Gerrit Hansen, Dáithí Stone

Nature Climate Change

Published date December 21, 2015

Assessing the observed impact of anthropogenic climate change

  • Provides a systematic assessment of the role of anthropogenic climate change for the range of impacts of regional climate trends reported in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report
  • Finds that almost two-thirds of the impacts related to atmospheric and ocean temperature can be confidently attributed to anthropogenic forcing
  • Finds, in contrast, that the evidence connecting changes in precipitation and their respective impacts to human influence is still weak
  • Finds that anthropogenic climate change has been a major influence for approximately three-quarters of the impacts observed on continental scales
  • States that the effects of anthropogenic emissions can now be discerned not only globally, but also at more regional and local scales for a variety of natural and human systems