Scientists who study the link between extreme weather and climate change tend to look at individual events— the floods in Peru earlier this year, for example, or the Russian heat wave of 2010. But in a new study, a group of Stanford researchers led by Noah Diffenbaugh is looking at a series of extreme weather events around the world. “What we’ve tried to do in this study is say, let’s imagine we wanted to look at all the events, how would we go about doing that?” Diffenbaugh said.

The team developed a framework for analyzing extreme events. They examined the hottest day, hottest month, driest year and wettest five-day period in numerous places across the globe. They found that climate change is making record-breaking heat more likely across 80 percent of the globe. They found the same for record-breaking rainfall across 50 percent of the globe. Diffenbaugh said more and more places are feeling the effects of climate change.


Owen Agnew writes and produces videos for Nexus Media, a syndicated newswire covering climate, energy, policy, art and culture. You can follow him at @OwenAgnew.