World Weather Attribution
International pro-climate-action scientific collaborative
Background
WWA was founded in 2014 by climate scientists Friederike Otto and Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, along with the nonprofit Climate Central, which served as its secretariat and helped secure early funding. The collaboration was built to operationalize the emerging science of 'extreme event attribution' — rapidly calculating, often within days of a disaster, how much human-caused climate change increased the probability or intensity of a given event. Climate Central and WWA separated into independent organizations in 2018, though they have continued occasional collaboration. Since then, WWA has produced more than 100 attribution studies on heatwaves, floods, droughts, wildfires, and storms worldwide, 26 of which have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Critics, including climate scientist Roger Pielke Jr., have argued that some of WWA's rapid studies are advocacy-driven and released too quickly for rigorous peer review; WWA maintains that its methods are scientifically sound and independently replicated. Co-founder Otto also holds a senior position at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, which is funded by the same Grantham Foundation that funds WWA — a overlap critics have flagged. WWA's 2025 annual report found extreme weather at 'concerning levels,' pushing millions of people near the limits of adaptation, a finding that aligns with climate-action advocacy positions and conflicts with Trump administration climate policy.
Sources
- World Weather Attribution — About
- World Weather Attribution — Wikipedia
- World Weather Attribution (WWA) — InfluenceWatch
- WWA History — World Weather Attribution
- Climate Central and Attribution Science
- Behind the Curtain — Roger Pielke Jr. / The Honest Broker
- Unequal evidence and impacts, limits to adaptation: Extreme Weather in 2025 — WWA
Profile compiled 2026-07-16; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.