Gaps in Attribution for the Next UK Climate Change Risk Assessment

We will present findings from a comprehensive review of the detection and attribution of climate change in the UK, including both recent and past events within the observation record. We will highlight where there are notable gaps, including those that can and cannot be closed with existing data and/or attribution techniques.

This systematic review of detection and attribution literature will feed into a report, with a database of supporting evidence, to inform the Climate Change Committee’s upcoming UK Climate Change Risk Assessment. The first part of the review will cover the detection and attribution of weather and climate changes in the UK, relevant to specific Climate Impact Drivers, while the second will cover societal, infrastructural, economic, and biodiversity impacts associated with these. As part of this, we will identify variables which are key drivers of multiple impacts, and, importantly, where further attribution analysis is needed, especially when the impacts are critical for UK risk.