FOR THE WEEK OF OCT. 14, 2024

Fierce hurricanes last week and last month show how warmer seas can affect us, scientists say

The pair of intense hurricanes that pounded Southeastern states in recent weeks don’t surprise weather researchers. As oceans remain notably warmer than in past decades, which scientists say is due primarily to human-caused climate change, more moisture rises to form intense hurricanes that carry vastly more precipitation than had been typical. When a storm forms, warm water and the right atmospheric conditions add extra energy, helping it gain speed and power quickly.

Hurricane Milton, which crossed Florida from the Gulf Coast to the Atlantic last week, strengthened from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in just over 24 hours. At least 16 people died and over 3.2 million customers lost electricity. In St. Petersburg, a construction crane fell into downtown offices and the Tampa Bay Rays' baseball stadium's dome cover was stripped off. The fierce wind and rain came less than two weeks after devastating floods brought by Hurricane Helene, one of the deadliest and costliest storms to hit the United States in 50 years. It killed more than 230 people in six Southeastern states and caused as much as $250 billion in estimated damage. Record-high surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico strengthened both storms before they reached Florida. "The heat that human activities are adding to the atmosphere and oceans is like steroids for hurricanes," says Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist at Climate Central, a nonprofit research group in Princeton, N.J.

Average temperatures worldwide have been rising for decades, an environmental and economic danger linked to emissions from burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas). Helene and Milton should serve "as a wake-up call" for emergency preparedness, resilience planning and the decreased use of fossil fuels, says Kim Cobb, director of a Brown University Institute for Environment and Society in Providence, R.I. "Additional warming that we know will occur over the next 10 or 20 years will even worsen the statistics of hurricanes," she added, "and we will break new records."

Evacuee says: "We're all in the same boat, and the boat is flooding." -- Chris Granson Sr., 74, who evacuated from a barrier island off Clearwater, Fla.

Author says: "Heat accumulating in the ocean from global warming will make tropical cyclones last longer than they once did and occasionally move slower, making damage many times worse." – Porter Fox, who wrote "Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them"

Climate researcher says: "We still have control over what trajectory this goes in as to what risks we face in the future, what costs we pay in the future. That just hinges on how we change our energy systems and how many more fossil fuels we burn."” -- Ben Clarke, an extreme weather and climate change scholar at Imperial College London

Front Page Talking Points Archive

Common Core State Standard
SL.CCS.1/2/3/4 Grades 6-12: An essay of a current news event is provided for discussion to encourage participation, but also inspire the use of evidence to support logical claims using the main ideas of the article. Students must analyze background information provided about a current event within the news, draw out the main ideas and key details, and review different opinions on the issue. Then, students should present their own claims using facts and analysis for support.