Stott Peter A, Stone D A, Allen M R
Met Office, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research (Reading Unit), Meteorology Building, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6BB, UK.
Nature. 2004 Dec 2;432(7017):610-4. doi: 10.1038/nature03089.
The summer of 2003 was probably the hottest in Europe since at latest ad 1500, and unusually large numbers of heat-related deaths were reported in France, Germany and Italy. It is an ill-posed question whether the 2003 heatwave was caused, in a simple deterministic sense, by a modification of the external influences on climate--for example, increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere--because almost any such weather event might have occurred by chance in an unmodified climate. However, it is possible to estimate by how much human activities may have increased the risk of the occurrence of such a heatwave. Here we use this conceptual framework to estimate the contribution of human-induced increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and other pollutants to the risk of the occurrence of unusually high mean summer temperatures throughout a large region of continental Europe. Using a threshold for mean summer temperature that was exceeded in 2003, but in no other year since the start of the instrumental record in 1851, we estimate it is very likely (confidence level >90%) that human influence has at least doubled the risk of a heatwave exceeding this threshold magnitude.
2003年夏天可能是自公元1500年以来欧洲最炎热的夏天，法国、德国和意大利都报告了异常大量与高温相关的死亡事件。从简单的确定性角度来看，2003年的热浪是否是由对气候的外部影响的改变（例如大气中温室气体浓度增加）所导致，这是一个不适定问题，因为在未改变的气候中几乎任何此类天气事件都可能偶然发生。然而，有可能估计人类活动可能使此类热浪发生的风险增加了多少。在此，我们使用这个概念框架来估计人为导致的大气中温室气体和其他污染物浓度增加对整个欧洲大陆大片地区夏季平均气温异常升高的发生风险的贡献。使用2003年超过但自1851年仪器记录开始以来其他年份均未超过的夏季平均气温阈值，我们估计很可能（置信水平>90%）人类影响至少使超过该阈值强度的热浪风险增加了一倍。
