Was 'Katie' climate change? Well, yes and no

Storm "Katie" caused huge difficulties
in parts of Western Europe.

Winds gusting to hurricane force have caused havoc in parts of Western Europe, leaving tens of thousands of homes without power and forcing flight cancellations and the closure of roads and bridges.

In France, at least 60,000 homes were without power at one point, more than half of them in the western provinces of Brittany and Normandy, electricity grid operator ERDF said.

The strongest gusts were recorded on the Breton tourist island of Belle-Ile, where the wind reached 150 kilometres per hour.

In Britain, the same weather system — dubbed "Storm Katie" — left a trail of disruption in its wake as it swept across southern England overnight, leaving debris and roadwork barriers strewn across London's streets.

Read the ABC story - “Storm Katie: Powerful winds bring power outages, Easter travel chaos to Western Europe.”

(Is “Katie” further evidence of climate change? Well, yes and no. Taking the cautious stance of most climate scientists, “Katie” should not be directly attributed to climate change, but human-induced changes to the world’s weather system make such event more likely, both in frequency and intensity, and so the answer is “yes” and “no”.

That said, watching weather events around the world and applying my scant knowledge to the rather complex scientific data about what is happening, what we are seeing with events such as “Katie” is climate change in action, but just the beginnings of what will unsettle, hugely, the world community – Robert McLean.)