By Beth Mole
Scientists have long suspected that some surges in extreme weather — from devastating droughts to thrashing superstorms — are caused by global warming. And now scientists have numbers to support that idea.
About 75 percent of extreme heat spikes and 18 percent of extreme precipitation over land worldwide can be blamed on this largely human-driven climate change, researchers report April 27 in Nature Climate Change. And if the planet’s temperature rises 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial conditions, global warming will be responsible for nearly all heat extremes and about 40 percent of heavy precipitation over land, the authors report. The current era is experiencing warming of 0.85 degrees C above preindustrial levels.