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The rain was still falling in Texas on Tuesday. But the question of whether human-caused climate change might have contributed to what is now the heaviest five-day rain in the history of the contiguous United States was already circulating.

In discussing the Texas deluge, Martin Hoerling, a meteorologist at Boulder’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, pointed to a study made on torrential rains that dumped 25 inches in southern Louisiana in August 2016.

Human-caused climate warming increased the intensity of the torrential Louisiana rains by at least 10 percent, according to a team of NOAA and partner scientists with World Weather Attribution. The same report stated that the likelihood of such an event had been raised 40 percent by global warming.

“They had rains of 25 inches or so, so 10 percent of that is 2 陆 inches” contributed by climate change, Hoerling said. “If you apply that to the Texas storm this year, you might be saying 4 inches of the 40 was related to warmer, more moist air from global warming. That is not definitive, though. That is sort of speculative at this time.”

World Weather Attribution is considering whether to conduct a similar “attribution analysis” of Tropical Storm Harvey once all rainfall figures are recorded.

The unofficial five-day total from Harvey in some Texas locations reached 51 inches on Tuesday, Hoerling said. That easily tops the previous five-day record for the contiguous U.S., which was 48 inches from Tropical Storm Amelia in Medina, Texas, July into August 1978.

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