Devastating weather can be expected in the years to come

Stanford, California

FOR the United States, 2017 was a year of devastating weather, including historic hurricanes and wildfires. Did climate change play a role? Increasingly, scientists are able to answer that question - and increasingly, the answer is "yes".

My lab recently published a new framework for examining connections between global warming and extreme events. Other scientists are doing similar research. How would we go about testing whether global warming has influenced the events that occurred last year?

Consider Hurricane Harvey, which caused enormous destruction along the Gulf Coast. It will …