How Tropical Cyclones Are Shocking, and Why Were More Floods than Americans? Dr. Emanuel Explains Why the United States is Stopped by a Series of Hurricanes
According to Dr. Emanuel, storms that intensify rapidly in the 24 hours before they hit the ocean are not as common as they used to be. He estimated that their likelihood in the years was equal to once per century.
Global warming is changing hurricanes, but researchers don’t know if it will mean longer or more active Hurricane seasons in the future.
Dr. Kossin said there was a migration of tropical cyclones out of the tropics and towards the middle latitudes. That could mean more storms making landfall in higher latitudes, like in the United States and Japan.
Slower storms cause more flooding. Dr. Kossin likened the problem to walking around your back yard while using a hose to spray water on the ground. If you walk fast, the water won’t have a chance to start pooling. He said that if you walk slowly you will get a lot of rain.
According to a paper written by Dr. Kossin, hurricanes over the United States have slowed in the last 70 years. Combined with the increase in rain rates, storms are causing a 25 percent increase in local rainfall in the United States, he said.
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Slower storms. Although researchers do not yet know why storms are moving more slowly, they are. Some say a slowdown in global atmospheric circulation, or global winds, could be partly to blame.
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There is more rain. Warming also causes the atmosphere to hold more water. In fact, every degree Celsius of warming allows the air to hold about 7 percent more water.
Source: Powerful Storm Sweeps Into Georgia After Pelting Florida Coast
Rapid Intensification of a Tropical-Scalar Hurricane and the Forecaster’s Dream: Anomalous Weather Conditions and Hurricane Preparedness
Rapid intensification technically refers to an increase of at least 30 knots, or 35 m.p.h., in the maximum sustained winds over a 24-hour period, according to the National Hurricane Center. Researchers have found that the likelihood of a hurricane undergoing rapid intensification has increased to 5 percent from 1 percent since the 1980s.
“Potential intensity is going up,” said Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We predicted it would go up 30 years ago, and the observations show it going up.”
“It’s very likely that human-caused climate change contributed to that anomalously warm ocean,” said James P. Kossin, a climate scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Climate change is making it more likely for hurricanes to behave in certain ways.”
“It’s a forecaster’s nightmare,” Dr. Emanuel said. He said there was no time to evacuate the people if a tropical storm developed into a Category 4 storm.
Dr. Emanuel said the window of time to make a decision gets shorter. For example, if officials, working with forecasters, issue an evacuation order too early, then they risk unnecessarily sending hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, scrambling, jamming highways and snarling transit systems. In some cases, that could be more dangerous, disruptive and costly than staying in place.
The First Atlantic Hurricane of the Atlantic Season: Florida’s West Coast Becomes More Active than It Has Already Been Preceded
The first major Hurricane of the Atlantic season is Idalia, which is expected to be more active than usual. That’s partly because of human-driven climate change, which appears to have contributed to record-breaking ocean temperatures off the Florida coast.
There are more than half a million people on Florida’s western coastline that is at risk of life threatening storm surge. “You’re not going to be able to survive that,” Gov. Ron DeSantis warned. Here are the latest updates:
In Florida, tens of thousands of customers are without power. Tallahassee is preparing for outages that could last days, expecting its strongest storm in decades.
The Florida National Guard is fully mobilized, with more than 55,000 soldiers and airmen either deployed or deploying, and help is coming from as far away as California.
Communities along hundreds of miles of coastline boarded up windows, sandbagged buildings and emptied grocery store shelves of water. Many people have left Cedar Key, an island city that is home to 700 people. “My family has been here for many generations,” said the mayor, Heath Davis. We haven’t seen a storm like this before.