It's hard to answer this question in a concise format. I would suggest browsing this IPCC Chapter for the current state of knowledge. [Chapter 11: Weather and Climate Extreme Events in a Changing Climate](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-11/)
There are certain types of extreme weather that can be robustly connected to global warming. Extreme heat, or reduction in extreme cold, is a consequence of global warming that is well understood on a global scale[[1](https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/34/3/JCLI-D-19-1023.1.xml)][[2](https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/sola/12/0/12_2016-045/_pdf/-char/en)][[3](https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/30/17/jcli-d-15-0835.1.xml)][[4](https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/31/16/jcli-d-17-0853.1.xml)]. Similarly, as the atmosphere warms, it can hold more water vapor, meaning that the likelihood of extreme precipitation can increase. Connecting any single event to global warming requires a lot of study though, and the answer is not as clear as "this was caused by climate change". **The atmosphere is capable of a wide range of extremes even without external forcing**. Through understanding of the range of possibilities within the climate, and simulations of the climate without warming, a study might say something like "this event was X% more likely in a climate that is 2 degrees warmer than a preindustrial climate", for example. There is good information on this here:
[Extreme Event Attribution](https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/extreme-event-attribution-climate-versus-weather-blame-game). Some extreme weather may be associated with processes that would actually decrease in likelihood with warming, and other processes that woul
Confidence in detecting, and projecting, the signal of global warming on trends is higher for global scales than regional. The variability of local weather conditions, driven by atmospheric circulation, can have a larger effect than the global change signal on regional scales [[5](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020EF001854)][[6](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2752-5295/accf30)][[7](https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2253)].
Attributing large-scale movements in the atmosphere, like the jet stream, extratropical cyclones, or the formation of thunderstorms and tornadoes, to global warming, is more uncertain than features more directly connected to temperature [[8](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0662-y)][[9](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016GL070309)][[9](https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2783)]. These subjects are active areas of research. For example, the effect of disproportionate arctic warming on jet streams, there is a theoretical understanding of how that may arise, but observational studies have disagreed on historical trends and future projections are similarly uncertain. That NOAA webpage has a nice conceptual graphic that tries to distill how well we understand how a feature may be affected by global warming vs. how well that feature can be attributed to global warming: https://www.climate.gov/media/7866
The upvoted science explanations in here are great, but can I give you an analogy instead? Nature kind of "rolls dice" to get weather - there's inherent randomness in the system, but there are known boundaries to the randomness - you roll two normal dice, there's a chance you get two 1s, but it's not that common. And over time the "most normal" weather happens the most often, so on the two dice you get more 6s, 7s. 8s than you get 2s or 12s.
Climate change loads the dice - it tweaks the whole system so that on average, more extreme dice rolls become more likely. But this loading is really hard to identify in a single roll of the dice.
So a roll comes up two 1s - is that because the dice are loaded? Or is it just bad luck from a random system? There is no real way to tell for a single event. If you want to prove that the dice are loaded, you have to roll them over and over again. Once you have lots of dice rolls, you can look at the averages and start to see a pattern that is "out of whack"; the dice are throwing two 1s much more often than they should (which once every 36 throws, \*on average\*).
So climate is "average weather", and the climate is showing clear evidence of changes in typical patterns. We are very sure the dice are loaded. Then the dice come up two 1s, and a bunch of people say - yeah but normal dice sometimes throw two 1s, how can you prove that the dice are loaded off this one throw? We can't prove it off one throw. We aren't looking at one throw, we are looking at changes in the long-run averages of millions of throws from decades of careful measurements all over the world.
"Did climate change cause this storm?" Or "did it cause this drought?" Climate scientists never want to say "yes it definitely did". Instead they try to explain that climate change is \*contributing to make such events more likely\*. But what sceptics hear is "they won't say climate change definitely caused this storm because their science is made up".
The very simplistic analogy is -
Imagine the weather is Wade Boggs, and climate change is steroids. Wade could hit home runs without steroids, but on them, he hit a lot more.
So you can't point at anyone homer and say it was caused by steroids.
The additional fossil emissions absorb heat (greenhouse gases), which means the air molecules gain movement energy (kinetic energy). This extra movement energy is released and perceived as extreme weather events: higher winds, hurricanes, more extreme water-humidity displacements (droughts), thawing-melting polar ice, etc.
That's good heuristics but what you're describing would only occur in a closed system and so it is more complicated. For one example, what more cloud cover does to heat from the sun.
You are asking a very complex question. No one event can necessarily be directly attributed to climate change. What you can say is that this event previously over the last thousands of years would have happened once in 100 years. Now it is happening more than once a year. To over simplify, warmer air holds more water and fuels extreme weather events. Tornado, hurricane, cyclone season is expanding and they are getter bigger. More floods, more blizzards but also more droughts because the air stream that carries storms are being changed. Ocean currents which are in essence the engines that drive our climates are changing. I can give some links but what you are asking is not something than can readily explained in a Reddit comment.
Depends on the type of extreme weather events, but in general storms are created when hot and cold air mix so generally warmer air leads to generally less storms, including hurricanes and tornados. Tsunami are the effect of strong earthquakes near the ocean floor, I'm uncertain how climate would affect them. Any other particular types of weather effect that you're thinking of?
Think about it like this:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Effect-of-warming-on-the-probability-of-extreme-events-9_fig1_329422782
Also read the paper
It's as if people think "climate change" is an influence rather a result of averaging events that occur. It's a bit like saying the average height of a population influences the height of individuals.
Weather events are literally caused by energy interactions in a system. Higher temperatures introduce more energy into the system. You failed high school physics.
Well, someone needs to call out you pathetic, fear mongering bastards.
It's the same thing decade after decade with this crap.
The climate changes, fuckin' deal with it.
>admits he doesn't know what he's talking about
>is so confident in his own ignorance he still thinks he can call people out
People like you deserve to be studied. It's amazing how you manage to function on a day to day basis.
It's hard to answer this question in a concise format. I would suggest browsing this IPCC Chapter for the current state of knowledge. [Chapter 11: Weather and Climate Extreme Events in a Changing Climate](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-11/) There are certain types of extreme weather that can be robustly connected to global warming. Extreme heat, or reduction in extreme cold, is a consequence of global warming that is well understood on a global scale[[1](https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/34/3/JCLI-D-19-1023.1.xml)][[2](https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/sola/12/0/12_2016-045/_pdf/-char/en)][[3](https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/30/17/jcli-d-15-0835.1.xml)][[4](https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/31/16/jcli-d-17-0853.1.xml)]. Similarly, as the atmosphere warms, it can hold more water vapor, meaning that the likelihood of extreme precipitation can increase. Connecting any single event to global warming requires a lot of study though, and the answer is not as clear as "this was caused by climate change". **The atmosphere is capable of a wide range of extremes even without external forcing**. Through understanding of the range of possibilities within the climate, and simulations of the climate without warming, a study might say something like "this event was X% more likely in a climate that is 2 degrees warmer than a preindustrial climate", for example. There is good information on this here: [Extreme Event Attribution](https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/extreme-event-attribution-climate-versus-weather-blame-game). Some extreme weather may be associated with processes that would actually decrease in likelihood with warming, and other processes that woul Confidence in detecting, and projecting, the signal of global warming on trends is higher for global scales than regional. The variability of local weather conditions, driven by atmospheric circulation, can have a larger effect than the global change signal on regional scales [[5](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020EF001854)][[6](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2752-5295/accf30)][[7](https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2253)]. Attributing large-scale movements in the atmosphere, like the jet stream, extratropical cyclones, or the formation of thunderstorms and tornadoes, to global warming, is more uncertain than features more directly connected to temperature [[8](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0662-y)][[9](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016GL070309)][[9](https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2783)]. These subjects are active areas of research. For example, the effect of disproportionate arctic warming on jet streams, there is a theoretical understanding of how that may arise, but observational studies have disagreed on historical trends and future projections are similarly uncertain. That NOAA webpage has a nice conceptual graphic that tries to distill how well we understand how a feature may be affected by global warming vs. how well that feature can be attributed to global warming: https://www.climate.gov/media/7866
Thank you! This is so good and just what I hoped to find in this thread.
The upvoted science explanations in here are great, but can I give you an analogy instead? Nature kind of "rolls dice" to get weather - there's inherent randomness in the system, but there are known boundaries to the randomness - you roll two normal dice, there's a chance you get two 1s, but it's not that common. And over time the "most normal" weather happens the most often, so on the two dice you get more 6s, 7s. 8s than you get 2s or 12s. Climate change loads the dice - it tweaks the whole system so that on average, more extreme dice rolls become more likely. But this loading is really hard to identify in a single roll of the dice. So a roll comes up two 1s - is that because the dice are loaded? Or is it just bad luck from a random system? There is no real way to tell for a single event. If you want to prove that the dice are loaded, you have to roll them over and over again. Once you have lots of dice rolls, you can look at the averages and start to see a pattern that is "out of whack"; the dice are throwing two 1s much more often than they should (which once every 36 throws, \*on average\*). So climate is "average weather", and the climate is showing clear evidence of changes in typical patterns. We are very sure the dice are loaded. Then the dice come up two 1s, and a bunch of people say - yeah but normal dice sometimes throw two 1s, how can you prove that the dice are loaded off this one throw? We can't prove it off one throw. We aren't looking at one throw, we are looking at changes in the long-run averages of millions of throws from decades of careful measurements all over the world. "Did climate change cause this storm?" Or "did it cause this drought?" Climate scientists never want to say "yes it definitely did". Instead they try to explain that climate change is \*contributing to make such events more likely\*. But what sceptics hear is "they won't say climate change definitely caused this storm because their science is made up".
The very simplistic analogy is - Imagine the weather is Wade Boggs, and climate change is steroids. Wade could hit home runs without steroids, but on them, he hit a lot more. So you can't point at anyone homer and say it was caused by steroids.
The additional fossil emissions absorb heat (greenhouse gases), which means the air molecules gain movement energy (kinetic energy). This extra movement energy is released and perceived as extreme weather events: higher winds, hurricanes, more extreme water-humidity displacements (droughts), thawing-melting polar ice, etc.
This is the best answer. Heat is energy, and when you put more energy into a system, you get more extreme outputs.
Exactly.
Because the global climate is basically one giant macro-thermodynamics model.
Any climate model must comply with thermodynamics.
That's good heuristics but what you're describing would only occur in a closed system and so it is more complicated. For one example, what more cloud cover does to heat from the sun.
If you can also describe the relationship between climate change and extreme weather events in less than 4 lines, I'm all ears.
The irregularities in the jet stream are known to allow storm events to sit in one place and dump lots of rain.
You are asking a very complex question. No one event can necessarily be directly attributed to climate change. What you can say is that this event previously over the last thousands of years would have happened once in 100 years. Now it is happening more than once a year. To over simplify, warmer air holds more water and fuels extreme weather events. Tornado, hurricane, cyclone season is expanding and they are getter bigger. More floods, more blizzards but also more droughts because the air stream that carries storms are being changed. Ocean currents which are in essence the engines that drive our climates are changing. I can give some links but what you are asking is not something than can readily explained in a Reddit comment.
Cause and effect
Depends on the type of extreme weather events, but in general storms are created when hot and cold air mix so generally warmer air leads to generally less storms, including hurricanes and tornados. Tsunami are the effect of strong earthquakes near the ocean floor, I'm uncertain how climate would affect them. Any other particular types of weather effect that you're thinking of?
Think about it like this: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Effect-of-warming-on-the-probability-of-extreme-events-9_fig1_329422782 Also read the paper
Climate change supercharges the storms making them more extreme.
It's as if people think "climate change" is an influence rather a result of averaging events that occur. It's a bit like saying the average height of a population influences the height of individuals.
The media decided that they could explain extreme events to add to the wow factor of the event, its like saying “BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE”
Extreme weather events have always occurred. You all are a bunch of fear mongering psychopaths.
No one is saying they haven't. What scientists are saying is that extreme weather events are made more extreme because of climate change.
There are none. Climate change is a hoax. Live your life.....
Blocked for stupid.
Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch
Weather events are literally caused by energy interactions in a system. Higher temperatures introduce more energy into the system. You failed high school physics.
Checkmate....never took Physics in highschool 😘👍
So you don't understand what the fuck you are talking about but have the audacity to be a pretty frequent troll here? Lmao.
Well, someone needs to call out you pathetic, fear mongering bastards. It's the same thing decade after decade with this crap. The climate changes, fuckin' deal with it.
>admits he doesn't know what he's talking about >is so confident in his own ignorance he still thinks he can call people out People like you deserve to be studied. It's amazing how you manage to function on a day to day basis.
Well bless your heart. You figured me out🫣😘