analyses here. World Weather Attribution: We partner with this collective of scientists that conducts in-depth studies on attribution. Their work quantifies how climate change influences the intensity and likelihood of an extreme weather event, and how existing vulnerabilities worsened the impacts.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.