New Research Strengthens the Link Between Warming and Extreme Weather By Felicity Bradstock - Oct 03, 2026, 12:00 PM CDT
- Carbon Brief’s database of more than 900 attribution studies covering almost 1,000 events and trends finds that 77% were made more likely or more severe by climate change, while 85% showed some human climate influence.
- NASA satellite observations indicate that major droughts and extreme wet periods have become more frequent and intense, with their combined intensity closely associated with global warming.
- A 2026 World Weather Attribution assessment found that warming and permafrost degradation likely contributed to instability behind the catastrophic Himalayan rock-ice avalanche and resulting floods.
There is an increasing body of evidence connecting climate change and severe weather events. In 2004, a group of researchers published one of the first studies linking human-caused climate change to a specific extreme weather event – the 2003 European summer heatwave, which killed over 70,000 people across Europe. The scientists determined that human involvement had at least doubled the risk of such an extreme heatwave, prompting other researchers to investigate the links between human-driven climate change and severe weather.
The UK-based organisation Carbon Brief, which specialises in the science and policy of climate change, has mapped every published study on how climate change has influenced extreme weather – totalling over 900 studies and covering almost 1,000 extreme weather events and trends – to make the growing body of knowledge easier to access.
Across all these cases, 77 per cent were made more likely or severe because of climate change, according to Carbon Brief. Several studies also showed that an extreme weather event was nearly impossible without human influence on global temperatures. Meanwhile,
Around 8 per cent of the mapped events and trends were made less likely or less severe by climate change. Therefore, overall, 85 per cent were likely influenced by human-caused climate change.
In 2025, NASA released new data revealing the dramatic increase in the intensity of weather events such as droughts and floods over the previous five years. The NASA study suggested that severe weather events were becoming more frequent, longer-lasting, and more intense, with figures from 2024 reaching twice the 2003 to 2020 average. The events were tracked by NASA's GRACE satellite.
The organisation cited climate change as the most likely cause of the more extreme events, even though the intensity of these events seems to have risen faster than global temperatures. It is worth noting that the researchers said they would need another decade or more to confirm the findings and decide whether to call it a trend conclusively.
Bailing Li, from the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, a co-researcher on the study, stated, “We can’t prove causation yet – we would need a much longer dataset. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what’s happening here, but other events suggest that (global) warming is the driving factor. We are seeing more and more extreme events around the world, so this is certainly alarming.”
Over the past century, as human-produced greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere, global temperatures have risen substantially. In 2025, the average global surface temperature was around 1.44 degrees Celsius above the 1850–1900 preindustrial average. Researchers have linked this warming to increases in the frequency and severity of many types of extreme weather events
Most recently, scientists have linked industrial emissions to the warming of the snow-capped Himalayan region, where a rock collapse caused devastating floods in Nepal and Tibet in August. The September report was prepared by two dozen researchers from around the globe and published by World Weather Attribution. It demonstrates how rising temperatures most likely contributed to the disaster, as warmer temperatures destabilised the ice and permafrost that underlay the mountain slopes.
The researchers acknowledged that climate change was not the only factor that caused the floods. They suggest that the 2015 Nepal earthquake may also have played a role in destabilising the slope. However, they suggest that human-caused warming had a “very strong linkage” to the disaster.
Although the report has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, the new evidence could be used to support Nepal’s request for financial assistance from the United Nations’ climate aid fund. Over 1,300 people were killed in the disaster, with thousands more still missing. Nepal expects recovery and rebuilding efforts to cost around $5 billion.
The researchers involved in the study found that in the days leading up to the disaster, temperatures were higher than usual around the northern face of Langtang Lirung, the mountain where the rockslide occurred, at around 12 degrees Celsius. They also saw that July and August in the area were unusually warm overall, reflecting high global temperatures, which set a tied record for Earth's hottest month.
Scientists have discovered in recent years that global warming, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, has significantly increased mercury levels at high elevations in this part of the Himalayas compared with preindustrial levels. This has gradually left permafrost within the rocky slopes more exposed to above-freezing conditions more frequently.
Permafrost, a mix of soil and sediment held together by ice, acts as a seal that prevents water from permeating the cracks in the bedrock. Therefore, when permafrost thaws, more water can seep in. When this water refreezes, it can widen the cracks, thereby weakening the surrounding rock, according to Walter Immerzeel, a mountain hydrologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands who contributed to the new report.
A wide array of scientific studies from the past two decades link human-driven climate change to extreme weather events. While climate change may not be the sole cause of severe weather, research suggests that global warming may be exacerbating these events and making them occur more frequently.
By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com
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