Is climate change influencing extreme weather? New research provides a way to find out

Ask any climate scientist what question they get most from the public and they'll tell you it's about whether climate change influenced an extreme weather event.

In Houston, we have a plethora of those to pick from – the Tax Day flood and the Memorial Day floods among them.

Last Sunday, the Houston Chronicle examined the connection between climate change and extreme weather events and local officials' pursuit for more clarity on the question.

On Monday, the Proceedings of the National Academics of Science published new research from a group of current and former Stanford researchers laying out a new framework for testing whether climate change is contributing to record-setting weather events. You can read that study here.

The team analyzed record-breaking rainfall and heat waves around the globe and found that climate change is having a significant effect.

It started with the assumption that global warming was having no effect, and essentially worked backward to unravel that assumption.

"Our approach is very conservative," said Noah Diffenbaugh, a professor of Earth system science at Stanford. "It's like the presumption of innocence in our legal system: The default is that the weather event was just bad luck, and a really high burden of proof is required to assign blame to global warming."

The research shows the science is pretty clear when it comes to extreme heat. Global warming has increased the odds of the hottest events across 80 percent of the globe where data is available.

Photo: Brett Coomer, Houston Chronicle The Wimbledon Champions Park subdivision is inundated by...

Precipitation is trickier, but there are clear signals about climate change in the tropics, according to the study.

The Stanford team's work is part of a quickly expanding field of science known as "extreme event attribution," which combines statistical analyses of climate observations with computer models to study climate change's influence on specific events.

Recently, the Chronicle talked to Heidi Cullen, the senior scientist at Climate Central, about work she and a team of scientists did to analyze climate change's impact on the Louisiana floods last year.

Photo: Brett Coomer, Houston Chronicle Cattle are herded to higher ground near Bear Creek Park inundated...

The team, which included scientists from the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, found that climate change made the event about 40 percent more likely than it was at the turn of the century.