Developing a global, event-based, rapid impact attribution framework
Hundreds of studies have shown how extreme weather events are becoming more intense around the world. However, how these changes translate to greater impacts is still not well understood.
The Climate Damage Tracker is creating a global and rapid event impact attribution framework that can solve this problem.
By combining information from hazard attribution with socio-economic impact data, scientists can now deliver close to real-time estimates of how climate change has influenced the impacts of specific extreme weather events. They can now also quantify how much climate change increases damage caused by extreme weather events. For example, impact attribution studies can estimate how much more expensive a storm has become, or how many more lives have been lost in a heatwave because of human-made climate change.
Through rapid studies, we deliver close to real-time estimates of how climate change has influenced the impacts of specific extreme weather events. By increasing awareness of these findings, we want to demonstrate that climate change is making life more dangerous and more expensive.
Latest rapid studies:
- Attribution of economic damages from tropical cyclones
- Typhoon Fung-wong (Philippines, November 2025)
- Typhoon Kalmaegi (Vietnam, November 2025)
- Hurricane Melissa (Jamaica, October 2025)
- Typhoon Ragasa (China, October 2025)
- Hurricane Milton (USA, October 2024)
- Hurricane Helene (USA, October 2024)
- Typhoon Shanshan (Japan, August 2024)
- Methodology: Attribution of economic damages from tropical cyclones
- Attribution of deaths from heatwaves
We are continuously expanding our framework to include more types of impacts and extreme weather events. If you are interested in contributing to the project or learning more, please do not hesitate to reach out by contacting Emily Theokritoff at e.theokritoff@imperial.ac.uk.