Investigating differences between event-as-class and probability density-based attribution statements with emerging climate change

Climatic Change (2017)

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-017-1906-3

There is significant public and scientific interest in understanding how the severity and frequency of extreme events have increased in response to human influences on the climate system.

We considered differences between event-as-class attribution statements with changes in the probability density of the distribution at the event threshold of interest. For the majority of extreme event attribution studies, it is likely that the two metrics are comparable once uncertainty estimates are considered.

However, results show these two metrics can produce divergent answers from each other for moderate climatological anomalies if the present-day climate distribution experiences a substantial change in the underlying signal-to-noise ratio.