Totally Cooked: Episode 22 – Who pays for climate destruction? Extreme weather attribution and Loss & Damage

Join hosts Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick and Iain Strachan as they talk with expert Dr Joyce Kimutai, climate attribution scientist at Imperial College London and member of World Weather Attribution, to unpack one of the most consequential fields in climate science.

Joyce explains the world of attribution, quantifying how much human-induced climate change has altered the likelihood or intensity of specific extreme weather events. From the relatively straightforward case of heat waves, where the signal of climate change is now essentially guaranteed, to the far thornier problem of attributing localised flooding in data-sparse regions, the conversation covers both the power and the limits of the science.

Joyce illustrates what it means to do attribution science in regions where weather station networks are sparse, records are inconsistent, and data-sharing policies can block access entirely. The show covers why satellite proxies and reanalysis products are not always a reliable substitute when the underlying observations are missing.

From all things Loss & Damage, litigation meeting climate science, the use of observations, and the unlikely and unique path that brought Joyce into the field, jump into the world of attribution for this episode.

Iain records Totally Cooked on the lands of the Bunurong People of the Kulin Nation. Sarah records Totally Cooked on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging and recognise their unique and continuing connection to the land, skies, waters, plants and animals.

Show Notes

In this episode, we look at:

• Climate attribution science quantifies the role of human-induced climate change in specific extreme weather events, examining both how frequently they occur and how intense they are.
• Attribution works by comparing climate model simulations of the current world against a reconstructed pre-industrial baseline, stripped of anthropogenic forcings.
• Heat wave attribution is now effectively settled, every heat wave occurring today carries a detectable human climate signal.
• Data quality is the field’s biggest limiting factor: sparse station networks, conflict-related gaps, and restrictive data-sharing policies make attribution in much of Africa genuinely difficult, and satellite proxies cannot compensate for poor underlying observations.
• World Weather Attribution (WWA) is a rapid-response scientific consortium that analyses extreme events while they are still in the public eye, providing coordinated, science-based answers to media and policymakers within days to weeks.
• Loss and damage — climate impacts that cannot be avoided through mitigation or adaptation — is a growing justice issue, and attribution science forms the evidentiary foundation for loss and damage claims at the UNFCCC and in climate litigation.
• Attributing a hazard does not directly translate to attributing the resulting losses: linking physical climate signals to human impacts requires additional layers of analysis.
• The frontiers of attribution science are better observations, models capable of handling complex localised events, and expanded scientific capacity in underrepresented regions.
• Joyce’s path into the field began with a geography teacher’s Saturday hikes in Kenya’s highlands, ran through the Kenya Meteorological Department, and pivoted after a lunch conversation with Friederike Otto at a Nairobi workshop.
• Joyce holds two roles at the IPCC: she was a lead author on the Special Report on Climate Change and Land, and now serves as a focal point — part of the government oversight body that approves report outlines, budgets, and meeting locations.

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This episode will be released and available to stream and download on Friday 29th May, 2026.

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Because it’s time to feel empowered, not overwhelmed. Totally Cooked is a science-backed, straight-talking podcast about weather, climate change, and what it all means for life on Earth – especially here in Australia.

Hosted by climate scientist Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick and science communicator Iain Strachan, Totally Cooked breaks down how human activity is changing the Earth’s systems—from our skies to our seas—and what we can do about it.

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