“You can't really attribute any specific single weather event to climate change,” says Gary Lackmann, professor in the department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at NC State University. That said, scientists are getting better at determining the degree to which climate change can make such events more likely or severe. As greenhouse gasses are released into the atmosphere, they trap heat, causing air and ocean temperatures to warm and contributing to shifting weather patterns. As Lackmann puts it: “[Climate change] loads the dice a little bit towards more extreme events.”