by Peter Sinclair
This is Not Cool, October 18, 2024
After the last three weeks, it should be clear to everyone that hurricanes and storms in a climate-altered world are different and much more dangerous threats than what humanity has dealt with historically.
The Smoky Mountain region is still counting up damages from massive Hurricane Helene, that drove from the Gulf of Mexico, deep into the heartland, delivering 42 trillion gallons of water to mountain terrain already saturated from previous storms, hydraulically pulverizing billions of dollars of infrastructure, businesses, and homes.
For comparison, the previous flood of record in the area was in 1916, when, according to Accuweather, “The Swannanoa River at Biltmore rose to 21.70 feet, a record that stood for more than 100 years, until Helene sent it to 26.10 feet, breaking that record by 5 feet.”
Accuweather estimated Helene’s damages at $250 billion or more. Milton, which quickly followed, added another $50 – $100 billion in still-spiraling damage estimates.
Basic physics describes the factors that are turbocharging storms in a warmer world.
First, a warming atmosphere holds more moisture, which is latent energy for storms. Hot ocean waters are also like gasoline for hurricanes.
At the beginning of this past summer, meteorologists warned about the implications of record warm sea surface temperatures for potential storms. After a strong start to this hurricane season, conditions turned sour for storm development in the Atlantic, suppressing hurricanes thru July and August.
But the heat and water vapor were still there, and physics will always find a way.
In June, for example, a saturated tropical depression dropped 13 inches of rain on South Florida. Hurricane Beryl came ashore in Texas, drifted northeast and triggered a flooding disaster in Northern Vermont, exactly one year after a similar flood catastrophe. In September, a blob of clouds too disorganized to even have a name dropped “500 year” rains on the coastal Carolinas.
In a warmed world, we don’t need a major hurricane to see major hurricane damages.
We don’t have to live on the beach to suffer enormous hurricane impacts.
Second, hot ocean waters favor “Rapid Intensification”– storms which explode from tropical depressions to major hurricanes at frightening speed. For example, in October 2023, Pacific Hurricane Otis winds intensified by 100 mph in 24 hours, hitting Acapulco with almost no warning as the first Category 5 ever to make landfall on Mexico’s Pacific coast.
Milton over performed all predictions with its rapid intensification in the Gulf.
Storms that rapidly intensify make it much harder for authorities to prepare and issue proper warnings – increasing impacts, damages, and deaths.
Third, a warmer climate increases hurricane wind speeds. According to Meteorologist Jeff Masters, even a small percentage increase in wind speeds translates into much greater damage potential. One NOAA estimate suggests that, “a Category 2 hurricane with 100 mph winds will do 10 times the damage of a Category 1 hurricane with 75 mph winds.”
Fourth, all hurricanes today are riding on a higher sea level, which makes storm surges more damaging, and is a bigger threat to infrastructure, homes and businesses built for a different time, literally a different planet.
Additionally, a new peer reviewed study in the journal Nature shows that more cyclone are making landfall with major intensity, while yet another study shows an increasing trend in storms that land as a 1-2 punch, like Helene and Milton just demonstrated.
Climate is not just changing, it HAS changed, yet our thinking has not kept up.
We live now in a world where historical assumptions no longer hold – and the changes are going to keep coming.
The Washington Post reports this week on a harsh new reality – “Climate calamities are becoming more frequent, deadly and costly in a country already facing massive fiscal challenges.”
The Post quotes Mark Zandi, Chief economist of Moody’s analytics, “I think the cost of climate [change] is increasingly a threat to our already very fragile fiscal outlook,” – when we factor in “tens of billions or hundreds of billions more each year to help mitigate the fallout of climate events, the outlook looks even darker.”
No society can deal with a problem it is unwilling to recognize and name. Our politics has been paralyzed by a highly effective, 40-year campaign by fossil fuel interests to degrade Americans’ confidence in the scientific and engineering authorities that are the very foundation of our prosperity and global leadership.
Solutions, in the form of clean, carbon free energy, are at hand, and as we have seen in Midland and surrounding counties, immediately improve quality of life in hosting communities by massively increasing tax revenues, adding resilience to electric grids, and stabilizing family farm incomes, while they help insure a viable and sustainable future for our children and generations to come.
Reposted with permission, from This is Not Cool, October 18, 2024. Peter Sinclair is a videographer specializing in Climate Change and renewable energy. He produces the video series “This is Not Cool” for Yale Climate Connections. and has produced more than a hundred videos in the series “Climate Denial Crock of the Week.”
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