Weather Extremes

A paper by Erich Fischer and Reto Knutti at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science determines that 75 percent of rare, hot days can be attributed to climate change.

It is the most rare and extreme events for which the largest fraction is anthropogenic, and that contribution increases nonlinearly with further warming.

Fischer explains:

Climate change doesn’t ‘cause’ any single weather event in a deterministic sense. But a warmer and moister atmosphere does clearly favor more frequent hot and wet extremes.

Update (July 17):  Two studies show that climate change is already making extreme weather events worse.

Update (May 30, 2019):  A preliminary count shows 500 tornado observations in the past 30 days.

Bill Bunting, the [U.S. Storm Prediction Center's] chief of forecast operations, told Bloomberg on Wednesday that only four other 30-day periods in the official record — in 2003, 2004, 2008 and 2011 — saw an excess of 500 tornado reports.