Mixing weather and climate

It’s getting harder and harder to know when it’s OK to mix climate and weather together.

We are routinely admonished that citing weather as an example of climate is a “no no,” but over time it is. How much time? That’s tough to say, apparently.

How about 10 years? Two scientists says extreme weather events — this year’s warmth, tornadoes, and hurricane — are likely linked to a warming planet, Dim Coumou and Stefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany write.

“It is very likely that several of the unprecedented extremes of the past decade would not have occurred without anthropocentric global warming,” they write in a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, as reported via LiveScience.com.