In her book "Angry Weather: Heat Waves, Floods, Storms, and the New Science of Climate Change," published last year, Otto said it had always been her intention to put climate science “on the offensive.” Rethinking extreme climate science It turns out that many climate scientists are quiet during these discussions. Weather is complicated. Most climate scientists observe long term trends and the impacts these have as inputs to weather systems. But they are reluctant to opine on individual events. In the last decade, a new area of climate science has developed called attribution science that is used to determine to what extent anthropogenic climate change has contributed to the magnitude or probability of an individual event. Friederike Otto is one of the scientists on the forefront of this emerging field and this book serves as a description of this field and its uses for the lay reader interested in climate research. (For those wanting a more technical version of this material, this article , co-authored by this author, goes deeper into their research methodologies and studies of climate events.)

Cullen asked them if they could turbocharge their studies. The problem, as Cullen saw it, was that peer-reviewed, comprehensive research arrived months or years after a storm. Her main research interest is on extreme weather events such as droughts, heat waves and storms, and understanding whether and to what extent these are made more likely or intense due to climate change - known by experts as 'climate change attribution'. Dr. Otto was part of an international team of researchers organized by the World Weather Attribution initiative who conducted a rapid analysis of the event. They found that human-induced global warming made the heat wave 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit hotter and at least 150 times as likely to occur. The report garnered headlines in part because it was released just nine days after the heat wave occurred, so it was still news. No scientist would have been secure in making such a rapid and decisive statement until a few years ago. Normally, it would take months or years to research, peer review and publish findings. Instead, WWA runs hundreds of computer simulations to compare the probability of an event occurring in the world as it exists and one in which there are no greenhouse gases added by humans. That has brought a new speed and certainty to the slow-moving and tentative world of climate science.

In the "local" tab, you can choose for your phone to have access to your location. This will put you to the nearest weather observation station anywhere in the United States; giving you the current temperature, wind, dew point, humidity, and current conditions. You also have access to a more generalized and automated 5 day forecast, making things convenient when traveling, relocating, or if you live outside of the NYC Metro Area. Fredi is the co-lead of World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international effort to analyse and communicate the possible influence of climate change on extreme weather events. Through rapid attribution studies, which provide timely scientific evidence showing the extent to which climate change influenced a given event, WWA has helped to change the global conversation around climate change, influencing adaptation strategies and paving the way for new sustainability litigation.

Image: This aerial photo shows the Breezy Point neighbourhood, in New York, where more than 50 homes were destroyed North America was still trapped in the heat wave when Otto and her team declared on July 7 that the extremes of temperatures reaching almost 50 degrees Celsius, or 122 degrees Fahrenheit, would have been “virtually impossible” without the extra greenhouse gases humans have loaded into the atmosphere.How can science tease out the exact contribution of human-caused climate change to a given event without a separate, otherwise identical but human-free earth to compare it to? The first step is to characterize the event using observations: how long and hot the heat wave was or how much rain fell during the storm or how strong the hurricane was. One of the pioneers of attribution science is Friederike Otto. She describes the method in her book Angry Weather: Heat waves, floods, storms, and the new science of climate change (Photo by Felix Mittermeier, CC BY-SA 4.0). The Angry Weatherman is a convenient application to obtain accurate local weather. It is essentially 2 applications in 1, with a NYC-centric, handmade forecast, and briefing by Ben Scott of Meteorologist Joe CIoffi's NYCWeatherNOW.com, and Angry Ben's Angry Weather on Facebook. In addition to the NYC area forecast, there is also access to national radar, satellite, and most weather stations/forecasts throughout the United States. The Angry Weatherman is the only weather app you need when planning your week in the New York City area, taking into consideration the nuances of New York City's micro-climate, something the majority of other apps do not do. With access to other weather stations across the Nation, it can also double as your go to source when traveling to another location, or if you live in other parts of the Country aside from New York City. While scientists often point to climate change increasing the conditions or likelihood of extreme weather events, it is notoriously difficult to attribute individual events to human influences events.