Statement of Resource Person, Myles Allen 24 October 2018 National inquiry on the impact of climate change on the human rights of the Filipino People Statement of Resource Person: Myles Allen Preliminary matters 1) My name is Myles Allen, and I am a Professor of Geosystem Science at the Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment and Department of Physics, University of Oxford. My research focuses on understanding how human and natural influences on climate contribute to observed climate change and extreme weather risk and using observed changes to constrain climate forecasts and their implications for adaptation and mitigation policy. 2) I have contributed extensively to the development of attribution science: In 2003 I wrote an article in Nature1 proposing a framework for attributing harm associated with extreme weather events to large-scale drivers of climate change, including anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The following year, I co-authored the first major study addressing this question using “repurposed” climate change simulations.2 In 2011 I led a study applying a more direct approach in which large ensembles of computer simulations are used to evaluate explicitly how risks of extreme weather events have changed between “the climate that might have been” in the absence of human influence, and the climate as observed, including the impact of past emissions of greenhouse gases and other atmospheric pollutants.3 This latter approach has since become the de facto standard for “probabilistic event attribution”, and in 2016 we extended it from meteorological indicators alone (extreme heat or precipitation) to proxy indicators of actual harm (estimated numbers of properties at risk of flooding4 and heat-related human mortality5). I have co-authored a number of articles and book chapters exploring the legal implications of event attribution science.6 3) I have also contributed more generally to attribution science, most recently as the Coordinating Lead Author of Chapter 1, Framing and Context, of the M. R. Allen, “Liability for Climate Change,” Nature, vol. 421, pp. 891–892, 2003. P. A. Stott, D. A. Stone, and M. R. Allen, “Human contribution to the European heatwave of 2003,” Nature, vol. 432, no. 7017, pp. 610–614, 2004. 3 P. Pall, T. Aina, D. A. Stone, P. A. Stott, T. Nozawa, A. G. J. Hilberts, D. Lohmann, and M. R. Allen, “Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to flood risk in England and Wales in autumn 2000,” Nature, vol. 470, no. 7334, pp. 382–385, 2011. 4 N. Schaller, A. L. Kay, R. Lamb, N. R. Massey, G. J. van Oldenborgh, F. E. L. Otto, S. N. Sparrow, R. Vautard, P. Yiou, I. Ashpole, A. Bowery, S. M. Crooks, K. Haustein, C. Huntingford, W. J. Ingram, R. G. Jones, T. Legg, J. Miller, J. Skeggs, D. Wallom, A. Weisheimer, S. Wilson, P. A. Stott & M. R. Allen, “Human influence on climate in the 2014 southern England winter floods and their impacts”, Nat. Clim. Chang. 6, 627-634, 2016. 5 D. Mitchell, C. Heaviside, S. Vardoulakis, C. Huntingford, G. Masato, B. P Guillod, P. Frumhoff, A. Bowery, D. Wallom, and M. Allen, “Attributing human mortality during extreme heat waves to anthropogenic climate change,” Environ. Res. Lett., vol. 11, no. 7, 2016. 6 M. R. Allen, “The scientific basis for climate change liability,” in Climate Change Liability: Transnational Law and Practice, 2011, pp. 8–22. 1 2 1