It seems that the past few years have seen quite a few more extreme weather events than most of us bargained for. Who can forget Hurricane Katrina, or the recent tsunami in Japan? And how about that Indian summer we just experienced here in the UK? It is possible that unusual temperature fluctuations and the occasional extreme weather event are natural occurrences stemming from normal changes in our Earth's oceans and atmospheres. Other evidence points to a more worrisome conclusion: that climate change is affecting and perhaps even causing some of these weather events. This brings forth many new questions: How do we define 'extreme' as it pertains to weather? Can global warming really be blamed, and to what extent? Have weather events actually become more extreme, or is the recent global discourse on climate change causing us to attach too much meaning to them? Is this the new normal?
There are some interesting papers recently published on this topic - evidence that extreme events are caused by global warming are rather rare.
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