Extreme weather linked to global warming

Financial Times : Global warming “significantly” increased the odds of some of last year’s most unusual weather, according to a report in the latest Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. However, not all weather disasters are caused by human-induced climate change. Researchers based their results on the study of six events: droughts in Texas and east Africa, Thailand’s floods, higher European temperatures, and the UK’s warm November and frigid 2010â11 winter. Using climate attribution science , they sought to “distinguish the effects of anthropogenic climate change or some other external factor ⦠from natural variability.” The goal of this and future studies is to improve climate models and to better predict the odds of future extreme weather events. The findings are significant because they were published within months of extreme weather—something that can sometimes take a decade for scientists to conclusively prove otherwise, said UK Met Office’s Peter Stott, one of the coeditors of the report, at a press conference held in London.