CEE Ph.D. Defense Announcement: Toward Impact-Based Attribution of Human-Induced Climate Extremes

Abstract: From wildfires and heatwaves to coastal flooding, the devastation wrought by climate extremes in recent years is hard to overstate. The worst climate impacts are a function not only of compound climate drivers, but also of societal vulnerabilities to these events further down the causal chain. Climate change attribution quantifies how climate extremes are changing in response to human influence, but typically lacks context about how climate disasters link to physical impacts such as loss of life and critical infrastructure outages. To address that gap, this dissertation explores an impact-based approach to attribution tailored to the unique scale and properties of several types of climate impacts.