Climate change’s impacts on extreme weather and society are becoming increasingly clear and undeniable. While we are making progress in solving the problem, we’re still moving too slowly, and one of the two political parties governing the world’s strongest superpower continues to deny the science. This led astrophysicist Katie Mack to make the following suggestion, related to a common refrain from Donald Trump and Republican Party leaders:
Global warming intensified Hurricane Matthew
Hurricane Matthew set a number of records. Its record-breaking rainfall and storm surge caused historic flooding and destructive winds along the coasts of Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia. Hillary Clinton touched upon the science linking global warming and hurricane impacts in a recent speech in Florida:
At Climate Progress, Joe Romm summarized the various ways in which global warming makes hurricanes like Matthew more intense:
- Hotter sea surface and upper ocean temperatures fuel hurricanes, leading to more of the strongest (Category 4 and 5) storms.
- Hotter ocean temperatures also cause more rapid intensification of hurricanes, and the most intense storms are those that undergo rapid intensification.
- Global warming causes sea level rise, which creates larger storm surges and thus worse flooding.
- Global warming also adds more water vapor to the atmosphere, which causes more intense rainfall and exacerbates flooding.
In short, global warming made Hurricane Matthew and its impacts more severe, and will lead to more such devastating hurricanes in the future.
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