How Global Warming Fueled Five Extreme Weather Events

By BRAD PLUMER and NADJA POPOVICH

 A wildfire in Azusa, Calif., in 2016. New research has analyzed 27 extreme weather events from that year for links to climate change. Credit Gene Blevins/Reuters

 Extreme weather left its mark across the planet in 2016, the hottest year in recorded history. Record heat baked Asia and the Arctic. Droughts gripped Brazil and southern Africa. The Great Barrier Reef suffered its worst bleaching event in memory, killing large swaths of coral.

Now climate scientists are starting to tease out which of last year’s calamities can, and can’t, be linked to global warming…