After a year of lethal heat, flooding, and wildfire smoke, the fight over climate accountability may be entering a new phase.
New research could give communities a more direct way to link extreme-weather damage to emissions from specific fossil companies — a key obstacle in lawsuits that aim to hold major polluters liable for covering the costs.
Here's what to know
As reported by Mother Jones, a peer-reviewed paper in Earth's Future outlines a clearer way to link emissions from a specific company or country to a specific extreme weather event.
Showing that link has long been one of the biggest challenges in climate litigation against oil and gas producers.
For the study, Christopher Callahan, an Earth systems researcher and assistant professor at the Indiana University O'Neill School, used eight climate models across more than 150 simulations. He then measured how higher carbon dioxide levels shift the likelihood of extreme heat and rainfall and compared those results with emissions data from major polluters.
When looking at what may have happened without the carbon dioxide emissions from specific fossil fuel companies and countries, he found striking results. His estimates found that fossil fuel companies increased the likelihood of the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave by 31% and Pakistan's 2022 extreme rainfall by 7%.
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Callahan put it simply: "There is no level of emissions that does not contribute to changing climate impacts. Every ton matters."
More background
The toll of climate-driven disasters is already being felt in threats to livelihoods and massive financial damage.
In 2026, record-breaking heat has hit parts of Europe and North Africa; extreme heat has affected India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh; deadly flash flooding has struck Texas; and wildfire smoke from Canada has exposed more than 106 million North Americans to dangerous air quality.
In the United States, catastrophic weather events have caused about 17,377 deaths and more than $3.2 trillion in damage between 1980 and 2026.
All of that is happening while fossil fuels remain the primary driver of climate change, accounting for about 68% of greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90% of carbon dioxide emissions.
Since 2017, more than 40 climate lawsuits have been filed against Big Oil in the United States, and at least five have reached discovery, where executives may be compelled to produce internal documents and give sworn testimony.
Industry allies, meanwhile, have continued attacking attribution science. During a 2025 Federalist Society panel, Boyden Gray PLLC partner Michael Buschbacher posed the issue this way: "How can you show approximate causation in injury?"
That issue of approximate causation has become central in many of these cases.
What's being done?
Researchers are working to make attribution science faster, more usable, and more difficult to dismiss.
Callahan said the new framework demands far less computing power than older approaches, which could take months. That could give researchers, governments, and courts a more precise way to quantify climate harm.
That, in turn, could strengthen efforts to seek recovery funds after disasters that damage homes, strain local budgets, worsen air quality, and increase insurance costs. It could also help communities prepare for future floods and heat waves.
Jim Hurrell, chair of the National Academies report on extreme weather attribution and a Colorado State University atmospheric science professor, said, "This science could be really useful to help communities plan for the future."
Callahan said, "What this science tells us is that there is a direct relationship between how much an entity emits and…[the] extreme events that alter people's lives."
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