Hurricanes are getting stronger according to study

Dr. Daniel Gilford of Climate Central reports to AccuWeather that the long-term effects of the environment are leading to stronger hurricanes.

Transcript

00:00We know that the 2024 hurricane season has been powerful, and a new study from Climate Central

00:06is finding reasons why recent hurricanes are strengthening more than previous hurricanes.

00:11Dr. Daniel Gifford is a climate scientist with Climate Central and the lead author of this study.

00:18Daniel, thanks for being with us. And why have storms that gain hurricane strength been growing

00:23stronger? What has your study found? We know that the record temperatures that are out there

00:28in the North Atlantic Ocean are just sweltering. The sea surfaces are higher than they've ever been

00:35in the last few years. And associated with that, we're seeing an increase in hurricane intensity.

00:40Now, our study has shown that hurricanes are a lot like heat engines. They need some fuel

00:45source in order to spin quickly. And their fuel source is the sea surface temperatures.

00:50So as climate change occurs, and the temperature of the planet goes up,

00:54the temperature of these sea surfaces also goes up. And these hurricanes see that,

00:58they can bump up the intensity at which they can spin associated with the sea surface temperature.

01:03So these warmer waters are leading to more intense storms. That's what our study is finding.

01:08And as far as your study is concerned, how can faster wind speeds

01:12alter the categories of the hurricanes? And what's influencing this change?

01:17Yeah, so over an analysis over the last five to six years, we find

01:22that hurricanes in general are on average increasing by about a category

01:26due to human-caused ocean warming. This means that a Category 3 storm would probably be a

01:33Category 2 storm in a world without climate change. And this matters a lot for damages,

01:38because we know the amount of damage scales with the wind speed, sometimes maybe up to the cube,

01:44or even more of the wind speed. So increases in wind speed will lead to increases in damages

01:49that communities all around the coastlines around the world could be feeling from these

01:54increasing intensities. And we know that your study looked up hurricanes up to last year into

01:59the 2023 season, but you have also looked at this year's hurricane season too. What did you find?

02:04That's right. So there's two storms that we had that were Category 5 storms, Hurricane Barrel

02:09and Milton. These storms wouldn't have been Category 5 storms, they would have been Category

02:144 storms in a world without climate change. We also found that Hurricane Raphael, which took

02:18place just a couple weeks ago in November, which is a very late Category 3 storm, would have

02:23actually been a Category 1 without human-caused climate change. So the influences are very strong.

02:27Of course, that storm had a lot of damage in the region around Cuba. So we know that these storms

02:32on a day-to-day basis out there in the Atlantic right now are being influenced by human-caused

02:38climate change. So the time to act on climate change is also now. Dr. Daniel Guilford is a

02:44climate scientist with Climate Central. Thank you so much for joining us today, sir.

02:48Thank you so much for having me.