“We are undoubtedly on the brink of a global emergency. Much of life on Earth is at risk. We are entering a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.”
So begins the report on the state of the climate in 2024 led by two researchers from Oregon State University, William J. Ripple and Christopher Wolf, published this Tuesday, as Hurricane Milton was about to make landfall in the United States -United.
This first paragraph seemed to predict its arrival and fits perfectly with the prediction of the mayor of Tampa, the epicenter of the hurricane’s destruction in Florida: “If you stay, you will die“.
More than five million people are being evacuated due to the hurricane, which is expected to be the most devastating in a century. The country’s president, Joe Biden, was blunt: “It’s a matter of life and death.”
Such strong statements may raise eyebrows among skeptics – not deniers – about the effects of climate change, but meteorologists have no doubt that this is what is driving the increased frequency and intensity of climate change. cyclones in recent years.
Because global warming does not activate these phenomena but creates the ideal conditions for them to explode.
“What climate change is telling us right now is that the temperature of the atmosphere is going to increase. That means more energy and more humidity, because these systems are hyperloaded with humidity,” he explains. Francisco MartinWeather forecaster.
“It’s premium hurricane fuel.”
You just need something to light the fuse. “You need ingredients like instability, ascending currents, a suitable environment… If this doesn’t happen, nothing will happen, like what happened in Septemberwhen everyone expected a lot of activity and nothing happened.
September is typically the most intense month for hurricanes, when sea surface temperatures remain high. “But there is a lot of heat stored for the month of October, record seawater temperatures are being reached in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Los huracanes Helene y Milton son hijos de ese calor almacenado producto del cambio climático.
Un análisis de la iniciativa científica Climate Central subraya que el cambio climático hace entre 400 y 800 veces más probable un aumento de la temperatura de la superficie oceánica en las últimas dos semanas (fuera de la época fuerte de huracanes).
“El cambio climático calentó de forma clara las aguas del Golfo [de México] who favored the development of Milton, likely “supercharge” its rapid intensification and make this hurricane much more dangerous“, says Climate Central meteorologist Daniel Gilford.
Milton went from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane, the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale, in 24 hours. This type of phenomenon is known as “rapid intensification” and is defined when the maximum sustained wind speed increases by at least 56.3 kilometers per hour over a 24-hour period.
Milton almost tripled this figure, from 129 to 282 kilometers per hour between October 6 and 7.
Extreme rain and winds
“This hurricane will go down in the history books,” emphasizes Francisco Martín. “This is something extraordinary, it has never been seen in the Gulf since we had modern data in 1966. Super typhoons have occurred in the Pacific but in the Atlantic I have no reference.”
Milton isn’t the only hurricane to wreak havoc over the past month. Work from World Weather Attribution, an initiative made up of climate experts from around the world, highlights that climate change is the main driver of Helene’s catastrophic impact: 227 dead and several million people without electricitythe most devastating hurricane since Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005.
“The influence of climate change on tropical cyclones is more complex than that of other types of extreme weather events, since their impact is due to both torrential rains and extreme winds,” they point out.
However, they attribute between 40 and 70% of this impact to the current climate, which is 1.3°C warmer than pre-industrial levels, “mainly due to the consumption of fossil fuels.”
Statistically, climate change is responsible for a 150% increase in the number of intense storms, going from one every 130 years to one every 53 years.
“Esto va en la línea de otros hallazgos científicos [que indican] “Atlantic tropical cyclones are becoming wetter due to climate change and experiencing rapid intensification,” they point out.
Meteorologist Francisco Martín points out that this increase in intensity has been observed in recent years. “We won’t know if there will be more or fewer hurricanes, but they will be very intense.“.
And it comes back to Milton: “Not only is this going to be extremely destructive in itself, but the storm surge is going to coincide with a high tide and sea levels may rise by three to six meters. This is something unimaginable in Tampa Bay. . “Once every hundred years.”
