A powerful storm wreaked havoc on the Arctic sea ice cover in August 2012. This visualization shows the strength and direction of the winds and their impact on the ice.

As climate change proceeds - which the record summer melt of Arctic sea-ice suggests it is doing at a worrying pace - nations, communities and individual citizens may begin to seek compensation for losses and damage arising from global warming. Climate scientists should be prepared for their skills one day to be probed in court. Whether there is a legal basis for such claims, such as that brought against the energy company ExxonMobil by the remote Alaskan community of Kivalina, which is facing coastal erosion and flooding as the sea ice retreats, is far from certain, however. So lawyers, insurers and climate negotiators are watching with interest the emerging ability, arising from improvements in climate models, to calculate how anthropogenic global warming will change, or has changed, the probability and magnitude of extreme weather and other climate-related events. But to make this emerging science of 'climate attribution' fit to inform legal and societal decisions will require enormous research effort.

Attribution is the attempt to deconstruct the causes of observable weather and to understand the physics of why extremes such as floods and heatwaves occur. This is important basic research. Extreme weather and changing weather patterns - the obvious manifestations of global climate change - do not simply reflect easily identifiable changes in Earth's energy balance such as a rise in atmospheric temperature. They usually have complex causes, involving anomalies in atmospheric circulation, levels of soil moisture and the like. Solid understanding of these factors is crucial if researchers are to improve the performance of, and confidence in, the climate models on which event attribution and longer-term climate projections depend.

Event attribution is one of the proposed 'climate services' - seasonal climate prediction is another - that are intended to provide society with the information needed to manage the risks and costs associated with climate change. Advocates of climate services see them as a counterpart to the daily weather forecast. But without the computing capacity of a well-equipped national meteorological office, heavily model-dependent services such as event attribution and seasonal prediction are unlikely to be as reliable.

According to the linked Youtube video, residents of Yekaterinburg, Russia stated that the Olkhovka river that flows through the city began to give off steam and possibly boil.

Gusty winds tore off the roof of the University of Trinidad and Tobago's south campus on Sunday destroying more than $12 million worth of equipment and displacing more than 1,500 students.

A severe thunderstorm warning has been issued for a large swathe of NSW, with heavy falls of hail and rain and damaging winds predicted.

Heavy hail falls were hitting Sydney's west this afternoon.

The Bureau of Meteorology warned the storms were likely to bring large hailstones and heavy rainfall that may lead to flash flooding and damaging winds in the warning area into late today.

A less than half-hour freak storm in Linden has left millions of dollars in damage and several persons homeless in its wake.

The roofs of seven houses in Amelia's Ward, Linden were Monday afternoon blown off during a freak storm. No one was injured.

Region 10 Chairman, Sharma Solomon said telephone and electricity services were not disrupted but the there was "significant damage" to the houses.

Flooding in Cameroon's Far North Region has killed nearly 30 people and affected more than 26,000 others, officials said Monday.

More than 4,000 people in the Logone and Shari division were displaced, and more than 22,000 people in the region of Maga, Mayo-Danay division, also have been affected.

Communication Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary described the flooding as "a calamity," and he called for urgent action to save lives, livestock and property. Dana FM, a local radio station, said the death toll will grow as bodies are collected and identified. For the past few weeks, there has been no sign of the flood easing.

Flash flooding has triggered landslides in northern India leaving 33 dead and 35 missing, reports children's charity Plan International.

Heavy monsoon rains swamped Uttarakhand state, in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Dozens of homes were flattened across eight villages in the early hours of the morning, killing villagers in their sleep.

"Houses were buried in the debris of mud and rocks and many lives of both people and livestock were lost as a consequence," says Plan's emergency response manager in India Murali Kunduru.

Tornado watches were issued for much of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic on Tuesday, part of a storm front that brought high winds and heavy rain. Power outages were reported in the Washington, D.C., area and air travel was disrupted across the region.

Major cities within the tornado watches include New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. The watches also cover parts of Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.

Wind gusts up to 70 mph are possible in those areas, the National Weather Service said in issuing the watches, some of which run through 11 p.m. ET.

Event Time
2012-09-18 01:44:47 UTC
2012-09-17 17:44:47 UTC-08:00 at epicenter
2012-09-17 18:44:47 UTC-07:00 system time

Nearby Cities
55km (34mi) SSW of Larsen Bay, Alaska
525km (326mi) SSW of Anchorage, Alaska
561km (349mi) SSW of Knik-Fairview, Alaska
934km (580mi) SSW of Fairbanks, Alaska
1174km (729mi) WSW of Whitehorse, Canada