What Happened to the La Nina-Type Hurricanes? — A Short Survey of Recent Climate Change Trends, and Some New Insights from the New Science
What is going on? Did human influence on the climate lead to the two recent disastrous storms? This is my attempt to answer those questions as briefly as possible while still doing justice to the uncertainty, as well as offering some insight from the new, rapidly evolving science.
Climate models can be unreliable and thus may be wrong about the recent La Nina trend being an accident, which may mean that it will continue. Another reason for Atlantic Hurricane activity to remain high would be provided if this is true.
Almost nothing happened. In September, the peak of Hurricane season, there were only a few weak storms and no real damage. Then after that. Fiona took down Puerto Rico’s power grid on September 18 (almost five years to the day after Maria had all but destroyed it) and then much of Nova Scotia’s in Canada, and then Ian, after knocking out power to all of Cuba, made landfall in Florida as a dangerous Category 4, one of the most destructive storms ever to hit the continental US, and decimated a wide swath of the Sunshine State.
It could be the costliest storm on record to hit Florida with as much as $47 billion in insured losses. Most of the losses due to flooding are not covered by private insurance, which will lead to a much higher total loss. The storm claimed at least 76 lives in the state.
There isn’t any evidence that the number of hurricanes is increasing. As the planet warms further, we have no faith in predictions of what that number will do. Many models suggest that the number will go down while others suggest that it will go up.
The critical phrase that is used in the above paragraph is over most of the planet. It’s the basin in the North Atlantic that matters the most in terms of Hurricane risk to the US. In the North Atlantic, there has been a clear increase from the quiet 1970s and 1980s to a much more active period, on average, since the mid-’90s.
According to observations and climate models, the Atlantic’s temperatureline circulation can vary on multiple time scales, causing the North Atlantic to warm and cool.
The argument is not holding up as well as it could. Recent research shows that pollution from the US and Europe was a part of the reason for the slow down in the 70s and 80s. The sun is not as high in the North Atlantic, and this cooling by tiny aerosol particles reduced the intensity of hurricanes.
New science makes the future for the Atlantic more uncertain. The last few years of La Nia conditions in the Pacific are part of a long-term trend in that direction. Our climate models failed to predict this, instead predicting that global warming will cause more El Nio-like conditions.
Leaders from Pakistan and Kenya, Senegal and the Bahamas connected the dots between a hotter Earth and devastating floods, storms, heat waves and droughts. President Joe Biden said that more hurricanes and wildfires were causing havoc in the United States.
That’s why the time after a weather disaster is so important. People who experience a significant heat wave and know that it is connected to climate change are more likely to act to protect themselves from future disasters and support climate policies.
Even after the connection between climate change and disasters is established, official weather forecasts from the federal government don’t include details about how global warming is making a disaster more likely. Most people get their forecasts on their phones or on television using government information.
It can be difficult to include climate context in real-time weather warnings. Kapnick is a researcher who has worked on extreme event attribution studies.
NOAA is currently reviewing how it communicates with the public about climate change, she says, in part because of a flood of interest from the public and from local officials who are grappling with more severe weather.
Rick Spinrad said that it is clear that climate change is affecting hurricanes and tropical storms.
Indeed, a preliminary analysis by Wehner and other climate scientists in the days after Ian made landfall estimated that climate change caused the storm to drop at least 10% more rain than it would have without global warming.
What will the worst droughts in 2023 and beyond be like? The role of La Nia, Lake Mead, and the Hoover Dam
There is more support for electric vehicles, and policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions, in addition to the interest in flood-proofing your home.
It is not known how long those attitudes will last after a disaster. An active area of research is figuring that out. “There appears to be this window of time within which you might want to help people better understand what those risks are, and make links to climate change,” Wong-Parodi explains.
“I think that’s really important as we move forward, because it has implications for how we may want to communicate to the public about these types of events,” says Wong-Parodi.
In 2023, the relentless increase in global heating will continue, bringing ever more disruptive weather that is the signature calling card of accelerating climate breakdown.
La Nia will be one of the longest on record if current forecasts are to be believed. Then, the equatorial Pacific will begin to warm again. Whether or not it becomes hot enough for a fully fledged El Niño to develop, 2023 has a very good chance—without the cooling influence of La Niña—of being the hottest year on record.
But what will this mean? I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the record for the highest recorded temperature—currently 54.4°C (129.9°F) in California’s Death Valley—shattered. This could well happen somewhere in the Middle East or South Asia, where temperatures could climb above 55°C. The heat could exceed the blistering 40°C mark again in the UK, and for the first time, top 50°C in parts of Europe.
The Southwest United States will be one of the worst-Affected regions. Here, the longest drought in at least 1,200 years has persisted for 22 years so far, reducing the level of Lake Mead on the Colorado River so much that power generation capacity at the Hoover Dam has fallen by almost half. Upstream, the Glen Canyon Dam, on the rapidly shrinking Lake Powell, is forecast to stop generating power in 2023 if the drought continues. The Hoover Dam could follow suit in 2024. Together, these lakes and dams provide water and power for millions of people in seven states, including California. The breakdown of the supply would be a catastrophe for the region’s agriculture and industry.
La Niña tends to limit hurricane development in the Atlantic, so as it begins to fade, hurricane activity can be expected to pick up. The higher global temperatures expected in 2023 could see extreme heating of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico surface waters. This would favor the formation of super-hurricanes, strong winds and storm surge that could wipe out a major US city if they strike land. Direct hits, rather than a glancing blow, are rare—the closest in recent decades being Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which made landfall immediately south of Miami, obliterating more than 60,000 homes and damaging 125,000 more. The consequences of a city being in the path of a powerful storm is likely to be catastrophic, because hurricanes today are more powerful and rainier.