Louis Straker, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Regional Integration of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, addresses the general debate of the U.N. General Assembly on Friday, Sept. 22, 2017.

(UN Photo/Cia Pak)

At a Glance

Caribbean leaders told the UN General Assembly on Friday that the recent extreme weather has been caused by a warming world.While it's likely that claim is true, climate scientists say they must first study each storm individually before those conclusions can be made.

Saying the conditions experienced from recent hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria are the "new normal," Caribbean leaders told the United Nations General Assembly on Friday that the storms are a symptom of climate change.

Among those who spoke were officials from , according to a UN report. They took issue with those who call climate change a hoax and said the recent destruction in the Caribbean is a clear sign that storms are getting stronger, and there's a single cause.

"The world is experiencing extraordinary change at a breathtaking pace – change that is reshaping the way we live ...and the very nature of peace and security," Saint Lucia PresidentAllen Michael Chastanet told the UN.

Calling these large storms the "new normal," Chastanet added: "I daresay, we do not have the luxury to be silent on this front anymore – we must act."

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Added Louis Straker, Deputy Prime Ministerof Saint Vincent and the Grenadines: "Almost every year is hotter than the preceding one. Almost every hurricane season more intense. Almost every storm, drought and flood more destructive than the previous one."

While a majority of climate scientists agree that human-caused global warming is happening and contributing to extreme weather, linking a specific event to climate change is something that requires in-depth studies. That will happen in the coming months and years, but as far as immediately declaring that hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria were caused or strengthened in specific ways by global warming, most climate scientists say there isn't enough that's known about each storm yet to make that leap.

"We can’t know for certain until we do attribution studies on this storm,"Dr. Suzana Camargo, a professor of Ocean and Climate Physics at Columbia University, told weather.com in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

On the other hand, it's known that sea level rise is making more water available for storms to push ashore, which can make storm surge and coastal flooding more extreme, and warming oceans can provide more energy for these storms. What isn't yet known, however, is how each of these factors played into the strengthening and ferocity of each individual storm. That's where the climate scientists' studies will come in.

"I'm NOT saying that climate change 'caused' Harvey. What I'm saying is that there is a high probability that climate change contributed to make the impacts of event worse," Camargo told weather.com in an email, adding that the truth about these storms "will only be determined with certainty by doing attribution studies."