With Hurricane Irma smashing into Florida so soon after Hurricane Harvey flooded southeastern Texas — and as wildfires burn through the western United States — extreme events have been hitting the U.S. from all sides. To what extent does climate change influence them?

Here are a few ways researchers think that climate change’s effects could play out.

Hurricanes

SEA LEVEL RISE AND STORM SURGE: As sea levels continue to rise due to global warming, they’re increasing the risk of storm surge — the dangerously high floods caused by a storm pushing water onshore. Those floodwaters are responsible for much of the damage left by hurricanes — particularly in highly populated coastal cities.

A 2013 study in PNAS found that the risk of a Hurricane Katrina-level storm surge rose two to seven times for every 1.8-degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature.

GET READY FOR RAIN. Climate change can influence hurricanes in a number of ways — for example, in the amount of rainfall they drop. As the planet warms, the atmosphere can hold more moisture. So when it rains, it really pours.

“We think that Harvey type of rainfalls will become noticeably more frequent as the century goes on,” said Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at MIT.

For hurricanes, that can be really dangerous, given the deaths and damage caused by rain and storm-surge flooding, Emanuel said.

“Water is the big killer in hurricanes, not wind,” Emanuel said. “Wind gets everyone’s attention, but it’s water that kills, and it’s often water that does most of the damage.”