When are extreme events part of natural climate variability and when are they due to climate change? It’s important to ask—no matter where you stand on the role of humanity’s impact on the environment.

A group of international scientists decided to address this question, focusing on a dozen or so extreme events from 2012. Their results were published last week in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. (The findings are also available in a downloadable report.)

And the results, were, well, variable.

The researchers did not look at Hurricane Sandy, but they did examine the flooding and the inundation it caused. Because of sea-level rise (a direct result of climate change), the researchers determined that the superstorm did far greater damage than it would have with oceans at normal levels.

The team also determined that heavy rains in the United Kingdom, Japan, and China were not due to global warming, and Australia’s above-average rainfall was due to a La Niña event (or short-term climate variability).

However, a deluge in New Zealand was due to climate change. From Wired:

Total moisture available for this extreme event was 1% to 5% higher as a result of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

And Arctic sea ice melt? The cap of sea ice covering the North Pole shrunk to its smallest extent last summer. The cause? Climate change.

What about last year’s devastating drought in the Midwest? Scientists judged that climate variability was to blame—not global warming.

However, Stanford researchers did find that the extreme heat that came with last summer’s drought could be attributed to climate change. They also found strong evidence that the high levels of greenhouse gases now in the atmosphere have increased the likelihood of severe heat.

In addition, their findings indicate that extreme weather in the north-central and northeastern United States is more than four times as likely to occur than it was in the pre-industrial era.

The Palo Alto scientists hope the results from these studies can help to quantify the true cost of emissions to society, since the cost of the disaster is measurable.

“Knowing how much our emissions have changed the likelihood of this kind of severe heat event can help us to minimize the impacts of the next heat wave, and to determine the value of avoiding further changes in climate,” says lead author Noah Diffenbaugh, a Stanford associate professor of environmental Earth system science.

Image: Theresa L Wysocki/Flickr

El Niño and La Niña both depend on ocean temperatures in the Pacific. The equatorial Pacific, specifically. If the temperatures are warmer than normal (based on averages from 1971-2000), that predicts a wet and warm El Niño pattern. If the temps are cooler, that means a colder, dryer La Niña is on its way.

And how is ocean temperature measured? By a satellite, of course. NASA’s Jason-2 satellite, where this image comes from, doesn’t measure temperature exactly, but measures sea surface height. Sea surface height is affected by both gravity and ocean circulation. Because gravity changes very little, the fluctuations in sea surface height are caused primarily by ocean circulation. The changing of the seasons, wind, warming and cooling all affect the circulation and therefore affect the height. According to NASA/JPL, “Using theory of ocean dynamics… sea-surface heights can be used to calculate how much heat is stored in the ocean below.”

Back to the image! The dark blue area in the center depicts the recent appearance of cold water hugging the equator, which the satellite measures as a region of lower-than-normal surface sea height. Voila La Niña.

“The next few months will reveal if the current cooling trend will eventually evolve into a long-lasting La Niña situation,” according to JPL oceanographer and climatologist Bill Patzert, PhD.

And that could be bad news for drought conditions in California and elsewhere. “For the American Southwest, La Niñas usually bring a dry winter, not good news for a region that has experienced normal rain and snowpack only once in the past five winters,” said Patzert.