Summary/Abstract
As climate change increasingly affects biodiversity and ecosystem services, a key challenge in ecology is accurate attribution of these impacts. Though experimental studies have greatly advanced understanding of climate change effects, experimental results are difficult to generalise to real-world scenarios. To better capture realised impacts, ecologists can use observational data. Disentangling cause and effect using observational data, however, requires careful research design.
The authors describe advances in causal inference that can improve climate change attribution in observational settings. Their framework includes five steps: (1) describe the theoretical foundation, (2) choose appropriate observational datasets, (3) estimate the causal relationships of interest, (4) simulate a counterfactual scenario and (5) evaluate results and assumptions using robustness checks. The authors demonstrate this framework using a pinyon pine case study in North America, and conclude with a discussion of frontiers in climate change attribution. Their aim is to provide an accessible foundation for applying observational causal inference to estimate climate change effects on ecological systems.