Event Attribution is Ready to Inform Loss and Damage Negotiations
We identified that the four most deadly extreme weather events in developing nations are famine (agricultural drought), tropical cyclones, non-tropical storm flooding and heatwaves. Extreme event attribution methodologies for all of these classes of events are well developed.
A Loss and Damage (L&D) fund has been established by the Conference of Parties (COP27, COP28) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to aid nations “particularly vulnerable” to the impacts of climate change. We argue that much of the information available from extreme event attribution (EEA), while far from perfect, can already substantially inform L&D activities. The arguments against EEA’s use in this context warrant close scrutiny, since these objections may be used by some to justify further delay, with the consequence that vulnerable developing countries will continue to face significant loss and damage without assistance.
Extreme weather event attribution techniques quantify anthropogenic contributions to extreme weather disasters, but recently it was argued they are not yet ready to inform decisions on loss and damage funding. Here, we assert that they can substantially help formulate allocations to impacted vulnerable countries for the most damaging extreme events.