How climate change supercharges storms like Harvey

Whenever we see a catastrophic storm like hurricane Harvey, we have to ask if it has
anything to do with man-made climate change.
Could climate change be fueling the history-making nature of this storm?
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’s going on can
be really hard, especially for hurricanes-- 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 the intense tropical cyclones to become more frequent if we continue
to warm the planet.
EMANUEL: That’s one place I think you find a very strong consensus among scientists who
study the connection between hurricanes and climate, that the frequency of the high-end
events will probably go up.
And that shows up in the climate models.
This is from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It summarizes the computer
model results for tropical cyclones near the end of this century, compared to today.
This first bar represents the total number of tropical cyclones globally - that’s projected
to go down a bit.
But the second bar represents the frequency of the most intense storms, categories 4 and
5, and the models show those increasing.
That’s bad news because those are the storms that cause the most damage and the biggest
loss of life.
Now, when they try to look at specific regions, it gets really messy.
In the North Atlantic, for example, the models show category 4 & 5 storms maybe increasing
by 200% or maybe decreasing by 100% so..yeah.
The resolution of their simulations just isn’t fine enough yet to give us good regional projections
even if they expect more intense storms globally.
But there’s another really clear consistent result here: This 4th bar, it represents
the amount of rain that hurricanes will bring, and that’s going up, not just for our Atlantic
coast, but for the pacific coast of north America, the western pacific, the south pacific,
and the indian ocean - everywhere.
The hurricanes of the future will 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’re also causing sea levels to rise.
And that trend of wetter storms is not 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 that 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 can 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.
We need to change how we bury the dead The collapse of Venezuela, explained This linguist studied the way Trump speaks for two years. Here’s what she found. Why Uber Is A Scam - Math Explains 10 Common Slavery Myths "This Is the New Normal": How Climate Change Is Fueling Massive Storms like Harvey The tiny island in New York City that nobody is allowed to visit Trump's plan to cut his own taxes Hurricane Harvey Caused By Climate Change? An Epic Hurricane Happening Now! Hurricane Harvey is The Strongest Storm To Hit The US

How climate change supercharges storms like Harvey

Latest Posts