Published: Sep 30, 2014, 9:40 AM EDT: By Eric Zerkel
Scientists announced Monday that human-caused climate change contributed to and/or amplified nine of 2013's most extreme weather events, making one of the most definitive statements yet on the direct link between individual weather extremes and human-induced climate change.
In a new report released in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) and organized by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 20 different groups of scientists studied how 16 extreme weather events came to fruition in 2013. In their analyses, the different groups conducted independent peer-reviewed scientific studies on the same events with the hope of sorting out human influences from natural variation in climate and weather.
The report found strong evidence that human-caused climate change -- particularly the burning of fossil fuels -- amplified temperature related events, including five heat waves across the globe. Less compelling evidence linked humans to the drought in California. On the other hand, the report found no link between humans and Winter Storm Atlas, which dumped up to 55 inches of snow on South Dakota last October, heavy rain in Colorado that flooded more than a dozen cities in and around the Denver metro area and heavy rain and flooding events in Europe.
The scientists hope that the report will help bridge the gap between the public, which sometimes incorrectly correlates weather events with climate change, and the science community, which looks to provide a scientific foundation to the link between the two.
http://www.weather.com/news/science/report-human-caused-climate-change-2013-weather-extremes-20140929
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