Although we can predict the course of broad trends, like “there will be more hot days” and “sea levels will go up,” we can’t with certainty blame climate change for any particular event. For example, when there’s a heat wave, we can’t say whether it was caused by climate change alone. What we can do, though, is say how much climate change increased the odds of that heat wave happening. For hurricanes, it’s unclear whether warmer oceans are causing a rise in the number of storms, but there is growing evidence that climate change is making storms wetter and increasing the number of intense ones.
