Abstract
Abstract Recent extreme weather events and their impacts on societies have highlighted the need for timely adaptation to the changing odds of their occurrence. Such measures require appropriate information about likely changes in event frequency and magnitude on relevant spatiotemporal scales. However, to support robust climate information for decision-making, an effective communication between scientists and stakeholders is crucial. In this context, weather event attribution studies are increasingly raising attention beyond academic circles, although the understanding of how to take it beyond academia is still evolving. This paper presents the results of a study that involved in-depth interviews with stakeholders from a range of sectors about potential applications and the general usefulness of event attribution studies. A case study of the hot and dry summer 2012 in southeast Europe is used as a concrete example, with a focus on the applicability of attribution results across sectors. An analysis of the interviews reveals an abundant interest among the interviewed stakeholders and highlights the need for information on the causes and odds of extreme events, in particular on regional scales. From this data key aspects of stakeholder engagement are emerging, which could productively feed back into how probabilistic event attribution studies are designed and communicated to ensure practical relevance and usefulness for the stakeholder community.
Highlights
Changing extreme weather events are likely to be among the most notable consequences of anthropogenic climate change with potentially highly significant impacts on societies (Seneviratne et al 2012; Barriopedro et al 2011; Rahmstorf and Coumou 2011; Huntingford et al 2014)
The frequency and magnitude of some extreme events such as heat waves have increased in recent years (Donat et al 2013; Seneviratne et al 2012), the question of causality remains largely unanswered (Stott et al 2013)
The most intriguing result of our scoping study was that, regardless of their backgrounds, all interviewed stakeholders found the presented findings of an event attribution study in southeast Europe interesting, and most argued that results of this kind could potentially be usefully applied in their daily work
Summary
Changing extreme weather events are likely to be among the most notable consequences of anthropogenic climate change with potentially highly significant impacts on societies (Seneviratne et al 2012; Barriopedro et al 2011; Rahmstorf and Coumou 2011; Huntingford et al 2014). A number of recent extreme events with considerable adverse impacts have raised questions as to whether and to what extent those events might be linked to climate change (Rahmstorf and Coumou 2011; Coumou and Rahmstorf 2012). These have included droughts in the Horn of Africa (Funk et al 2013; Lott et al 2013); flooding in Pakistan (Christidis et al 2013), Denotes Open Access content. After the method had been initially described (Allen 2003; Stone and Allen 2005), scientists attributed large-scale heat events, such as the European heat wave 2003, and found that human influence on the climate ‘‘has at least doubled the risk of a heat wave exceeding this threshold
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