The other half — including a record wet British summer and the U.S. drought last year — simply reflected the random freakiness of weather, researchers with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British meteorological office concluded in a report issued Thursday.
The scientists conducted thousands of runs of different computer simulations that looked at various factors, such as moisture in the air, atmospheric flow, and sea temperature and level.
The approach represents an evolution in the field. Scientists used to say that individual weather events — a specific hurricane or flood, for example — cannot be attributed to climate change. But recently, researchers have used computer simulations to look at extreme events in a more nuanced way and measure the influence of climate change on their likelihood and magnitude.
This is the second year that NOAA and the British meteorology office have teamed up to look at the greenhouse gas connection to the previous year's unusual events.
"We've got some new evidence that human influence has changed the risk and has changed it enough that we can detect it," study lead author Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution for the British meteorological office, said at a news conference.
Georgia Institute of Technology professor Judith Curry, who often disagrees with mainstream scientists, said connecting shrinking sea ice to human activity was obvious, but as for Sandy and the rest: "I'm not buying it at all."
Thomas Karl, director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, said the study provides "compelling evidence that human-caused change was a factor contributing to the extreme events."
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/half-2012-wild-weather-linked-climate-change-20165235
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/half-2012-wild-weather-linked-climate-change-20165235
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