On January 9-10, 2025, the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and the Columbia Climate School held an in-person and virtual conference on the topic of Attribution Science and Climate Law at Columbia Law School.
Attribution science provides critical insights on both the impacts attributable to anthropogenic climate change and the relative contributions of different sources for those impacts. This research plays an important role in climate litigation as well as policy-making and regulatory decision-making. This conference brought together scientific and legal experts to discuss how advances in climate change detection and attribution science can inform legal decisions related to climate change.
The conference consisted of multiple presentations and panels focusing on some of the most pressing questions related to attribution research and its role in policy and legal decision-making, including:
- Scientific context: What is “detection and attribution” research, how has this field evolved over time, and how does it fit within the broader field of climate science? What are some of the major trends that have been attributed to human influence on the climate, and how has the evidence evolved before and since IPCC AR6?
- Legal context: How is science used in environmental lawmaking and litigation? Why does attribution science matter for legal decision-making, what sorts of legal claims are being filed and how does the science factor into these claims?
- Extreme event attribution: What are the different approaches to extreme event attribution, how might the suitability of these approaches differ depending on legal/policy application, and how can they complement one another?
- Impact attribution: What is the current status of research with regards to the attribution of different impacts, including but not limited to health impacts, food and water impacts, ecological impacts, socioeconomic impacts, and humanitarian impacts?
- Attribution of climate injuries and damages: To what extent can attribution research support decisions on injuries and damages attributable to specific quantities of emissions and specific responsible parties? What types of damages are quantifiable and how?
For more information about the Attribution Science and Climate Law conference, please visit our conference webpage. The agenda, video recordings, and the presentations of panelists who gave permission for their presentations to be shared on this database, are presented below.
Agenda and Presentations
Thursday, January 9: (Part 1 Video Available Here) (Part 2 Video Available Here)
9:30 – 9:45 am Opening Remarks
9:45 – 10:45 am Introduction to Climate Change Attribution Science
Moderator:
Dr. Radley Horton, Professor of Climate, Columbia Climate School
Panelists:
Dr. Benjamin Santer, Distinguished Scholar in Residence, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute – “A Brief History of Climate Science”
Dr. Gavin Schmidt, Adjunct Senior Research Scientist, Columbia Climate School – “Attribution of Climate Changes with Earth System Models”
10:45 – 12:00 pm Extreme Event Attribution
Moderator:
Dr. Friederike Otto, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science, Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College London; Co-lead, World Weather Attribution
Panelists:
Dr. Joyce Kimutai, Associate Researcher, Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College London; CoChair, Loss and Damage Working Group on Climate Litigation: Climate Research Forum, Oxford Sustainable Law Programme – “Probabilistic Attribution: Relevance for Climate Litigation”
Dr. Kevin Reed, Associate Provost for Climate and Sustainability Programming and Professor, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University – “Quantifying Climate Impacts on Recent Events Through Storylines”
Dr. Elisabeth A. Lloyd, Distinguished Professor Emerita, History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University, Bloomington – “Deduction, Induction, and Attribution: How to Be More Effective in Climate Legal Contexts”
1:00 – 2:15 pm Impact Attribution I: Food Security, Labor, and Disaster Impacts
Moderator:
Dr. Kristie Ebi, Professor of Global Health and Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington Center for Health and the Global Environment – “Impact attribution I: food security, labor, and disaster impacts”
Panelists:
Dr. Emmanuel Raju, Director, Copenhagen Center for Disaster Research; Associate Professor of Disaster Risk Management, University of Copenhagen – “Disentangling Drivers of Disasters”
Dr. Jonas Jägermeyr, Associate Research Scientist, Columbia Climate School and NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Leader of the Agricultural Sector in ISIMIP, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany – “The Fingerprint of Climate Change in Crop Losses During Recent Heatwaves and Droughts”
Dr. Shouro Dasgupta, Researcher, Fondazione Centro EuroMediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici; Visiting Senior Fellow, Grantham Research Institute, London School of Economics – “Attribution of Historical Changes in Labour Outcomes to Climate Change”
2:15 – 3:30 pm Impact Attribution II: Natural Resources, Ecosystems, and Vector-Borne Diseases
Moderator:
Dr. Peter Frumhoff, Lecturer on Environmental Science and Public Policy, Harvard University; Senior Science Policy Advisor, Woodwell Climate Research Center
Panelists:
Dr. Rachel Warren, Professor of Global Change and Environmental Biology, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia – “Climate Change Impact Attribution for Ecosystems and Biodiversity”
Dr. Jason Smerdon, Professor of Climate, Co-Senior Director for Education, and Co-Director of the MA in Climate, Columbia Climate School – “Drought: Definitions, Detection, and Difficulties”
Dr. Nick Ogden, Senior Research Scientist and Director of Public Health Risk Sciences Division, Public Health Agency of Canada – “Evidence for Impacts of Climate Change on Lyme Disease Emergence in Canada”
3:45 – 5:15 pm Legal and Policy Applications I: Fundamental Rights and Government Obligations
Moderator:
Dr. Maria Antonia Tigre, Director, Global Climate Litigation, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School
Panelists:
Pooven Moodley, Former Executive Director, Natural Justice – “Communities, Climate Litigation and Attribution in a Rapidly Changing World”
Andrea Rodgers, Deputy Director, Our Children’s Trust – “Attributing Constitutional Climate Change Injuries to Government Conduct”
Dennis van Berkel, Legal Counsel, Urgenda Foundation; Strategic Advisor, Climate Litigation Network – “Fundamental Rights Obligations to Reduce Emissions; The Case of Europe and South Korea”
Rafaela Santos Martins de Rosa, Federal Judge, Brazil; Visiting Scholar, University of California Berkeley School of Law – “The Dialogue Between Science and Judges in Advancing Climate Litigation”
5:15 – 5:30 pm Closing Remarks
Friday, January 10: (Video Available Here)
9:00 – 10:15 am Legal Applications II: Corporate Liability for Climate Damages
Moderator:
Michael Burger, Executive Director, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law; Senior Research Scholar, Columbia Law School
Panelists:
Aisha Saad, Associate Professor, Georgetown University Law Center
Dr. Omondi Owino, Partner, Acorn Law Advocates LLP; Senior Law Lecturer, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology – “Attribution Science and Climate Law: The Kenyan Experience”
Nauê Bernardo Pinheiro de Azevedo, Lawyer and Political Scientist, University of Brasília – “Challenges in the Use of Scientific Data in Climate-Related Lawsuits in Brazil”
10:15 – 11:30 am Attributing Impacts to Specific Emitters and Emissions
Moderator:
Dr. Justin Mankin, Associate Professor, Dartmouth College; Adjunct Associate Research Scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Panelists:
Dr. Brenda Ekwurzel, Director of Scientific Excellence, Union of Concerned Scientists – “Source Attribution: Opportunities and Challenges”
Dr. Christopher Callahan, Postdoctoral Scholar, Earth System Science, Stanford University – “Carbon Majors and the Scientific Case for Climate Liability”
Dr. Marshall Burke, Associate Professor, Doerr School of Sustainability; Deputy Director, Center on Food Security and the Environment, Stanford University – “Attributing Specific Climate Damages to Specific Emitters”
11:45 – 1:00 pm Reflections and Concluding Remarks
Moderator:
Jessica Wentz, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School
Panelists:
Douglas Kysar, Joseph M. Field ‘55 Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Law, Environment and Animals Program, Yale Law School
Sheila Foster, Professor of Climate, Columbia Climate School; Affiliated Faculty Member, Columbia Law School
Dr. Adam Sobel, Professor of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics and of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University