Iain has a good post on extreme weather events, below.

Back in 1998, my husband David wrote a paper for The National Center for Public Policy Research on this topic. Titled Don't Like the Weather? Don't Blame it on Global Warming, the paper examined charges that mid-90s forest fires, heat waves, blizzards and hurricanes were indicators of global warming. Because the paper reviews a century's worth of trends on these extreme weather events, it remains one of the most popular downloads on the National Center's website even now, six years later. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in the topic.