Is Weather Getting Worse? Here's What Science Says

Remember how thunderstorms felt when you were a kid? The ones today seem different somehow. That basement flooding that used to happen once in a lifetime? Now it happens every few years. Those summer heat waves? They stretch longer than anyone can remember.

Walk into any small-town diner, and the conversations are all basically the same: old-timers comparing the weather to how it used to be, farmers saying rainfall patterns no longer follow the old rhythms, weekend gardeners complaining that their planting calendars don't quite seem to work like they used to.

But this is no longer small talk. Weather records tell their own story-a story corroborating what people notice. Those "once in a century" floods? They show up every decade now. Heat records don't just break-they shatter (1). What, then, does science say to all of this? Is weather getting worse?

What Science Tells Us