Climate change directly responsible for some extreme weather events, study finds

NEW YORK — Many of the world's most extreme weather events in 2017 were made more likely and, in some cases, even caused by human activity and greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report published Monday.

Hurricane Harvey that pummeled southeast Texas, severe drought in the Northern Great Plains of the U.S., catastrophic flooding in Bangladesh, the "Lucifer" heat wave across southern Europe and the Mediterranean and massive wildfires in Australia were among the extreme weather events examined in new research published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS).

At least one of those extreme weather events — intense marine heatwaves in the Tasman Sea off Australia in 2017 and 2018 — would have been "virtually impossible" absent human-caused climate change, scientists said.

"Ninety-three percent of the excess [heat] from human-caused climate change is being stored in the ocean," said CBS News contributing meteorologist Jeff Berardelli. "That ocean heat is coming back to haunt us by compromising ocean life, like killing coral reefs, disrupting ocean life support systems and exacerbating extreme weather patterns on land."