The proportion of hurricanes that fall into the more intense Categories 4 and 5 are expected to increase as the planet heats up, according to the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations' climate science authority.
“These hurricanes are getting bigger and stronger and that is due to simple energy transfer,” Claudia Benitez-Nelson, a climate scientist at the University of South Carolina, told The Hill.
This is expected to continue and worsen as the planet heats up.
While estimates of just how much worse this will get can vary, if the planet warms by about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels, there could be about a 5 percent increase in a hurricane’s maximum wind speeds, according to Tom Knutson, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab.
Benitez-Nelson also noted that climate change is causing hurricanes to intensify more quickly, potentially giving people less time to prepare.
Hurricane Helene went from a Category 1 storm to a Category 4 in less than a day amid unusually warm ocean temperatures.
In addition to increased wind speeds, Knutson noted that climate change is also likely causing more rainfall to occur during hurricanes.
He added that modeling shows every degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in the regional sea surface temperatures where the hurricane is leads to an average of 7 percent more rainfall.
Beyond climate change’s own impacts on hurricanes, these storms can combine with other climate impacts like sea level rise to bring about more damage.
“Our ocean has been rising, and so, of course it has an impact when a hurricane comes along because now the height of your water is already higher and then you've got the storm surge on top of that,” said Jennifer Collins, a professor at the University of South Florida’s school of geosciences.
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