Last Year's Wild Weather Tied to Climate Change. Well, Duh!

Another day, another study.  A Stanford University study has found that last year's wild weather, including the heat wave and drought that swept most of the U.S., is now more likely to recur due to global warming, or climate change, or that hoax by all those scientist guys, whatever.

Brace yourself for more hot summers ahead. Extreme weather researchers report on Thursday that climate change makes the searing summer that the struck the United States last year much more likely.

In fact, July 2012-like heat is now four times as likely to strike the Midwest and Northeast as it was in pre-industrial America when less carbon dioxide warmed the atmosphere, according to a Stanford University study. Last year's heat wave, which peaked in July — the warmest month on record for the contiguous USA — exacerbated the nation's drought, ruined crops and contributed to more than 100 deaths.

"The models are improving," agrees Thomas Knutson of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., adding they're now able to simulate year-to-year climate patterns such as El Niño and La Niña and thus tease out the role of long-term global warming. The studies, edited by NOAA climate scientists, appear as a special supplement in today's Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

Knutson co-authored a study, based on historical data and 23 models, that estimates human-caused climate change contributed 35% to the extreme warmth that swept over the eastern USA from March through May last year. He says the risk of such an event occurring again is at least 10 times more likely.

Another study, led by NOAA's William Sweet, finds that coastal communities will see "increased frequency" of flooding akin to that in New Jersey and New York after 2012's Superstorm Sandy because of climate-induced sea level rise. "Events of less and less severity (from less powerful storms) will produce similar impacts," the study concludes.