WASHINGTON (MCT) — Exceedingly high summer temperatures, longer summers and related catastrophes such as wildfire and drought are poised to be the norm, and they are driven by climate change, according to a new research paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In an opinion article over the weekend in The Washington Post that previewed the findings, the paper’s lead author, James E. Hansen wrote: “It is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.”