In memoriam: Professor Geert Jan van Oldenborgh

A special symposium recognising the work of Professor Geert Jan van Oldenborgh

The past two decades have seen the emergence of a new field of enquiry in meteorology and climate: quantifying the contribution of greenhouse gas emissions to observed weather and climate events. We have also seen considerable progress in communicating the relationship between climate change and extreme weather, from the dismissive “weather is not climate” twenty years ago to a much more sophisticated probabilistic understanding today. The late Professor Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and Visiting Professor in Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics in Oxford, played a central role in both of these developments, particularly as one of the founders of the World Weather Attribution project. In a special symposium, three of Geert Jan’s colleagues reflect on the progress that has been made in this challenging and often controversial field and discuss priorities for the future. Robert Vautard will discuss the remaining open questions related to attribution and its applications; Friederike Otto will discuss the importance of including vulnerability & exposure in all our assessments and the huge time effort & emphasis we spent on comms in WWA; and Myles Allen will discuss the progress of event attribution from a theoretical possibility towards a routine weather and climate service.

Robert Vautard is Director of the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, Senior Scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and Coordinating Lead Author of Chapter 12, Climate change information for regional impact and for risk assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Assessment Report (IPCC-AR6). His research focusses on the development of climate services, regional climate and energy modelling and understanding extreme events in the context of climate change through a combination of mathematics, climate science and modelling.

Friederike Otto is a Senior Lecturer in Climate Science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine. Her main research interest is on extreme weather events such as droughts, heat waves and storms, and understanding whether and to what extent these are made more likely or intense due to climate change. She is a Lead Author of the Physical Science and Synthesis Reports of the IPCC-AR6 and co-leader of the World Weather Attribution project that she founded with Geert Jan in 2014. She and Geert Jan were named on the Time Top 100 most influential people of 2021 for their work on event attribution.

Myles Allen is Professor of Geosystem Science in the Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment and Department of Physics, University of Oxford. His research focuses on how human and natural influences on climate contribute to observed climate change and risks of extreme weather and in assessing the implications. He proposed the theoretical concept of probabilistic event attribution in 2003 and co-authored a number of papers with Geert Jan in the late 2000s and early 2010s developing different approaches to its implementation.

The in-person lecture will be followed by a drinks reception.

This event is free to attend however registration is required.