The Physics of Extreme Weather: Why Climate Change Makes Every Disaster Worse

Climate change doesn't cause extreme weather — it amplifies it. Thermodynamics is clear: warmer atmosphere holds 7% more moisture per degree Celsius (Clausius-Clapeyron equation). Warmer oceans fuel stronger hurricanes. Drought + heat = more wildfires. Melting ice changes jet stream patterns, causing prolonged extreme weather events. The multiplier effect: compound events (heat + drought + wildfire, or hurricane + storm surge + rainfall) create cascading failures. Attribution science can now quantify how much climate change worsened specific events. The trend: what was a '1-in-100-year' event is becoming a '1-in-20-year' event.