This study highlights the need to disentangle climate change effects on flood drivers using storyline attribution. Whether information is presented as change in one or multiple drivers, or as change in hazard or impact, determines the attribution statement. For compound flooding from tropical cyclone Idai, that hit Mozambique in 2019, we attribute 1–19 % of the flood hazard and 8–35 % of the damage to climate change. The attribution framework can be applied to other events worldwide.