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Longer fire seasons.
火灾季节持续时间更久。
Stronger hurricanes.
飓风更强。
More intense heatwaves and floods.
热浪和洪水更凶猛。
Across the world, climate events are getting more extreme.
全球范围内的气候事件变得越来越极端了。
And while there's little doubt that global warming is to blame,
毫无疑问，全球变暖是罪魁祸首，
proving that fault for specific weather events hasn't really been possible ... until now.
证明特定天气事件的错误是不可能的……直到现在也是不可能的。
An emerging field called extreme-event attribution is helping us measure and verify the relationship between the climate crisis and extreme weather.
一个被称为极端事件归因的新兴领域正在帮助我们检测和验证气候危机和极端天气之间的关系。
Not only does this have huge implications for predicting and modeling our planet's future,
这不仅对预测和模拟我们星球的未来有巨大的影响，
but it could also help us better prepare for living in an increasingly extreme world.
它还可以帮助我们更好地为生活在一个日益极端的世界做好准备。
For a long time, there was a distinction between climate and weather.
长期以来，气候和天气都是有区别的。
And the reality is, extreme events are where we most acutely feel the climate system.
而事实是，极端事件是我们对于气候系统最敏锐的感受。
It's critical that we understand how global warming is impacting the extremes.
我们必须了解全球变暖是如何影响极端气候的。
Because that's where the impacts from climate change are being played out.
因为气候变化的影响就在那里。
When we talk about the impacts of the climate crisis,
当我们谈论气候危机的影响时，
we're really talking about distinguishing the influence of natural factors from anthropogenic factors on Earth's climate cycle.
我们实际上是在讨论区分自然因素和人为因素对地球气候循环的影响。
Basically, this means teasing apart Earth's natural climate cycles from human-caused climate change.
基本上，这意味着把地球的自然气候循环与人类引起的气候变化区分开来。
A way to begin doing this is to examine the "fingerprints" we humans have left behind on Earth's climate.
一个开始这样做的方法是检查我们人类在地球气候上留下的“指纹”。
For example, our ice core records tell us that CO2 levels have risen by almost 50% in the last 150 years,
例如，我们的冰芯记录告诉我们，在过去的150年里，二氧化碳的含量上升了将近50%，
and records show that since the industrial age began over a century ago, many regions of the world have warmed by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
有记录显示，自从100多年前工业时代开始以来，世界上许多地区的气温已经上升了1.5摄氏度以上。
By matching both the observed and modeled patterns of Earth's climate,
通过匹配观测到的和模拟的地球气候模式，
scientists can positively identify the "fingerprints" associated with these changes.
科学家们可以确定与这些变化相关的“指纹”。
Following the tracks of these fingerprints has helped scientists link climate change with more general trends,
追踪这些指纹有助于科学家将气候变化与更普遍的趋势联系起来，
like rising sea levels and global temperatures.
比如日益上升的海平面和全球气温。
But verifying the role of human influence on specific climate events, like Hurricane Harvey or the California drought?
但是验证人类对特定气候事件的影响作用，比如哈维飓风或加州干旱，
That's not as easy.
那可没那么容易。
It's precisely this problem of attributing specific extreme weather events to climate change that researchers like Dr.Diffenbaugh are working on.
迪芬博博士等研究人员正在努力将特定的极端天气事件归因于气候变化。
While we can't yet say for sure that these events wouldn't have happened without climate change,
虽然我们还不能确定没有气候变化这些事件就不会发生，
we can talk about the probability of them happening ... and how those odds are changing.
但我们可以讨论它们发生的可能性……以及这些几率是如何变化的。
By comparing our climate predictions with how things actually play out,
通过比较我们的气候预测和实际情况，
researchers can start to develop a real-world framework for posing and testing hypotheses.
研究人员可以开始开发一个用于提出和检验假设的真实框架。
But the work doesn't stop there.
但工作并不止于此。
Observational data can only tell us if there's a change in the intensity or frequency of an event; it still can't tell us what caused those changes.
观测数据只能告诉我们一个事件的强度或频率是否发生了变化；它仍然不能告诉我们是什么导致了这些变化。
This is where computer modeling comes in.
这就是计算机建模的用武之地。
We can't run experiments on the global climate system.
我们不能对全球气候系统做实验。
We can't stick the climate system in a lab.
我们不能把气候系统放在实验室里。
But we can say, our extreme event attribution framework predicts a probability of record-setting heat over a region of Europe to be X percent,
但我们可以说，我们的极端事件归因框架预测，欧洲某一地区创纪录的高温概率为X%，
and then we can wait and watch and see how often record-setting temperatures occur.
然后我们可以等着看，看看有多频繁的创纪录的温度出现。
