How Will Extreme Weather Events Change due to Climate Change?

Headlines from newspapers and websites scream out the soundbite that anthropogenic climate change is causing more extreme weather. 

• “Climate change means more extreme weather – here’s what the UK can expect if emissions keep increasing.”
• “Why extreme weather is the new normal.”
• “Man-made climate change had role in some of 2015’s extreme weather.”

For better or worse, the potential and deadly serious effects of anthropogenic climate change are often communicated through this soundbite. This soundbite has become popular with scientists and the media, but neglects important caveats.  What do we mean by “extreme weather”?  Where does this extreme weather occur on Earth?  Will all types of extreme weather be affected equally?  Have we already witnessed changes in extreme weather?  Is anthropogenic climate change responsible? How will these changes affect society?  Thus, the seemingly simple question of how does climate change affect extreme weather becomes much more complicated upon further reflection.

No doubt these questions may be obscured or even unasked in the modern media landscape, but that does not mean that they aren’t important questions to ask.  In this talk, I will present the science behind how different extreme weather events may – or may not – change in the future as the global climate warms.  Specifically, I will present results from studies on tropical cyclones and tornadoes, and I will consider the factors that have affected, and will affect, their changes in intensity, frequency, and spatial distribution on Earth.  I will also discuss the relatively recent approach called climate-change attribution where the role of anthropogenic climate change in individual extreme weather events can be quantitatively addressed.  By the end of this talk, I hope to give the audience the tools to evaluate with a critical eye media stories about climate change and extreme weather.