Climate Reality reports:

Carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas is warming our planet and driving climate change. It’s throwing natural systems out of balance – to often devastating effect.

One result among many is that average global sea surface temperatures are rising – and when sea surface temperatures become warmer, hurricanes can become more powerful.

“For a long time, we’ve understood, based on pretty simple physics, that as you warm the ocean’s surface, you’re going to get more intense hurricanes. Whether you get more hurricanes or fewer hurricanes, the strongest storms will tend to become stronger,” Dr. Michael Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University and author of The Hockey Stick and The Climate Wars and The Madhouse Effect, explained to Climate Reality.

“Empirical studies show that there’s a roughly 10-mile-per-hour increase in sustained peak winds in Cat 5-level storms for each degree Fahrenheit of warming.”

Warmer oceans – especially deep ocean waters – can also allow storms to intensify quickly. So a once-relatively weak storm can cross the right stretch of (warm) water and become a major hurricane in a matter of hours.

With storms and forecasts changing fast, people can be under-prepared for the true intensity of the actual hurricane that makes landfall, potentially resulting in greater damage and even loss of life.

But looking at increases in sustained wind speed alone doesn’t paint the full picture of a storm’s destructive potential. A hurricane is more than just its winds – it’s a major rainfall event accompanied by dangerous storm surge. [Continue reading…]