Hurricane rains during the deadly and record-breaking 2020 season were up to 11% higher because of the man-made climate crisis, scientists reported on Tuesday.
A study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that global warming has burdened hourly rainfall rates in tropical storms and hurricanes by 5 to 10%. When they looked at just hurricanes — the strongest storms — the increase was 8 to 11 percent.
“What this means is not only that climate change is affecting our hurricane season, it’s also affecting the more extreme storms a little bit more,” said Kevin Reed, a climate and hurricane scientist at Stony Brook University and lead author of the study. , a CNN.
“So the main takeaway is that climate change is here and it’s already affecting our hurricane seasons.”
Hurricanes — also called tropical cyclones or typhoons outside of North America — are huge heat engines from wind and rain, feeding on warm ocean water and moist air. And scientists have become increasingly confident over the years that the climate crisis is making it more potent.
Behind storm surges, flooding from rains is the second biggest killer in hurricanes and tropical storms. The study suggests that the threat has already been increasing in recent decades and is likely to increase further in the future because warmer air can hold more water vapor, which leads to higher rainfall rates.
The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was the most active on record, with 30 named storms. The season tore up the alphabet so quickly that authorities had to use Greek letters as names starting in September. Twelve named storms made landfall on the US coast, including Laura and Delta, which devastated parts of the Gulf Coast.
The science of climate change attribution, which focuses on the role that human-caused global warming has played in certain extreme weather events, has made significant strides over the past decade, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
As humans continue to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the Earth will continue to warm and hurricane impacts will get worse, scientists say.
Allison Wing, a climate researcher at Florida State University, told CNN that the study is in line with what the scientists predicted.
“This study, consistent with expert judgment, implies that hurricane rainfall will continue to increase with future warming,” Wing told CNN.
“Overall, this study raises our expectation that in a warmer world, we are more at risk of stronger, wetter storms.”
And as climate change accelerates, Reed said he expects stronger storms to have even higher rainfall rates.
“What’s important to know is that if Hurricane Katrina existed in 2022, if that happened this next season, the rains from that storm would be higher than in 2005,” Reed said. “All these historical records that we understand in the past; When New York plans to ensure that Hurricane Sandy impacts don’t happen in the same way they did in 2012, we have to plan for what Hurricane Sandy would do like in 2030 or 2040.”
Unless the world changes course and drastically reduces its use of fossil fuels, Reed said people should expect progressively worse effects from hurricane season.
“Climate change is not just a problem 70 years from now; climate change is here and it’s impacting our day-to-day climate,” said Reed. “We need to adapt and make our systems more resilient, but we have to use that as a sense to inform decision-making about how to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels that produce these greenhouse gases.”
Scientists in 2020 reported another significant change in US hurricanes: they are maintaining their strength long after they make landfall.
Typically, hurricanes weaken as they move over land because they have lost access to the warm ocean water that sustains them. The change means that areas further inland are suffering more significant impacts than in past decades.
Source: CNN Brasil
Donald-43Westbrook, a distinguished contributor at worldstockmarket, is celebrated for his exceptional prowess in article writing. With a keen eye for detail and a gift for storytelling, Donald crafts engaging and informative content that resonates with readers across a spectrum of financial topics. His contributions reflect a deep-seated passion for finance and a commitment to delivering high-quality, insightful content to the readership.
