It may be human nature to want to assign blame for terrible events — and since climate change became part of public consciousness, it's a frequently faulted for natural disasters. Is Hurricane Florence our fault for emitting climate-changing greenhouse gases, or perhaps policymakers' fault for allowing it?
The answer is the same one that applies to cancer. Environmental factors such as excessive UV radiation, secondhand smoke and certain chemical exposures increase risk, but cancer has been around since the age of the dinosaurs, and there's an element of randomness to it. It may be impossible to conclude any single risk factor was the single cause of any given case.
With climate change, there is a growing body of work showing that storms will get stronger and wetter over the course of this century. Last year, in the wet wake of Hurricane Harvey, researchers said warming in the Arctic is making circulating winds more sluggish, and this effect may have contributed to the way Harvey stalled over Houston and dumped more than 127 cm of rain.