"End-to End" Climate Attribution Science Can Link Specific Companies To Climate Change Disasters

Climate attribution science is getting
more and more sophisticated. This
might make it increasingly 
possible for local governments to
recoup from climate disasters, like
this 2024 Vermont flood might
have been. 

Climate attribution studies - the art and science of determining to what extent weather extremes are tied to climate change - are getting so good that they're starting to delve into how much individual corporations are responsible for given disasters. 

This advanced work on assigning individual corporations' role in climate disasters is known as end-to-end attribution. 

For now, the focus is on heat waves, as the science doesn't appear to be quite there in assigning blame for other disasters, like floods, wildfires and hurricanes. But that's coming. 

 According to CBC:

"A new study by climate researchers in Europe and the U.S. and published in the journal Nature has taken this analysis further, by lining the deadliest type of disaster - heat waves - directly to major fossil fuel companies and their products. 

The study looked at major heat waves that happened between 2000 and 2023 and the role of 'carbon majors.'  These include state-owned companies (such as Gazprom in Russia or Saudi Armco, investor-owned private companies (Shell, BP, ExxonMoil or even Canadian companies such as Suncor and Census) and nation-states that produce fossil fuels such as coal (India, the former Soviet Union)."

 The study indicated that the median intensity of heat waves globally between 2010 and 2019 was about 1.68 degrees Celsius hotter, and 0.47 Celsius of that was due to just 14 of the largest carbon producers. 

More from CBC

"The study goes into granular detail, with data for each one of the 180 carbon majors and their specific contribution to each of the 213 heat waves studied. The detail even shows the impact of smaller companies - for example, the smallest carbon major by emissions, a Russian coal company, made 16 heat waves more than 10,000 times likely - meaning the heat waves would have been virtually impossible without the emissions of that carbon major."

The study drew on previous research detailing the lifetime carbon emissions of these carbon majors, and other studies that show how carbon emissions make heat waves worse. They then connected those two strands to estimate how the emissions of a specific carbon major impacted the severity and likelihood of a particular heat wave.

The research doesn't assign a quantity or dollar amount of heat wave damage caused by each corporation. Besides, heat waves usually don't cause much damage to buildings and infrastructure, at least compared to other disasters.

But heat waves kill a lot of people, and how do you put a price tag on that?  

Then there are practical matters. Some regions are more prepared for heat waves than others. An intense heat wave might not be as bad in, say Oklahoma, because practically everyone there has air conditioning. Air conditioning, meanwhile, is much more rare in western and northern Europe, where heat waves in recent decades have been taking an especially big toll. 

Still, this attribution science regarding climate damage caused by specific firms is probably of great interest to policymakers. 

A great example is here in Vermont. 

Vermont and New York have enacted "climate superfund" laws, which would force corporations that produce large amounts of carbon dioxide to pay a share of what climate change has cost Vermont, based on how much the company contributed to global emissions during the same period.  

Lawmakers in Vermont were prodded into enacted this legislation in part by a series of devastating floods in the state. 

Trump's Department of Justice has sued both Vermont and New York, claiming the climate superfund laws attempt to "extorts" energy producers.  

Still, if the New York and Vermont superfund laws survive the legal challenges, or we get a more climate friendly administration in the future, the research we're talking about would definitely interest people in both states. And any other jurisdiction that wants to establish similar laws. 

Beyond the United States, the International Court of Justice issued a July advisory opinion that said countries dealing with climate disasters could seek reparations from countries emitting the most carbon. 

Some legal experts said the International Court of Justice, which is under the United Nations, could spur similar moves around the world in local courts. 

Any science that would more accurately assign responsibility for climate-related disasters and expenses might favor all these laws and lawsuits.  

End-to-end attribution can boost a claimant's case, notes the Conversation. Such attribution can meet what is known as the "but for" test, which means that but for a specific company's emissions, climate related damages would not have happened.

Also, notes the Conservationist:

"One is called proportional liability, and it attempts to quantify the extent to which a company's emissions contribute d to increased risk or the severity of damage. This flexibility strengthens the method's applicability across different legal systems."

Meanwhile, climate attribution science will almost definitely continue to improve. That science is going to be a force that a lot of people in power are going to need to contend with.

Also, says the Conservationist, "The end-to-end attribution method enables claimants to connect global warming to local disasters, such as the 2021 Pacific Northwest 'heat dome'. This is crucial, as climate litigation focused on single, high-impact  events is usually more successful."

Climate attribution science is getting more and more sophisticated. This will probably change the climate legal landscape, even if the Trump administration is trying to postpone that day.  

European Heat Wave Killed Thousands In Disturbing Trend,, As Activists Refer To "Climate Breakdown." .

An attribution study says an early summer European 
heat wave was worsened by climate change and
killed thousands. Meanwhile, the world continues
to rack up more all time record heat waves this summer.

 A scientific group that does rapid analyses of extreme weather events to determine how climate change influenced the incidents concluded a late June and early July European heat wave killed thousands. 

Per the Guardian:

"Scientists estimate that high heat killed 2,300 people across 12 major cities as temperatures soared across Europe between June 23 and July 2.  They attributed 1,500 of the deaths to climate breakdown, which has heated the planet and made the worst extremes even hotter.

Milan was the hardest hit city in absolute terms, with 317 out of 499 heat deaths attributed to climate breakdown, followed by Paris and Barcelona. Long had 273 heat deaths, 171 of which the researchers attributed to attributed to human influence on the climate."

People have always died in heat waves, of course, but the study led by scientists at Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said that climate change made the heat wave worse than it otherwise would be. That added heat intensity had a disproportionate effect on deaths. 

Essentially, the scientists concluded the heat wave nearly tripled the number of deaths from heat. 

The study was part of a growing body of science called rapid attribution, which seeks to assess the cost and effects of climate-related weather events shortly after they happen. 

CLIMATE TERMINOLOGY

 As an aside, The Guardian is describing climate change in a new way that I haven't seen too much previously, but has gained a lot of use among activists in recent years: The term is  "climate breakdown"

Climate activist Greta Thunberg have the term its currency about six years ago when she said this:

"It's 2019. Can we all now please stop saying 'climate change' and instead call it what it is: climate breakdown climate crisis, climate emergency, ecological breakdown, ecological crisis and ecological emergency?"

2025 HEAT WAVES WIDESPREAD

Whatever it is, this is another summer when heat is clearly killing people, and so far, we arguably haven't had quite as many extreme heat waves as last year or the year before. But there's been plenty of horrible and sometimes deadly hot spells all over the world.  

Some example:

Finland finally just came out of its longest, most intense heat wave on record. This far northern, Scandinavian nation, endured three weeks in which daily highs were 86 degrees or higher.  

A town north of the Arctic Circle in Norway was also 86 degrees or warmer daily for almost two week. 

People who live in northern areas like Scandinavia can be especially prone to heat as it's historically uncommon there.  Nighttime heat combined with the fact it doesn't really get dark overnight near and north of the Arctic Circle in summer cause sleep disruptions. Air conditioning is rare, which is especially dangerous in retirement communities or health care settings. 

Just this week, at least 25 Japanese cities hit all time record high temperatures. Last Wednesday, the temperature in Tamba in Japan's Hyogo Prefecture reached 106 degrees, the hottest temperature on record for the entire nation. 

China is already reporting nearly 70 stations setting new August high temperature records, with six of those places setting all time records. 

Parts of Iran and Iraq have gotten as warm as 124 degrees. 

A historic heat wave hit the Northeast U.S. a month and a half ago,  breaking or tying all time June record highs in all six New England states.  

I've said his previously and it's worth saying again: Heat waves are underreported risks of climate change in most of the media. Hot spells are not "sexy" like picturesque and dramatic images of flash floods, tornadoes and hurricanes. 

Media to a large extent depends on images. And media depends on clicks - eyeballs on web sites and podcasts and such. Which means, behind the scenes, heat waves cause a lot more deaths, a lot more harm than the storms you see on the news all the time.  

The Guardian again, going back to that attribution study of European heat: 

"'This study demonstrates why heat waves are know as silent killers,' said Malcolm Mistry, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and co-author of the study. 'While a handful of deaths have been reported in Spain, France and Italy, thousands more people are expected to have died as a result of the blistering temperatures." 

Research Group Pins Blame For Big 2024 Global Weather Disasters On Climate Change

The organization World Weather Attribution blames
many of the world's worst weather disasters of 2024
largely on climate change. 

 A research group says that many of the most extreme weather disasters of 2024 were made worse than they otherwise would have due to climate change. 

The group World Weather Attribution issued their 2024 summary on December 27.

Key findings include:

-- Climate change contributed to the deaths of at least 3,700 people the displacement of 26 weather events the group studies in 2024.  They explain: "These were just a small fraction of the 219 events that met our trigger criteria, used to identify the most impactful weather events. It's like the total number of people killed in extreme weather events intensified by climate change this year is in the tens, or hundreds of thousands."

--Globally, climate change added on average 41 additional days of dangerous heat in 2024 that threatened people's health. The countries the had the most dangerous heat days in 2024 were mostly small islands and developing states that don't have the infrastructure to protect people from the heat. 

---Although many of 2024's extreme events were in part influence by El Nino, especially in the early part of the year, in most cases climate change played a larger role than El Nino in making these individual problems - such as a huge drought in the Amazon - worse. 

--- Of 16 floods WWA studied, 15 were driven by rainfall amplified by climate change. A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, leasing to heavier downpours. Some of the floods had huge death tolls due to shortcomings in storm warnings and evacuation plans. 

--- Warmer seas in general strengthen tropical cyclones. Thirty of 38 Atlantic hurricanes between 2019 and 2023 were made noticeably stronger than they otherwise would have been without climate change. That climate change is also increasing the risk of the Philippines being hit be strong typhoons.

An example not mentioned in the WWA report is the fact that in November, the Philippines were hit by four powerful typhoons within ten days. 

World Weather Attribution works with scientists to quantify how climate change influences to the intensity and likelihood of extreme weather events. They do so, usually immediately after an extreme event using weather observations and computer modeling.  The organization also evaluates how existing vulnerabilities worse the impacts of those extreme weather events. 

WWA tries to make their analyses public as soon as they become available, very often days or weeks after the event.  

That's good, since these events are still hot topics in the media not long after they occur. If these reports are made public months or years after these disasters, the publics minds will have long since moved on to the next topic. 

In their end of year report, WWA had a few "New Year's resolutions" to pass on. Those include efforts to accelerate shifts away from fossil fuel use, improvements in warning procedures around the world to get people out of the way of sudden disasters, and more real-time reporting of heat deaths since this problem is underreported.  

Chile's Big Wildfires Not Necessarily Due To Climate Change After All

A deadly February wildfire in Chile could not be really
attributed to climate change, according to scientists
who determine links between weather extremes and
climate or other factors. 

You might remember how I told you in a post on February 9 about some huge, deadly wildfires in Chile.

I speculated about the fires being made worse by climate change. In the headline, I even said it was "part of a disturbing climate trend."

In this case, I was probably wrong about that. 

Increased deadly wildfires around the world are indeed a disturbing climate trend. But the growing science of attribution - which looks at the specific causes of disasters in rapid response, questions whether the Chilean wildfires really were worsened by climate change. 

 According to Climate Brief:

"Climate change did not have a statistically significant impact on the wildfires that hit Chile (in February), according to a new attribution study by the world Weather Attribution Service."

It's not that climate change had absolutely nothing to do with the Chilean fires. 

The deep dive into Chile's fires was conducted by World Weather Attribution. They use a growing field of science that can either tie a specific extreme weather event to climate change, or debunk a link to that climate change. 

Here's how World Weather Attribution puts it:

"World Weather Attribution uses weather observations and climate models to understand how climate change influences the intensity and likelihood of extreme weather events. The studies also assess the role of vulnerability and exposure in the extent of the impacts.

Most studies are performed rapidly, in the aftermath of extreme weather events - or even while they're still happening - to answer the increasingly common question: "What was the role of climate change in this event."

Their work is important to understand exactly what climate change does and doesn't do.  I - and many others - speculate during each extreme weather moment whether climate change made things worse. World Weather Attribution is applying sober science to that question.  

That would help reduce hype on any side of the political spectrum. Or at least that's the idea. Figuring out what disasters were worsened by climate change and which weren't help us find strategies to gird ourselves against future, similar disasters. Whether caused by global warming or not. 

 CHILEAN FIRE EXPLANATION

Authors of the attribution study said "global warming will likely increase the risk of fire conditions in central Chile," and that climate change is making most of the nation hotter and drier, which make wildfires more likely. 

So, climate change made the fire conditions more likely when the blazes broke out, but that added likelihood was statistically significant, according to Climate Brief.

The February fires in Chile were pretty close to the coast. Shifting weather patterns are actually - in general - making parts of coastal Chile a bit cooler.  

Probably the biggest factor behind the ferocity of the Chilean wildfires was changes in land use. 

Settlements in forested areas, an increase in non-native species and monoculture plantations all make wildfires more likely.  People have added more pine and eucalyptus trees to the mix. Both types of trees are highly flammable. 

Those settlements in the fire zone contained houses  mostly made of wood. Again, easier to burn. Much of the burned area was densely populated, with little regard for land planning. 

The fires were obviously fired by hot, dry, windy weather. The authors of the study said the kind of conditions the region had just prior to and during the firestorm were a one in 30 year event in today's climate.