What The Science Says

Attribution studies fix responsibility on historical polluters. But will they be open to the evidence?

- Akshit Sangomla And Avantika Goswami

It is well known that human activities going as far back as the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century have led to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere and global warming. Over the past two decades, a small group of scientists has been working to prove that this warming has been linked to rising intensity and frequency of disasters. The efforts of World Weather Attribution (wwa), a global initiative that studies the influence of climate change on extreme weather events, was cited in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s assessment report last year, which confidently said that humans have a role in the world’s changing weather patterns.

But now, the question arises, who will accept responsibility for the historical emissions and therefore compensate for the loss and damage from the resultant disasters? “The relationship between global warming and extreme weather events is quite linear and this can be extended to the rest of the calculations of historic responsibility,” Friederike Otto, climate scientist at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College London, tells