9/24/2025 Attribution of climate change and climate change impacts As Part of the Advanced AGNES Courses on Climate Outlook, Impact Assessment, and Climate Risk Assessment Mastawesha Misganaw Engdaw and Aniruddha Ghosh Engdaw, Mastawesha Misganaw (Alliance Bioversity-CIAT) ABOUT THE AUTHORS Mastawesha Misganaw Engdaw is Postodctoral Fellow at the Alliance of Bioversity and International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) Email: m.engdaw@cgiar.org ORCiD ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8224-2369 Aniruddha Ghosh is Senior Scientist at the Alliance of Bioversity and International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) Email: a.ghosh@cgiar.org ORCiD ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3667-8019 Suggested Citation Engdaw, M. M. and Ghosh, A. (2025). Attribution of climate change and climate change impacts as Part of the Advanced AGNES Courses on Climate Outlook, Impact Assessment, and Climate Risk Assessment. Partners mailto:m.engdaw@cgiar.org https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8224-2369 mailto:a.ghosh@cgiar.org https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3667-8019 Contents List of Figures ............................................................................................................... 2 Abstract ....................................................................................................................... 1 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1 2. Importance of Attribution of climate change and its impacts training for Africa ........ 2 3. Chapter curriculum ............................................................................................... 3 3.1. Climate change attribution ............................................................................. 4 3.2. Developments in attribution methods, data and models .................................. 4 3.3. Attribution of observed long-term changes in the climate system ..................... 4 3.4. Attribution of observed changes in climate hazards ......................................... 4 3.5. Methods of impact attribution ......................................................................... 4 3.6. Climate impact attribution in Africa ................................................................. 4 3.7. From impact attribution to Loss and Damage .................................................. 4 3.8. Loss and damage ........................................................................................... 4 3.9. The implications of impact attribution methods for Loss and Damage in the Global South ......................................................................................................... 4 3.10. challenges in supporting loss and damage in Africa ....................................... 4 3.11. challenges in hazard and impact attribution .................................................. 4 4. Training Participants in Cohort 1 ............................................................................ 4 5. Conclusion and Recommendations ....................................................................... 7 6. Reading Materials and Selected References Used in the course ............................. 7 7. Disclaimer .......................................................................................................... 10 List of Figures Figure 1: The number of participants trained on “Attribution of climate change and climate change impacts” as part of the AGNES advanced ourse on Climate Outlook, Impact Assessment, and Climate Risk Assessment cohort 1. ........................................ 5 Figure 2 : The number of participants trained on “Attribution of climate change and climate change impacts” as part of the AGNES advanced ourse on Climate Outlook, Impact Assessment, and Climate Risk Assessment cohort 1. ........................................ 6 Abstract Attribution science of climate change — encompassing both slow- and sudden-onset changes in the climate system and the attribution of their consequent impacts — provides the most robust evidence of human influence on the climate system. However, expertise in attribution science, which is essential for generating evidence on the respective roles of industrialized and developing regions in driving climate change, remains limited. African countries are among the most affected by this cause-and-effect relationship. Consequently, climate negotiations at the COPs often center on discussions between industrialized nations, as major emitters, and developing countries, as the primary victims of climate change impacts. Therefore, a critical understanding of scientific methods that link greenhouse gas emissions to changes in climate extremes and their associated impacts is vital for African climate negotiators. As part of ongoing efforts to strengthen this capacity, the African Group of Negotiators Expert Support (AGNES) has been actively working to build the technical competence of African negotiators. This report documents the capacity-building trainings conducted on the “Attribution of Climate Change and Its Impacts” for African climate negotiators. Keywords: climate literacy, attribution of climate change, climate extremes, climate impact attribution, loss and damage 1 1. Introduction The African Group of Negotiators Expert Support (AGNES) provides capacity building trainings on basic and advanced courses. Among those courses are the introductory course on Climate Governance, Diplomacy and Negotiations Leadership Program and three advanced courses: Digital Technologies and Artificial Intelligence for Climate Action, Climate Finance and Innovative Business Models, and The Climate Outlook, Impact Assessment and Climate Risk Management courses. The introductory course aims building and strengthening African climate leaders, improving their scientific knowledge and their negotiation skills so that to so that they become capable of effectively engaging in international climate change policy discourse. In addition, the course aims to enable climate policy makers and experts to contribute to the successful implementation of climate change adaptation and mitigation actions at different spatial scales. The Leadership course has target groups (1) Climate change negotiators and international diplomats (2) Policy and decision makers, representatives of non-state actors such as international and intergovernmental organizations, Climate scientists and professionals working in think tanks and academia; non-governmental organizations (NGOs) including the private sector working in the field of climate change and related disciplines (AGNES, 2025). The Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT’s Climate Action Lever, under the CGIAR’s Climate Action Science Program, also works on multiple aspects of climate change across its Net-Zero Development, Climate https://www.agnesafrica.org/training-portal/ 2 Security and Migration, Climate Services for Agriculture Climate Readiness sub-levers. These shared interests of The African Group of Negotiators Expert Support (AGNES) and the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT towards robust and actionable information production and use, among others, is the center of the partnership the two organizations have been building. 2. Importance of Attribution of climate change and its impacts training for Africa The Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT contributed to identifying what aspects of climate science is missing and incorporating them towards achieving the grand objectives of The African Group of Negotiators Expert Support (AGNES). As part of the advanced course on Climate Outlook, Impact Assessment, and Climate Risk Assessment, the Alliance of Bioversity played a crucial role in introducing multiple concepts of attribution science to the Climate Governance, Diplomacy and Negotiations Leadership Program during Cohort XVI. During Cohort XVI of the Leadership Course, emphasis was given introducing participants about what attribution is, its requirements, what makes it different from change detection, and several other concepts. These concepts of attribution science enabled participants of diverse educational background and work experience to bring on board and prepared them for the specialized topics on hazard attribution, impact attribution, the importance of rigorous scientific evidence generation for Loss and Damage, the exiting challenges in evidence generation and potential exit strategies. 3 Attribution science is critical in providing quantitative information about the contributions of causal factors to observed changes and impacts. This is critical but missing piece of climate information that developing countries must have to provide robust information to their counterparts of global north. However, there are very few Africa experts on the topic. In addition, most of the attribution information available for Africa is conducted by Scientists from academic and research institutions of Global North. Although there is now growing interest of attribution information by African countries. 3. Chapter curriculum The Alliance contributed from designing course curriculum to delivering the proposed chapter using state of the art methods and respective examples across the world. Below is the proposed chapter outline on “Attribution of climate Change and its impacts”: 4 3.1. Climate change attribution 3.2. Developments in attribution methods, data and models 3.3. Attribution of observed long-term changes in the climate system 3.4. Attribution of observed changes in climate hazards 3.5. Methods of impact attribution 3.6. Climate impact attribution in Africa 3.7. From impact attribution to Loss and Damage 3.8. Loss and damage 3.9. The implications of impact attribution methods for Loss and Damage in the Global South 3.10. challenges in supporting loss and damage in Africa 3.11. challenges in hazard and impact attribution 4. Training Participants in Cohort 1 The training on “Attribution of climate change and climate change impacts” was delivered as one week chapter as part of the AGNES’s advanced course on “Climate Outlook, Impact Assessment, and Climate Risk Assessment”. The advanced Climate Outlook, Impact Assessment, and Climate Risk Assessment course was delivered from 17 February 2025 to 28 March 2025. The Attribution of climate change and climate change impacts training run as the last chapter of the course from 24 – 28 March 2025. During the first cohort, 119 participants, from 29 African countries, are trained on Attribution of climate change and climate change impacts. The number and nationality of participants in the training have a good representation. most of the African countries were represented by less than 5 trainees. Contributing to ongoing efforts, this training enabled to enhancing climate literacy at continental scale efforts. Benin, Burkina Faso and Nigeria were represented by five participants. Kenya had the highest number of participants, with 39 trainees. The number of participants in the cohort 1 training are shown in Figure 1 below. 5 Figure 1: The number of participants trained on “Attribution of climate change and climate change impacts” as part of the AGNES advanced ourse on Climate Outlook, Impact Assessment, and Climate Risk Assessment cohort 1. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 Zimbabwe Zambia Togo Somalia Senegal Sao Tome and Principe Rwanda Nigeria Niger Mauritania Mali Malawi Madagascar Lesotho Kenya India Guinea-Bissau Guinea Ghana Gabon Ethiopia Egypt DRC Côte d'Ivoire Central African Republic Cameroon Burkina Faso Benin Angola Total 6 The participants trained were also diverse in their educational background, understanding of the physical science of climate change and their work experience. The trainees’ background shows that many of them (59%) had a Master’s degree followed by 34% of participants who hold bachelor’s degree. In addition, 10% of participants hold PhD degrees. Figure 2 : The number of participants trained on “Attribution of climate change and climate change impacts” as part of the AGNES advanced ourse on Climate Outlook, Impact Assessment, and Climate Risk Assessment cohort 1. 34% 1% 2% 53% 10% Total Bachelor's Degree Certificate Diploma Masters Phd (blank) 7 5. Conclusion and Recommendations the AGNES’s advanced course on “Climate Outlook, Impact Assessment, and Climate Risk Assessment” is a great opportunity to train African climate experts on advanced topics. Given Africa has very few experts on attribution science, the continent is far behind evidence generation how human-induced climate change is increasing the frequency, intensity, duration and spatial extent of climate change and climate extremes in the continent. Therefore, the training provided on Attribution of climate change and climate change impacts enabled us to familiarize participants to the broader aspects of attribution science. The training was used to introduce participants to Climate change attribution, developments in attribution methods, data and models, attribution of observed long-term changes in the climate system, attribution of observed changes in climate hazards. In addition, methods of impact attribution; climate impact attribution in Africa, and from impact attribution to Loss and Damage. The relevance of evidence generation on impact attribution methods in climate finance (for Loss and Damage) in the Global South was also emphasized including the existing challenges in conducting hazard and impact attribution assessments to in showcase the disproportionate impacts Africa is facing in climate negotiations on loss and damage Therefore, we strongly recommend the periodic delivery of the Attribution of climate change and its impacts training as part of the AGNES’s advanced course on “Climate Outlook, Impact Assessment, and Climate Risk Assessment” 6. Reading Materials and Selected References Used in the course Stott, P. A., Christidis, N., Otto, F. E., Sun, Y., Vanderlinden, J. P., Van Oldenborgh, G. J., ... & Zwiers, F. W. (2016). Attribution of extreme weather and climate‐related events. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 7(1), 23-41. 8 Ortiz-Bobea, A., Ault, T. R., Carrillo, C. M., Chambers, R. G., & Lobell, D. B. (2021). Anthropogenic climate change has slowed global agricultural productivity growth. Nature Climate Change, 11(4), 306-312. Lloyd, E. A., & Shepherd, T. G. (2021). Climate change attribution and legal contexts: evidence and the role of storylines. Climatic Change, 167(3), 28. Wang, J., Chen, Y., Tett, S. F., Yan, Z., Zhai, P., Feng, J., & Xia, J. (2020). Anthropogenically-driven increases in the risks of summertime compound hot extremes. Nature communications, 11(1), 528. Zscheischler, J., Westra, S., Van Den Hurk, B. J., Seneviratne, S. I., Ward, P. J., Pitman, A., ... & Zhang, X. (2018). Future climate risk from compound events. Nature climate change, 8(6), 469-477. Ridder, N. N., Pitman, A. J., Westra, S., Ukkola, A., Do, H. X., Bador, M., ... & Zscheischler, J. (2020). Global hotspots for the occurrence of compound events. Nature communications, 11(1), 5956. Yang, J., Gong, P., Fu, R., Zhang, M., Chen, J., Liang, S., ... & Dickinson, R. (2013). The role of satellite remote sensing in climate change studies. Nature climate change, 3(10), 875-883. Engdaw, M. M., Mayanja, B., Rose, S., Loboguerrero, A. M., & Ghosh, A. (2024). Bridging evidence gaps in attributing loss and damage, and measures to minimize impacts. PLOS Climate, 3(8), e0000477. Engdaw, M. M., Ballinger, A. P., Hegerl, G. C., & Steiner, A. K. (2022). Changes in temperature and heat waves over Africa using observational and reanalysis data sets. International Journal of Climatology, 42(2), 1165-1180. Engdaw, M. M., Steiner, A. K., Hegerl, G. C., & Ballinger, A. P. (2023). Attribution of observed changes in extreme temperatures to anthropogenic forcing using CMIP6 models. Weather and Climate Extremes, 39, 100548. Engdaw, M. M., Ghosh, A., Chilambe, P. A., Ramirez Villegas, J., & Girvetz, E. (2025). Quantifying loss and damage from compound climate risk. Zhao, C., Liu, B., Piao, S., Wang, X., Lobell, D. B., Huang, Y., ... & Asseng, S. (2017). Temperature increase reduces global yields of major crops in four independent estimates. Proceedings of the National Academy of sciences, 114(35), 9326- 9331. 9 National Academies of Sciences, Medicine, Division on Earth, Board on Atmospheric Sciences, Committee on Extreme Weather Events, & Climate Change Attribution. (2016). Attribution of extreme weather events in the context of climate change. National Academies Press. Hulme, M. (2014). Attributing weather extremes to ‘climate change’ A review. Progress in Physical Geography, 38(4), 499-511. Lloyd, E. A., & Shepherd, T. G. (2020). Environmental catastrophes, climate change, and attribution. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1469(1), 105-124. Dimitrova, A., Dimitrova, A., Mengel, M., Gasparrini, A., Lotze-Campen, H., & Gabrysch, S. (2024). Temperature-related neonatal deaths attributable to climate change in 29 low-and middle-income countries. Nature communications, 15(1), 5504. Pulkkinen, K., Undorf, S., Bender, F., Wikman-Svahn, P., Doblas-Reyes, F., Flynn, C., ... & Thompson, E. (2022). The value of values in climate science. Nature Climate Change, 12(1), 4-6. Lloyd, E. A., & Oreskes, N. (2018). Climate change attribution: when is it appropriate to accept new methods?. Earth's Future, 6(3), 311-325. Van Oldenborgh, G. J., van Der Wiel, K., Kew, S., Philip, S., Otto, F., Vautard, R., ... & van Aalst, M. (2021). Pathways and pitfalls in extreme event attribution. Climatic Change, 166(1), 13. Knutson, T. (2017). Detection and attribution methodologies overview. Climate science special report: Fourth national climate assessment, 1, 443-451. Otto, F. E., Harrington, L., Schmitt, K., Philip, S., Kew, S., van Oldenborgh, G. J., ... & Wolski, P. (2021). Challenges to Understanding Extreme Weather Changes in Developing Countries: Revealing an Inherent Bias. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 102(7), 637-639. 10 7. Disclaimer This work was carried out with support from the CGIAR Trust Fund. We would like to thank all funders who supported this research through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the Training Report.