How Can We Know How Much Global Warming is Responsible for Extreme Weather? – #365papers – 2017 – 115

#365papers for April 25, 2017

Diffenbaugh, Singh, Mankin, Horton, Swain, Touma, Charland, Liu, Haugen, Tsiang, and Rajaratnam, 2017, Quantifying the influence of global warming on unprecedented extreme climate events: Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1618082114

What’s it about?

Global warming is an important issue in the modern world. Many people are attributing extreme weather events – hurricanes, droughts, flooding, etc. – to global climate change. This paper is an attempt to assess and quantify how much global warming was an influence for such events.

Why does it matter?

In order for us to better understand how global warming might affect our future, it’s important to know what recent events are the result of warming and which are not.

Why did I read this?

I thought this paper sounded interesting. Alas, I got lost in the statistics early on and didn’t get as much out of it as I might have hoped.