Experts fear worse climate disasters in future

A record amount of California is burning, spurred by a nearly 20-year megadrought. To the north, parts of Oregon that don't usual catch fire are in flames.

In the Atlantic, 16th and 17th named tropical storms swirling, a record number for this time of year.

Powerful Typhoon Haishen just lashed Japan and the Korean Peninsula.

Last month it hit 130 degrees in Death Valley, the hottest Earth had been in nearly a century.

Phoenix keeps setting triple-digit heat records this year, and Colorado went through a weather whiplash of 90-degree weather to snow this week.

Amid all that Iowa's multi-billion dollar derecho bizarre straight line winds that got as powerful as a major hurricane _ barely went noticed.

Freak natural disasters, most with what scientists say likely have some kind of climate change connection _ seem to be everywhere in the crazy year of 2020.

Colorado University environmental sciences chief Waleed Abdalati, NASA's former chief scientist, said the trajectory of worsening disasters because of climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas is clear and basic physics.

"There is an accumulation of risk and we've put ourselves over the decades in a tremendously significant risk posture. And that's being borne out in the kinds of things that we're seeing here," Abdalati said.

That's because scientists see just the type of crazy climate they anticipated 10 or 20 years ago, Abdalati said.

"You know, there's just a lot of energy in the system and sometimes that manifests itself as precipitation as very strong fronts," Abdalati said.

Abdalati says we'll probably look back on this year and say those were the good old days when disasters weren't so wild.

"I strongly believe we're going to look back in 10 years, certainly 20, probably definitely 50 and say, 'Wow, you know, 2020, that was a crazy year, but I miss it,'" Abdalati said.