For years, climate scientists have been wary of attributing extreme weather directly to man-made atmospheric warming, but that's changing in the face of historic heat waves and cascading natural disasters. In recent weeks alone, a "derecho," a complex of unusually powerful, hurricane-like storms, tore through the Midwest, destroying homes and crops across a 745-mile path; Hurricane Laura crashed into the Gulf Coast with sustained 150-mph winds; and hundreds of California wildfires incinerated an area the size of Rhode Island in just a week. The Southwest suffered a punishing heat wave with a high of 130 in Death Valley, perhaps the hottest day in world history. It followed highs of 125 in Iraq and a record 100-degree day in the Siberian town of Verkhoyansk, a once-in-100,000-years event. These freak patterns, researchers say, are almost certainly the result of mankind pumping 2.6 million pounds of CO2into the atmosphere per second. "We've gotten to the point where, when it comes to extreme heat waves, there is almost always a human fingerprint," said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain.
Climate change has arrived
