How science links global warming to extreme weather

Heatwaves are the weather phenomena most directly related to human greenhouse gas pollution. And heat, along with drought and wind, is responsible for wildfires, which is why scientists have become convinced that climate change is driving the wildfires in the western United States, Australia and elsewhere got much worse. (The U.S. fire season is two months longer than it was in the 1970s and 1980s.) The link between global warming and hurricanes, in both frequency and severity, is more difficult to determine, because complex meteorological properties and the rate at which they form and dissipate. But warmer water and wetter air – two results of global warming – provide more fuel for tropical cyclones and other storms, which are expected to become more intense as the world approaches. This century has passed.