Climate change is real, it’s happening, and we all feel it.  Some of us couldn’t play tennis in it.  The record-setting heat wave that baked beautiful Australia at the end of 2013 and into 2014 was the product of human activity that released greenhouse gases.

“When we look at the heat across the whole of Australia and the whole 12 months of 2013, we can say that this was virtually impossible without climate change,” said University of Melbourne climate scientist David Karoly.

Five separate groups of researchers using distinct methods reached the same conclusions.  Their work was collected into a larger report called “Explaining Extreme Events of 2013 From a Climate Perspective”, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS).

It includes 22 separate studies on 16 different extreme weather events that occurred last year.  In some cases, researchers said they could not find a direct link between climate change and some weather events, such as the California drought or heavy rain and flooding in Colorado earlier this year.  But in the case of Australia’s sweltering summer, the researchers found that it couldn’t have been anything else.

 “Five reports all showing the same thing is a very powerful signal,” said Thomas C. Peterson of America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).