For Severe Weather, ‘Is This Climate Change?’ Is the Wrong Question

Here’s a better of thinking about the link between weather and climate change.

Journalists are prone to asking, “Is this climate change?” any time a hurricane makes landfall, much to the frustration of scientists.

Jason Smerdon, a climate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, says the question is “a straw man.” “In any individual event, it’s likely that climate change is acting in the background in one manner or another,” he said. “I think the most egregious thing that the scientific community tends to push back on is the idea of whether or not this event wouldn’t have happened at all without climate change.”

Instead of asking, “Is this storm due to climate change?” reporters should ask, “How much more likely has climate change made this storm?” or “How much of this storm is climate change?”

Read the rest at Live Science.