Identification

Title

Attribution of extreme events to climate change in the Australian region – A review

Abstract

Extreme event attribution is a rapidly growing field of climate science with important implications for public and government understanding of human-induced climate change. However, there is substantial variation in how well events can be attributed to human-induced climate change, depending on the nature of the event. Focusing on Australia: at one end of the scale, large-scale heat events on both the land and in the ocean are well suited to attribution studies because climate models simulate them reasonably well, there are high-quality observations available and our understanding of the processes that lead to extreme heat events is reasonably well developed. At the other end of the scale, very important phenomenon such as changes in east coast lows, severe convective storms and long-term droughts are less well observed, are beyond our current capability to robustly simulate in climate models and the complex mechanisms that lead to intensification are not well understood. Thus, some important extreme events can be linked to human-induced climate change, with a high degree of confidence, while others cannot. We review the state of the science relevant to event attribution with a focus on Australia. We highlight where progress can be made, focusing on observations, physical understanding, and realistic climate modelling.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7pn99rw

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2023-12-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-07-11T15:12:17.818839

Metadata language

eng; USA