Climate Change Could Have Enabled a More Intense Hurricane, says Julie Arrighi of the WWA Center for Global Warming
Julie Arrighi is the author of a study about how communities need to prepare for more intense storms in the future.
Hurricane Helene eventually unleashed more than two feet of rain on some towns in North Carolina. Warming from human-caused climate change would have made this event more possible, according to the WWA analysis.
The Atlantic Ocean, where hurricanes that hit the U.S. form, and the Gulf of Mexico just off Florida, have been hotter than average for more than 18 months, driven both by climate change and the recent El Nino weather pattern.
Two Category 1 hurricanes hit the U.S. in 2012 and both were at the beach. But one was Hurricane Sandy, which caused tens of billions of dollars in damage up and down the East Coast.
Milton will be the fifth hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. this year. Like Helene, the storm has gained strength rapidly as it spins across the Gulf of Mexico, where water temperatures are abnormally high.
World Weather Attribution released findings from a study on the impact of climate change on major weather events.
Climate change also made such heavy rainfall up to 70% more likely in central and southern Appalachia, where catastrophic flooding washed away roads, destroyed homes and businesses, and left thousands of people still without power two weeks later. So far, 230 people have died from the storm, though the true human toll will take years to fully determine.
A key factor in Helene’s intensity was extraordinarily high water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. Sea surface temperatures reached about 85 degrees Fahrenheit as Helene was forming.
Wehner worked with a team on a similar analysis to fingerprint the impact of climate change on the storm, using different statistical techniques. Climate change could have boosted Helene’s rainfall by 50%, according to his team.
The chief meteorologist for Climate Central, who worked on the WWA analysis says the only way to prevent more storms is to limit global warming.