IRYNA VLASENKO / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO commentary Figure 1 | Attribution studies are predicting more severe heatwaves in some regions with high confidence. available climate science, these construction professionals may expose themselves to litigation. Impacts on company directors In general, corporate directors and officers are fiduciaries and owe a series of special duties to the corporation and its shareholders. Fiduciary duties of due care and disclosure are similar (though not identical) around the world (http://go.nature. com/2wP0RIA), these often require company directors to act in good faith in the best interests of the corporation, and also with the requisite level of care, due diligence and skill. Companies are also often required to disclose information about material risks to shareholders. Consideration of these laws is beyond the scope of this paper; however, attribution science will also be relevant to what information a company discloses about the risks climate change poses to its assets. Prudential regulators around the world have recently begun to recognize the threat to companies and the economy from climate change27–30. Increased extreme weather events are likely to pose physical risks to corporate assets, may cause loss of productivity due to forced periods of shutdown, and may have secondary impacts such as “higher energy 618 costs, legal risks from emissions regulation and private litigation, an inability to transfer risk (via mechanisms such as insurance), and market risks as investors and credit providers limit their own exposures to emissions-intensive sectors”31. The degree of care and diligence required of a director in any given context will depend on the nature and extent of the foreseeable risk of harm to the company that would otherwise arise. Recent Australian legal opinion concluded that: “If the country is to experience more frequent and intense storms, for example, of the type that might cause flooding and power outages, then directors of companies exposed to such risks should be considering them regardless of whether or not they are perceived to be brought about by climate change, and regardless of the regulatory outlook. In this sense, ‘climate change’ has the potential to be a distracting label. The question is really whether there is a foreseeable risk to the interests of a company”32. The evidence cited above demonstrating that extreme heat such as that seen in the summer of 2017 will be a one-in-five-year event in the future clearly engages the above paragraph, and implies that company directors should be planning for such a future. Scientists are warning corporate directors about these risks, which are now clearly foreseeable. A call to science Attribution science is poised to play an increasingly important role in climate change litigation. In particular, the state of attribution science — what is accepted as consensus versus what is debated — will substantially determine the foreseeability of previously unexpected events, a critical factor in determining liability under contract, tort and duties law. We therefore reiterate the critical importance of continuing developments in attribution science. We also suggest the following actions to enable attribution scientists to inform and assist courts in their efforts to determine climate change liability: (i) areas of agreement should be clearly stated before discussion of areas of disagreement; (ii) methodology and results should be quantitatively and qualitatively transparent to enable interpretation and assessment of credibility by the courts; (iii) assumptions and uncertainties should be stated in a simple, concise and transparent manner; and (iv), results should discuss implications for forseeability; that is, whether NATURE GEOSCIENCE | VOL 10 | SEPTEMBER 2017 | www.nature.com/naturegeoscience . d e v r e s e r s t h g i r l l A . e r u t a N r e g n i r p S f o t r a p , d e t i m i L s r e h s i l b u P n a l l i m c a M 7 1 0 2 ©