Scientists can now connect extreme weather events with climate change using a methodology known as “extreme event attribution”, or EEA. The idea of connecting climate change and extreme weather has long been heralded as a panacea for communications, connecting the dangers of climate change to real-world, on-the-ground events. However, event attribution remains a nascent science, and attribution studies of the same event can sometimes produce divergent answers due to precise methodology used, variables examined, and the timescale selected for the event. The 2011–2017 California drought was assessed by 11 EEA studies which came to varying conclusions on its connection to climate change. This article uses the case study of the drought and a multi-methods approach to examine perceptions of EEA among key stakeholders and citizens. Twenty-five key informant interviews were conducted with different stakeholders: scientists performing EEA research, journalists, local and state-level policymakers, and non-governmental organization representatives. In addition, two focus groups with 20 California citizens were convened: one with environmentalists and another with agriculturalists. While climate change was viewed by many as a mild contributing factor to the California drought, many stakeholders had not heard of EEA or doubted that scientists could conclusively link the drought to anthropogenic climate change; those that were familiar with EEA felt that the science was generally uncertain. In the focus groups, presentation of divergent EEA results led participants to revert to pre-existing ideas about the drought-climate connection, or to question whether science had sufficiently advanced to analyze the event properly. These results indicate that while EEA continues to provoke interest and research in the scientific community, it is not currently utilized by many stakeholders, and may entrench the public in pre-existing views.

科学家现在可以使用称为“极端事件归因”（EEA）的方法将极端天气事件与气候变化联系起来。将气候变化和极端天气联系起来的想法长期以来被认为是沟通的灵丹妙药，它将气候变化的危险与现实世界中的现实事件联系起来。但是，事件归因仍然是一门新兴科学，由于使用的精确方法，检查的变量以及为事件选择的时间范围，对同一事件的归因研究有时会产生不同的答案。通过11项EEA研究评估了2011-2017年加州的干旱，得出有关其与气候变化的联系的不同结论。本文使用干旱的案例研究和多方法方法来检验主要利益相关者和公民对EEA的看法。与不同的利益相关者进行了25次重要的信息提供者访谈：进行EEA研究的科学家，记者，地方和州级决策者以及非政府组织代表。此外，还召集了两个由20名加州公民组成的焦点小组：一个与环境保护主义者一起，另一个与农业主义者一起。尽管许多人将气候变化视为造成加州干旱的温和因素，但许多利益相关者并未听说过EEA或怀疑科学家能否将干旱与人为气候变化联系起来；那些熟悉EEA的人认为科学通常是不确定的。在焦点小组中，由于呈现出不同的EEA结果，导致参与者转而使用关于干旱与气候之间联系的既有想法，或质疑科学是否已经足够先进以适当地分析事件。这些结果表明，尽管EEA继续引起了科学界的兴趣和研究，但是EEA目前并未被许多利益相关者所利用，并且可能使公众以先前存在的观点来巩固自己的地位。