Reviewing climate change attribution in UK natural hazards and their impacts

TL;DR

This review assesses the current state of climate change attribution studies in the UK, highlighting significant impacts on sectors like health and agriculture, and identifying gaps in hazard-specific attribution research.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of UK-specific climate change attribution literature, emphasizing the need for diversification of hazards and methodologies in future research.

Findings

Heatwaves show a strong human-induced climate change signal.

Many impact sectors already exhibit detectable climate change influences.

Significant gaps exist in attribution studies for numerous hazards.

Abstract

The field of Detection and Attribution is rapidly moving beyond weather and climate, and towards incorporating hazards and their impacts on natural and human systems. Here, we review the comprehensive literature base relevant for the UK ahead of the next Climate Change Risk Assessment. The current literature highlights a detectable and non-trivial influence of climate change in many UK impact sectors already - notably health, agriculture, and infrastructure. We found that heatwaves were the most studied hazard overall, with a unanimous consensus on a strong attributable signal of human-induced climate change in their increased frequency and intensity over the last century. The most notable gap identified overall was in attributing climate-related impacts to human influence, with a few impact studies for only a handful of the hazards assessed. Furthermore, just under half of the 29 hazards were not found to have any UK-relevant attribution studies, with most of the remainder having three or fewer. This review highlights requirements for and opportunities to develop attribution scicnce to meet the needs of the UK. Diversifying hazards and impacts studied, in conjunction with the techniques and approaches used, will undoubtedly benefit the community.