Hurricanes are becoming unpredictable: Courtesy Climate Change

While scientists are still under dilemma, whether climate change has enhanced hurricane Fiona’s strength or nature’s, there’s valid proof that these disastrous storms are becoming worse with time.

A group of scientists from IPCC have presented strong scientific evidences that man-made activities have resulted into warming of earth’s climate. This warming up has led to the rise in earth’s global mean temperature by around 0.8 to 1.3 degree Celsius since 1800s.

The question of concern is, does this anthropogenic rise in temperature have affected Atlantic hurricanes or tropical cyclone activities?

The answer is ‘Yes.’ Hurricanes are getting wetter, windier and on the whole more intense. All due to the changing climate! In addition, growing body of evidence confirms that climate change is also affecting storms’ movements. This means that storms are travelling more slowly, thereby dumping more water at one particular place.

In the past four decades, the seas as well as the oceans have absorbed around 90% of the heat resulting from greenhouse emissions. Most of this heat is accumulated over and near the water surface. This additional heat is what adds on to a storm’s intensity, and fuels stronger winds. Moreover, climate change is also proven to boost the amount of rainfall that a storm delivers. This owes to the fact that a warmer air holds up more moisture, accumulating more water vapor until clouds break, descending heavy rains over places.

The Atlantic hurricane season was recorded to be most active in the year 2020. Climate change was responsible in boosting the rate of rainfall in hurricanes by around 8-11%. This is the condition when the earth’s temperature has warmed by 1.1°C. Scientists at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have warned that hurricane wind speeds could increase up to 10% if the rise in earth’s temperature reaches 2°C of warming. Scientists also predicted that the proportion of hurricanes that climb up to the most intense levels of category 4 to 5 could boost up by 10% by the end of this century. Since 1851, less than a fifth of storms that have occurred till now, have reached to this intensity.

Other ways in which climate change affects hurricanes

Hurricanes, as an affect of climate change, are shifting from their season. This is due to the reason that climate change is creating conducive conditions for storms to occur in more months per year. Moreover, hurricanes are also making landfalls in places that are far outside the historic norms.

NOAA reported that Florida, in U.S. witnesses most hurricanes, causing landfalls with 120 plus occurrences since 1851. But in the past few years, scientists reported that a few of the storms are reaching their peak intensity, and shifting the landfalls more towards north than their earlier occurrences. This pole ward shift might be linked to increasing global air as well as ocean temperatures.

This trend is a matter of concern for cities such as New York, Boston, Beijing and Tokyo. These cities are not yet prepared in terms of infrastructure to tackle such storms, one of the scientists from Florida State University reported.

Hurricane Sandy, which fell under category-I was the fourth most expensive storm for U.S. hurricanes on record. It caused approximately $81 billion loss, when it hit the North Eastern Seaboard in the year 2012.

A study report published in Nature Communications in August 2022, said that the storms that made U.S. landfall have shifted three weeks earlier than they did in 1900.

Hurricanes are known to cause damage to life and property. One of the greatest concerns of hurricanes, when it comes ashore, is flooding, and climate change is likely to make that worse. With impacts that climate change had already brought in, the probability of a billion dollar disaster from hurricanes remains very high.

Climate scientists and environmentalists are working everyday to collect more data about hurricanes and creating models which could more precisely predict hurricane changes from anthropogenic activities led global warming.