A primer on extreme weather, the paper explains that the recent surplus of extreme weather events is part of a longer trend of rising extremes that reveals a pattern of increasing risk as the planet warms. Instead of focusing on whether individual weather events are caused by climate change, the paper asserts that the events of 2011 provide evidence that are loading the dice for more instances of extreme weather in the future, and that these events will happen with increasing frequency in the years and decades to come.