Angry Weather

A pioneering scientist solves a pressing climate question: Can we pin the blame for individual extreme weather events on humans? Unbearable heat, widespread floods, category 4 hurricanes--weather disasters are becoming more frequent each year, but not everyone agrees on what causes them. Renowned University of Oxford researcher Friederike Otto provides an answer with attribution science, a revolutionary method for pinpointing the role of climate change in extreme weather events. Anchoring her book with the gripping, day-by-day story of Hurricane Harvey, which caused over 100 deaths and $125 billion in damage in 2017, Otto reveals how attribution science works in real time, and determines that Harvey's terrifying floods were three times more likely to occur due to human-induced climate change. At a time when our inability to determine climate change's role in weather events has impacted everything from how much aid a devastated region receives to the culpability of corporations and governments, Otto's research laid out in this groundbreaking book will have profound impacts, both today and for the future of humankind.