Probabilistic Climate Attribution: Methods and Open Questions

Mengran Li (University of Glasgow)

Wednesday 23rd September 12:00-13:00
Maths 311B

Abstract

Extreme weather events routinely raise the question of how climate change has affected their likelihood and severity. Probabilistic climate attribution provides a statistical framework for investigating this by combining observational data, extreme value methods, and climate model ensembles. Drawing on the World Weather Attribution summer school at Imperial College in August 2026, this talk gives an overview of the main statistical workflow used in modern attribution studies, from defining the event of interest and modelling changes in extreme risk to combining evidence from observations and climate models. The discussion then connects this framework to related work on causal inference in extremes and extreme event attribution, particularly the role of statistical assumptions in translating changes in climate into statements about extreme-event risk. The talk also considers several open statistical questions arising from current attribution practice and opportunities for further methodological development.

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