Science Sources: Detection and Attribution

Climate Signals tracks detection and attribution studies in real time. Below is an updating database of studies that find the fingerprint of human-caused climate change on observed trends and events. The database is limited to studies of local significance in the United States and studies of global significance. For a broader database of peer-reviewed studies and organizational reports on climate change trends, please see all Science Sources.

Search or browse our collection of detection and attribution studies below, or learn more about detection and attribution studies.

Title Source Date Author(s)
EEE 2012: The Extreme March-May 2012 Warm Anomaly Over the Eastern United States: Global Context and Multimodel Trend Analysis Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Thomas R. Knutson, Fanrong Zeng, and Andrew T. Wittenberg
EEE 2012: Hurricane Sandy Inundation Probabilities Today and Tomorrow Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society William Sweet, Chris Zervas, Stephen Gill, and Joseph Park
EEE 2012: September 2012 Arctic Sea Ice Minimum: Discriminating Between Sea Ice Memory, The August 2012 Extreme Storm, and Prevailing Warm Conditions Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Virginie Guemas, Francisco Doblas-Reyes, Agathe Germe, Matthieu Chevallier, and David Salas y Mélia
EEE 2012: The Role of Global Climate Change in the Extreme Low Summer Arctic Sea Ice Extent in 2012 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Rong Zhang and Thomas R. Knutson
Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change Assessment: Part I Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Thomas Knutson, Suzana J. Camargo, Johnny C. L. Chan, Kerry Emanuel, Chang-Hoi Ho, James Kossin, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, Masaki Satoh, Masato Sugi, Kevin Walsh, and Liguang Wu
EEE 2014: Extreme Fire Season in California: A Glimpse Into the Future? Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Jin-Ho Yoon, S.-Y. Simon Wang, Robert R. Gillies, Lawr ence Hipps, Ben Kravitz, Philip J. Rasch
EEE 2011: Did Human Influence On Climate Make The 2011 Texas Drought More Probable? Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society David Rupp, Philip Mote, Neil Massey, Cameron Rye, Richard Jones, and Myles Allen
EEE 2014: How Unusual was the Cold Winter of 2013/14 in the Upper Midwest? Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Klaus Wolter, Jon K. Eischeid, Xiao-Wei Quan, and Thomas N. Chase
EEE 2014: Record Annual Mean Warmth Over Europe, the Northeast Pacific, and the Northwest Atlantic During 2014: Assessment of Anthropogenic Influence Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Jonghun Kam, Thomas R. Knutson, Fanrong Zeng, and Andrew T. Wittenberg
EEE 2016: CMIP5 Model-based Assessment of Anthropogenic Influence on Record Global Warmth during 2016 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Thomas R. Knutson, Jonghun Kam, Fanrong Zeng and Andrew T. Wittenberg
EEE 2015: Influences of Natural Variability and Anthropogenic Forcing on the Extreme 2015 Accumulated Cyclone Energy in the Western North Pacific Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Wei Zhang, Gabriel A. Vecchi, Hiroyuki Murakami, Thomas L. Delworth, Karen Paffendorf, Liwei Jia, Gabriele Villarin, Rich Gudgel, Fanrong Zeng, and Xiaosong Yang
Unnatural Coastal Floods: Sea level rise and the human fingerprint on U.S. floods since 1950 Climate Central Benjamin H. Strauss, Robert E. Kopp, William V. Sweet, Klaus Bittermann
Attribution of extreme temperature changes during 1951–2010 Climate Dynamics Yeon-Hee Kim, Seung-Ki Min, Xuebin Zhang, Francis Zwiers, Lisa V. Alexander, Markus G. Donat, Yu-Shiang Tung
Attributing northern high-latitude precipitation change over the period 1966–2005 to human influence Climate Dynamics Hui Wan, Xuebin Zhang, Francis Zwiers, Seung-Ki Min
A probabilistic quantification of the anthropogenic component of twentieth century global warming Climate Dynamics T. M. L. Wigley, B. D. Santer
The contribution of anthropogenic forcings to regional changes in temperature during the last decade Climate Dynamics Nikolaos Christidis, Peter A. Stott, Francis W. Zwiers, Hideo Shiogama, Toru Nozawa
Climate of the weakly-forced yet high-impact convective storms throughout the Ohio River Valley and Mid-Atlantic United States Climate Dynamics Binod Pokharel, S.-Y. Simon Wang, Jonathan Meyer, Robert Gillies, Yen-Heng Lin
Signal detectability in extreme precipitation changes assessed from twentieth century climate simulations Climate Dynamics Seung-Ki Min, Xuebin Zhang, Francis W. Zwiers, Petra Friederichs, Andreas Hense
Multi-fingerprint detection and attribution analysis of greenhouse gas, greenhouse gas-plus-aerosol and solar forced climate change Climate Dynamics G. C. Hegerl, K. Hasselmann, U. Cubasch, J. F. B. Mitchell, E. Roeckner, R. Voss, J. Waszkewitz
Towards the detection and attribution of an anthropogenic effect on climate Climate Dynamics Benjamin D. Santer, Karl E. Taylor, Tom M. L. Wigley, Joyce E. Penner, Philip D. Jones, Ulrich Cubasch