The Emergence of a human influence on climate extremes

In recent years a new area of climate science has developed called Event Attribution which aims to investigate specific extreme weather and climate events (like the “Angry Summer” of 2012/13 in Australia- the hottest summer on record) and answer whether human-induced climate change and/or natural climate variability played a role in that event. In this talk I will take a different perspective to examine how anthropogenic influences on extreme weather events are changing through time. Through investigating record-breaking temperatures, I find that many extreme events, not only recently, but in the last few decades, can be attributed to anthropogenic climate change. The last 17 record-breaking hot years globally are attributable to human-induced climate change. I will also discuss heavy precipitation events and show that over most of the world a clear anthropogenic signal towards increasing heavy precipitation extremes will emerge by the middle of this century. By 2070, more than half the world’s population will be living in areas where climate change is doubling the likelihood of heavy 1-day rainfall events.