Extreme weather and climate events have significant impacts and are among the most serious challenges to society in
coping with a changing climate. According to the latest IPCC report,
"confidence has increased that some extremes will become more frequent, more widespread and/or more intense
during the 21st century".
The menu below allows you to select descriptions of some of the recent extreme events. Each event is placed in the context of climate change. Note that single extreme events cannot be simply and directly attributed to anthropogenic climate change, as there is always a finite chance that the event in question might have occurred naturally. However, the odds may have shifted to make some of them more likely than in an unchanging climate (IPCC, 2007).
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