The tide of opinion is turning against climate change sceptics in North America, according to the head of the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Escalating bouts of extreme weather appear to be behind the shift, said Jane Lubchenco, the chief of the NOAA - the US equivalent of the CSIRO.
''I think there really is a heightened awareness now, because it is something tangible, it's something people are experiencing themselves - more heatwaves, more wildfires,'' Dr Lubchenco told the Herald.
''In the US, I think that the increasing number of extreme weather-related events will help the American public understand that there is a lot at risk and that we do need to be acting more definitively.''
The east coast of the US has just endured a series of some of the most intense heatwaves on record. Altogether, record high temperatures have been recorded at more than 40,000 sites in the US.
If global warming wasn't taking place, the ratio of high and low temperature records would be roughly equal, but in the US this year, heat records have dominated by a ratio of seven to one.
''The heatwaves that we have been seeing in the eastern United States are completely consistent with what we expected to be seeing, and we expect to see more,'' she said.
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