Results of Climate Change

The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society has recently published analyses of 27 extreme weather events in 2016. The conclusion: human-caused climate change was a “significant driver” for 21 of them. 

The NY Times looked at five of these events in some detail:

1. Record temperatures around the world
2. Coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef
3. Drought in Africa
4. Wildfires in North America
5. The warm “blob” in the Pacific Ocean

The Times does acknowledge that climate change may not be the sole cause of these events. 

Temperature records are the simplest to link to climate change. But droughts — which are influenced by a complex interplay of temperature, precipitation and soil moisture — can be trickier to connect to warming trends. And hurricanes are more difficult still, because they occur so rarely.