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Climate change is making droughts more likely to occur - and more severe when they do.
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Climate change is increasing the size, frequency, and intensity of wildfires.
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Climate Signals curates attribution science and provides resources in real time explaining how climate change worsens extreme weather and other impacts.
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Climate change is increasing the risk of flooding due to a variety of reasons including rising sea levels and increasing extreme precipitation events.
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Climate change makes heat waves hotter, longer, and more common.
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Rising air and ocean temperatures due to climate change are increasing hurricane precipitation, intensity, and the risk of coastal flooding.
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What is climate attribution?
Climate change attribution tells us how much of the credit or risk for a trend or event should go to human-caused climate change.
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Report: Fingerprints Everywhere 2018
Studies since the 1990s show human-caused climate change directly influenced many recent trends and events.
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An updating database of studies that find the fingerprint of human-caused climate change on observed trends and events.
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Climate Change Impacts Explained in Real Time
Top Ten Climate Change Signals in 2017
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Top Ten Climate Change Signals in 2017: USA
From floods and hurricanes to droughts and wildfires, climate change set the stage for numerous natural disasters across the U.S. in 2017. In this inaugural list, we rank ten of the year’s most noteworthy events by their “climate buzz,” as measured by the volume of climate change-related discussion they generated on Twitter and in the news. We identify the trends and physical processes behind each event fueled by climate change. For more details on these events, follow the links or visit Climate Signals, a digital platform that identifies the long-term climate change trends behind extreme events as they unfold in real time. The platform hosts a database of climate change impacts organized as trends (the “signals”) and individual events. Scroll down and hover over each image to find out which event’s climate connections sparked the most conversation in the news and Twitterverse. *For this exercise, we utilized social media analytics platform Crimson Hexagon’s buzz monitor tool, w
#10 Summer in Winter
In a stable climate, the ratio of days that are record hot to days that are record cold is approximately even. However, in our warming climate, record highs have begun to outpace record lows, with the imbalance growing for the past three decades.
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#9 Pre-Monsoon Extreme Heat
During the pre-monsoon season, the southwestern U.S. experienced record-breaking heat, a classic signal of climate change. June temperatures soared 15 to 30°F above normal from California’s Central Valley, to Las Vegas, and down to Phoenix. More than 40 flights out of Phoenix were delayed or canceled when temperatures exceeded the maximum operating temperatures of the planes.
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#8 Plains on Fire
Extreme fire conditions in early March fueled major blazes in Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Texas. These fires are consistent with the long-term increasing wildfire activity observed in the western U.S. grasslands, activity driven by climate change trends in the Great Plains region.
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#7 California Bakes and Burns
After a record warm June through August, California experienced “the greatest statewide heat wave ever recorded” from late August through early September. A few weeks after the record September heat wave, major fires in California wine country exploded in October 2017. Higher temperatures and extreme variability between wet and dry seasons has elevated wildfire risk.
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#6 High Plains Flash Drought
In early May, the U.S. Drought Monitor classified neither the Dakotas or Montana as being in a drought. By July, and with the arrival of a major, slow-moving heat dome, flash drought gripped all three states. Climate change amplifies the intensity, duration and frequency of extreme heat events that can exacerbate drought conditions.
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#5 Spring Snow/Rainfall and Floods
Winter Storm Stella brought snowfall totals of up to 42 inches and snowfall rates up to an “incredible” 7 inches per hour to the U.S. Northeast in mid-March. Beginning in late-April, heavy rainfall of up to 15 inches over a multi-state region in the Midwest caused historic levels of flooding along many rivers. Increasing extreme precipitation is firmly attributed to climate change.
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#4 California Deluge
The wet winter season of 2017 was noteworthy for the large number of extreme atmospheric rivers that produced record rainfall and flooding in the state. The recently released U.S. National Climate Assessment notes that the severity of landfalling atmospheric river storms on the U.S. West Coast increases with increasing temperatures.
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#3 Hurricane Maria
The Category 4 winds that leveled Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria reflect the ongoing trend in the intensification of hurricanes driven, at least in part, if not largely, by global warming. Warming seas are increasing the potential energy available to passing storms, effectively increasing the power ceiling or speed limit for these cyclones.
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#2 Hurricane Harvey
The historic floods driven by Hurricane Harvey were fueled by record-breaking rainfall. A warmer atmosphere is now holding and dumping more water when it rains and warming seas are evaporating more readily, offering up more moisture to passing storms. As Harvey approached the coast of Texas, temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were up to 7°F warmer than the average over 1961-1990.
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#1 Hurricane Irma
Hurricane Irma drove record-breaking “compound” coastal flooding in Jacksonville and Savannah. In these events, rainfall runoff met storm surge that rode in on waters elevated by sea level rise over the last 100 years, creating devastating flooding. Sea level rise is now dramatically amplifying the damage done when tropical cyclones make landfall along low-lying coastlines.
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