Following the recent trend of trying to explain climate change and discover ways to curb its effects, a new study has tied events of extreme weather to winds that swirl high above the Earth.

According to USA Today, the researchers behind the study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, linked jet streams in the upper atmosphere to weather events such as droughts in the western U.S. and nor'easter snow storms in the east. Extreme weather has been one result of a warming climate of particular interest in the science community.

"The impacts of large and slow moving atmospheric waves are different in different places," study lead author Dr. James Screen, a mathematics research fellow at the University of Exeter, said in a press release. "In some places amplified waves increase the chance of unusually hot conditions, and in others the risk of cold, wet or dry conditions."

The researchers said these air flow patterns are not linked with severe thunderstorms, hurricanes or tornadoes, but rather extremes in temperature and humidity. For example, Screen said either U.S. coast could see an increase in waves of hot and cold weather on the west and east coast, respectively.

"The implication of our study is that if climate change was to make these wave patterns more frequent, this could lead to more heat waves in the western U.S., droughts in the central U.S. and cold outbreaks in the eastern U.S.," he told USA Today.

For their study, the researchers examined data from 1979 to 2012 detailing instances of erratic or uncharacteristic temperatures and other weather events. They were looking specifically at waves of cold and hot weather as well as dry and wet extremes that lasted at least a month and affected a large area.

"The study revealed that these types of events are strongly related to well-developed wave patterns, and that these patterns increase the chance of heat waves in western North America and central Asia, cold outbreaks in eastern North America, droughts in central North America, Europe and central Asia, and wet spells in western Asia," study co-author Ian Simmonds, the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, said in the release. "The findings are very important for decision makers in assessing the risk of, and planning for the impacts of, extreme weather events in the future."