Pay no attention to the old chestnut that you can’t attribute any one storm to climate change. Climate change did cause Hurricane Sandy, according to Scientific American senior editor Mark Fischetti:

If you’ve followed the U.S. news and weather in the past 24 hours you have no doubt run across a journalist or blogger explaining why it’s difficult to say that climate change could be causing big storms like Sandy. Well, no doubt here: it is.

The hedge expressed by journalists is that many variables go into creating a big storm, so the size of Hurricane Sandy, or any specific storm, cannot be attributed to climate change. That’s true, and it’s based on good science. However, that statement does not mean that we cannot say that climate change is making storms bigger. It is doing just that—a statement also based on good science

Read the rest of his post for a rundown on the science of how warming oceans and melting ice caps directly cause stronger, bigger hurricanes like Sandy. At least we now know the physics behind our inevitable return to the sea.

-Adrian