Several scientists at NASA and the state climatologist say the record-setting heat and drought of last summer in Texas was made worse by climate change.More than just providing bragging rights that Texas now holds the record for hottest summer ever recorded in the United States, that conclusion adds another layer of uncertainty for water planners.
James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University's Earth Institute titled his still unpublished climate analysis, “Perceptions of Climate Change: The New Climate Dice.”
“We conclude that extreme heat waves, such as that in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010, were ‘caused' by global warming, because their likelihood was negligible prior to the recent rapid global warming,” he wrote in the paper that is still undergoing peer review. “We can say with a high degree of confidence that these extreme anomalies were a consequence of global warming.” Read More
