A National Academies of Science report released on Thursday finds that climate attribution science—the field that determines whether a specific weather event was made more likely by human-caused climate change—has matured significantly over the past decade and can now answer many questions with far greater confidence than before. This matters because attribution findings inform practical decisions such as building codes, infrastructure design and disaster preparedness, and because establishing clear scientific links between emissions and specific disasters strengthens the case for holding fossil fuel companies liable for climate-related damages, prompting some Republicans in Congress and state governments to threaten the National Academies' funding.

Attribution science works by comparing how often the atmospheric conditions behind a given weather event occur in climate models with and without human greenhouse gas emissions, with the difference indicating climate change's influence; the method has been peer-reviewed and applied to numerous events, many showing a clear climate fingerprint, though some cases remain inconclusive. The National Academies previously examined the field in 2016, and this new report assesses a decade of progress, and while it confirms the science is now mainstream and increasingly reliable, it also identifies ongoing limitations and recommends steps to address them.