September is disaster preparedness month, so let’s add hurricanes to the list of monthly climate issues, including border security, air pollution, flooding, infrastructure, mental health, rising seas, food security and disease.
Wind is primarily caused by temperature differences and the earth’s rotation. As heat rises globally due to carbon pollution, some areas actually experience less wind as temperature differences disappear. But as more energy is being trapped in our atmosphere, storms still strengthen. There are many different types of windstorms around the world, including cyclones, dust storms, firestorms, hurricanes, monsoons, the polar vortex, the roaring 40s, tornadoes, tropical storms, and typhoons. Climate science predicts increasingly more dangerous storms in the future, and there are signs that is happening already.
In the North Atlantic Ocean, the inflation-adjusted costs of Atlantic hurricanes increased tenfold from the 1980s to the 2010s. While every year is different, the trend by decade over the past century shows increasingly more hurricanes and more severe hurricanes. In the 1920-40s we had fewer than 3 category 5 hurricanes per decade. In the 1950s-1970s we had over 3. In the 1980s-2000s we had over 4. And we are currently on track to have over 5 category 5 hurricanes per decade.
This year’s North Atlantic hurricane season is being temporarily suppressed by high altitude winds as the world prepares for an unprecedented El Niño. But the Pacific is now seeing more hurricanes and typhoons than usual. Globally, scientists have been studying historical and current storm trends, analyzing the rise of deadly storms around the world. But in the US, climate science has been cut by the current administration. So far, Congress has not been able to pass a new budget that would include 40% cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but thousands of NOAA and related jobs were eliminated by other cuts. Climate research has been specifically targeted, including climate databases, federal grants, hurricane tracking at the National Weather Service, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, ocean temperature buoys, the Oceanic & Atmospheric Research Office, research labs, and weather balloons.
Despite an ignorant, incorrect, minority political view, the climate crisis is worsening. Cutting hurricane research risks lives, increases property damage and insurance costs, reduces the effectiveness of evacuation warnings, and misleads the public about a growing threat to public safety. Blinding ourselves only makes us more vulnerable.
