Recently the United Nation?s World Meteorlogical Organization put out the following statement about extreme weather events that have occurred this summer:

Several regions of the world are currently coping with severe weather-related events: flash floods and widespread flooding in large parts of Asia and parts of Central Europe while other regions are also affected: by heatwave and drought in Russian Federation, mudslides in China and severe droughts in sub-Saharan Africa. While a longer time range is required to establish whether an individual event is attributable to climate change, the sequence of current events matches IPCC projections of more frequent and more intense extreme weather events due to global warming. The Monsoon activity in Pakistan and other countries in South-East Asia is aggravated by the la Ni?a phenomenon, now well established in the Pacific Ocean.

This claim has been challenged by several different experts. Here is a response by Professor Roger Pielke Jr. from the University of Colorado. Pielke essentially claims the IPCC makes no such projections. The comments below Pielke’s blog post are also worth reading.

Also, over at the blog Meteorlogial Musings there is a very good graph showing the relationship between extreme weather events and global temperatures. What the author shows is that such events are just as likely to occur when such temperatures are relatively cool as when they are warm. Another point to note in this blog is that in that while the northern hemisphere is experiencing a warmer than normal summer the southern hemisphere is experiencing a brutally cold winter.