Does Climate Change Cause Extreme Weather Now? Here’s a Scorcher of a Reality Check | RealClearInvestigations

Inconveniently for World Weather Attribution, an atmospheric scientist with extensive knowledge of the Pacific Northwest climate was actively running weather models that accurately predicted the heatwave. Cliff Mass rejected the notion that global warming was to blame for the scorching temperatures. He calculated that global warming might have been responsible for two degrees of the near 40-degree anomaly. With or without climate change, Mass wrote, the region still would have experienced the most severe heat wave of the past century.

Mass has no shortage of credentials relevant to the issue: A professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, he is author of the book The Weather of the Pacific Northwest.

Mass took on the World Weather Attribution group directly: Unfortunately, there are serious flaws in their approach. According to Mass, the heatwave was the result of natural variability. The models being used by the international group lacked the resolution to correctly simulate critical intense, local precipitation features, and they generally use unrealistic greenhouse gas emissions.

via www.realclearinvestigations.com

I wondered about the confident assertions that it was climate change causing our recent heat waves. But it was too hot to think clearly.