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How climate change makes hurricanes worse
Here's what we know about climate change and hurricanes.
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We know that humanity's carbon footprint has shifted the baseline conditions of the climate, the context in which every weather event takes place. But trying to isolate the human influence from everything else that is going on can be really hard, especially for hurricanes, or what scientists call "tropical cyclones."
They're super complex and the quality of the historical data we have for them isn't great. We do have physics, though. Hurricanes are driven by the transfer of heat from the sea to the air through evaporation. The storm's maximum possible wind speed, or its potential intensity, depends in part on how warm the ocean is – and of course, we're warming the ocean.
So researchers expect intense tropical cyclones to become frequent if we continue to warm the planet.
The hurricanes of the future will also be wetter. So coastal cities will face freshwater flooding from the sky paired with storm surge from the sea, which is higher now because we are also causing sea levels to rise. And that trend of wetter storms isn't just for hurricanes. Heavy precipitation events from other types of storms have been increasing in The US and should continue to increase across the country. Even in places that might see less rain over the whole year, they'll get more days with really heavy precipitation.
This comes down to basic physics too: warmer air can take up more water before it dumps it back down on us. All of this means global warming worsens floods like the kind that hit Houston.
But it's not our destiny to hurt ourselves like this. It depends on what we choose to do now. We could rethink our infrastructure and regulations to minimize the damage, but unless we also start cutting our carbon emissions and shifting the world to clean energy, it's just going to get worse.
Sources:
Peter Sinclair: https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/author/psinclair/
IPCC AR5: https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter14_FINAL.pdf
National Climate Assessment: http://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/our-changing-climate/heavy-downpours-increasing
NOAA/EPA https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-sea-surface-temperature
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-sea-level
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