AccuWeather Forecasting Senior Director Dan DePodwin and AccuWeather Climate Expert Brett Anderson discuss the top headlines related to climate change in the May 23 edition of Climate In The News
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00:00We're covering a couple of interesting climate stories today. We'll start with how climate change is impacting hurricanes and then shift towards how it's impacting wildfires around the world.
00:09Brett, our first story from the journal Nature, how hurricane risk is changing due to climate change. And there's a lot of uncertainty here with how climate change is impacting different facets or parts of hurricanes, precipitation, wind intensity, the frequency of these storms.
00:23Yeah, we're not necessarily seeing more storms, but many other variables that we're seeing changes with. One of those is rainfall, heavier rainfall due to slower moving storms. Also, warmer waters provide more moisture for these storms, more energy for these storms. That's one thing we're noticing. Wind speeds are increasing, also a reflection of the warmer water providing more energy.
00:44One thing I found interesting, too, was that the coastal flooding risk, we think about sea level rise as being the significant contributor to coastal flooding and more coastal flooding from storms, but also some land is actually sinking, and therefore the risk of sea level rise is different depending on where you are in the world.
00:59Exactly. Much of the east coast, especially the southeast coast, is sinking, and that combined with the sea level rise really making a big difference. Whereas you go to the west coast, especially the Pacific Northwest in Alaska, the land is actually rising, so the relative sea level rise is much less.
01:14So the frequency of these storms, that change due to climate change is a bit unclear. What do we know about the track of these storms and the intensity along that track?
01:23Yeah, we're seeing a poleward shift in the track of storms, especially when they reach a maximum intensity. So storms reach category 3, 4, 5 are located more north now than they were 30, 40 years ago, which is a big deal because we have more population as we go farther north, especially in the United States.
01:41And so certainly a significant impact. In fact, a quarter of all the insured losses since 1980 are due to hurricanes when you look at all extreme weather events.
01:50Turning to our second story from The Economist, which parts of the world are becoming more prone to wildfires?
01:55Fire seasons are longer, closer to the equator, Brett, because that's where the conditions are more favorable, longer during the year.
02:01But summer is starting earlier and ending later in a lot of the other parts of the world, too.
02:06Yeah, so that's increasing the fire season, unfortunately, in many areas of seeing an additional 14-year days, I should say, compared to 40 years ago of the fire season.
02:16Extreme fire days also have increased about 54 percent since 1979. So that's very significant.
02:23And are there certain parts of the world where we're seeing this change in fire season happening more than other parts of the world?
02:28Yeah, in the far north, northern latitudes, especially northern Canada, Alaska, the fire season growing.
02:35Part of the reason for that, the warming world means more vegetation in areas that typically do not have a lot of vegetation.
02:40So with more vegetation, these areas that typically dry, especially during the winter season, dries out very quickly, bigger fires.
02:48So more wildfires, or at least more of a wildfire season due to a changing climate.
02:54Thank you, Brett, for those insights. For other stories about climate, you can find that at accuweather.com slash climate.