A core topic of our research is to quantify changes in the climate system, from regional to global scale, with an emphasis on distinguishing internal variability, secular and rapid change. The latter can make adaptation by society especially challenging because of the relatively large magnitude and short timescale of these transitions. These efforts are underpinned by refinement of robust statistical techniques for time series analysis in general and change-point detection in particular. The need for tailored statistical approaches motivates methodological development in collaboration with statisticians.