Global Warming May Have Fueled March Heat Wave Odds According to
several top scientists, the March heat wave that has shattered
records across a wide swath of the U.S. bears some of the
hallmarks of global warming. In email conversations on Wednesday
and Thursday, those same scientific researchers who specialize
in studying the role climate change plays in influencing
individual extreme events — a burgeoning field known as "extreme
event attribution” — said global warming may have made March's
soaring temperatures more likely to occur, although they add
that natural variability has played a key role as well. Since
March 12, more than 7,000 warm temperature records (warm daily
highs and warm overnight lows) have been set or tied, including
numerous all-time monthly high temperature records. Although
studies have not yet been conducted on the main factors that
triggered this heat wave and whether global warming may have
tilted the odds in favor of the event, scientific studies of
previous heat events clearly sh