Guest Post: Great Barrier Reef bleaching would be almost impossible without climate change

I have followed climate change and marine science for about 10 years. This latest climate attribution research by Australian climate scientists shows clearly that the massive coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef would not have occurred without human caused climate change. It is attribution climate science done in near real time. Cutting edge stuff.

The researchers also dispel arguments that this coral bleaching event was due to the strong El Nino this year, but primarily long term temperature warming of oceans. It underlines that coral reef ecosystems face a bleak future with coral bleaching events from warm waters being a regular occurrence in as little as 20 years time.

Read and weep, and then focus your anger on the intransigence of many politicians, first in denial then, like Environment Minister Greg Hunt who pay lip service and make nominal commitments, while supporting the agents of greenhouse gas emissions in approving the massive Adani Carmichael Coal mine.

Great Barrier Reef bleaching would be almost impossible without climate change

Andrew King, University of Melbourne; David Karoly, University of Melbourne; Mitchell Black, University of Melbourne; Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, The University of Queensland, and Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, UNSW Australia

Europe's extreme heatwave frequency increased by climate change say researchers

Preliminary climate attribution analysis done by a team of international scientists makes it clear that it is virtually certain that climate change increased the likelihood of the July 2015 European heatwave subjecting much of central Europe to elevated temperatures.

Climate scientists from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), the University of Oxford, CNRS, and MeteoSwiss examined the likely influence of global warming. The team was convened by Climate Central.

"A statistical analysis of the observations shows that the probability of observing such a heat wave has more than doubled over the past 37 years in most of the affected region. In the selected cities the increase is even stronger." says the Climate Central report.

Central England record warmth in 2014 attributed to climate change

In 2014 Central England recorded it's hottest year dating back to 1659, when the instrumental temperature record started.

A new study has found that the record high Central England temperatures can be attributed to anthropogenic influences with 90 per cent confidence. The syudy highlighted that the chances of record warm years in Central England has increased by at least 13-fold.

"This study points to a large influence of human activities on extreme warm years despite the small region of study and the variable climate of Central England. Our analysis shows that climate change is clearly visible on the local-scale in this case." said the study abstract.

The researchers used two methodologies: one based on climate model simulation, and another based on the observational record. They found agreement in the results between the two methodologies strong, "A substantial increase in the likelihood of warm years due to anthropogenic influences is found using both methods with very high confidence. This conclusion is robust especially when we consider that the two methods are primarily based on different datasets, one model simulations and the other observations."

The study is a growing body of scientific work in Fractional Attribution of Risk (FAR), whereby climate events are assessed as to their probability of being influenced by anthropogenic climate change.

Guest Post: Human hands are all over Australia's hottest ever year in 2013

New research by multiple separate research groups shows that extreme heat events are increasing and can be clearly attributable to global warming. The research draws upon modelling and Fractional Attribution of Risk (FAR) of extreme weather events including from Australian scientists who have shown that extreme heatwaves and hot spells are caused by the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It confirms earlier published research by Karoly and Lewis that the Record Australian 2013 temperatures caused by climate change.

Australia is already feeling the heat of global warming and Spending wisely now will make heatwaves less costly later. Our cities in particular are becoming hothouses in summer as global warming amplifies the urban heat island effect which along with increasing urbanisation like in Sydney, provides major climate impacts. There are already major challenges for adaptation for cities like Melbourne with Municipal Councils often on the front line.

Risk attribution Study: Record Australian 2013 temperatures caused by climate change

Professor David Karoly and Post-doctoral researcher Sophie lewis have been undertaking analysis on the temperature record for Australia in 2013. Their article published at The Conversation - Australia’s hottest year was no freak event: humans caused it - is an attribution of risk study of the extreme Australian heat in 2013 involving statistical probability analysis. This is cutting edge climate science research using Global Climate modelling, simulations and probability analysis to determine likely cause.

Last year Lewis and Karoly examined the temperatures for the 2012-2013 Australian summer using Fractional Attribution of Risk (FAR) analysis, publishing a study - Anthropogenic contributions to Australia's record summer temperatures of 2013 (open access) - that "found that it was very likely (with 90% confidence) that human influences increased the odds of extreme summers such as 2012-13 by at least five times."

Fractional Attribution of Risk (FAR) methodologies were originally developed in epidemiology, health and population studies, and over the last few years have been applied to extreme weather events to determine the statistical likelihood of these events being substantially caused or contributed to by human caused greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. You can read background on Why bother trying to attribute extreme events? at the Real climate Blog.