Your turkey and cheese sandwich and small bar of dark chocolate might be a tasty lunch, but beware of the headache that could follow it. All these foods contain chemicals that can bring on a migraine. Other culprits include aged cheeses like stilton and brie, diet fizzy drinks, and processed meats and fish.

As for the writing, it was very engaging and enjoyable. It mixed in some of the science (it does not go into details how the models work, which is a huge downfall to climate scientists, because people who have been convinced global climate change doesn't exist will not suddenly change their mind based on yet another Algorithm) with his history of working with his current research team with a bit of history of major storms (Harvey in Houston). I could have done without the chapter on insurance, because that's boring. No one will ever make insurance not boring, but bless Otto for putting it near the end of the book, because it was nonetheless an interesting look at how finances could help alleviate damage.

Explore topics

What I found most fascinating is how attribution studies can be used practically. They allow governments and local authorities to plan ahead and understand environmental change. We can use them to manage risk. They’re also a tool for climate justice. Where a climate connection can be made, responsibility can be taken. That includes court cases against major polluters, and the book includes examples. Attribution studies “put climate science on the offensive, rather than the defensive. We can state whether and to what extent climate change is manifesting in our weather. We can stand up to the energy companies and mercenaries of doubt.”

A lot of writers struggle with describing settings. I’ve written before about how to describe settings and why it matters, but a few people have told me they’d like me to do some of my master lists for writers to help them out! The effect of climate change is the difference between what happens in a world without human influence and what happened in the real world. When scientists find that, say, what is now a once in 100 years event in the real world would have occurred only once every 200 years without climate change, this doubled risk can be attributed to climate change.If you think housework is giving you a headache, you could be right. Household cleaners, along with perfumes and fragranced air fresheners, contain chemicals that can bring on headaches.

From leading climate scientist Dr. Friederike Otto, this gripping book reveals the revolutionary science that definitively links extreme weather events—including deadly heat waves, forest fires, floods, and hurricanes—to climate change.There are aspects of this work that are controversial. For one thing, studies like the one on Harvey, are published in real-time, and only subsequently in journals that are peer-reviewed. The argument is that the models are peer-reviewed, as are subsequent articles, but that in the elapse of time, and given the obscurity of most academic journals, this information is most timely and helpful in policy discussions in the immediate context of an event rather than when it is in the rear view mirror. It's a standing joke that headaches are used as an excuse to avoid sex, but for many men and women coital headaches that come on at the height of passion are a real and distressing problem. You’ve heard the discussions. An extreme drought results in unprecedented forest fires. A record and extended heatwave results in hundreds of heat-related deaths. A hurricane stalls over a major coastal city and dumps record amounts of rainfall resulting in extensive flooding, property damage, and deaths. Record spring rainfalls flood farmlands resulting in major crop losses. Commentators will cite these as yet more examples of climate change, while those denying climate change will argue that these are rare but naturally occurring events. How to fix it: Avoid the temptation to sleep in at weekends. More than 8 hours' sleep at a time can bring on a headache. Introduce some relaxation time, such as a yoga class, into your working week, rather than squeezing it all into the weekend. 2. Pent-up anger It turns out that many climate scientists are quiet during these discussions. Weather is complicated. Most climate scientists observe long term trends and the impacts these have as inputs to weather systems. But they are reluctant to opine on individual events. In the last decade, a new area of climate science has developed called attribution science that is used to determine to what extent anthropogenic climate change has contributed to the magnitude or probability of an individual event. Friederike Otto is one of the scientists on the forefront of this emerging field and this book serves as a description of this field and its uses for the lay reader interested in climate research. (For those wanting a more technical version of this material, this article , co-authored by this author, goes deeper into their research methodologies and studies of climate events.)