Scientists Weigh Climate Change Role in 2012 Weather
Scientists studied global warming's role in a dozen extreme weather events.
The scientists, who published their findings Thursday in the Bulletin of the American Meteorology Society, acknowledged that determining how much influence climate change has on particular extreme weather events is an evolving science, and that better tools are needed to measure that influence.
"(W)hile climate models may indicate a human effect is causing increases in the chances of having extremely high precipitation in a region (much like speeding increases the chances of having an accident), natural variability can still be the primary factor in any individual extreme event," the authors said.
Thursday's report was written by 18 teams comprising 78 meteorologists from around the world.
Here are four of the major events analyzed by the meteorologists:
That rise in sea level has been
