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August 6, 2012

Study: "No Explanation Other Than Climate Change" for Extreme Weather 
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A new study from one of the nation's leading climate scientists
concludes that the recent spate of extreme weather seen in the United
States and around the world cannot be attributed to anything but
human-caused global warming. The study concludes that the odds of
extreme temperature occurrences have grown from 1 in 300 through the
1980s to one-in-10 today. The study was led by James Hansen, the head of
NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Over the weekend, Hansen
discussed his findings with PBS News.

James Hansen: "What we show is that there is a connection to these
extreme weather events that we've been seeing. The probability of these
unusually hot spells, forest fires, and extreme droughts has increased
substantially over the last few decades."

More than 3,100 daily heat records were set in the United States last
month, a rate of more than 100 per day. In an article previewing his
study, Hansen writes: "It is no longer enough to say that global warming
will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat
that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate
change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot
weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than
climate change."

 

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