Weather Insider: Climate change is making hurricanes more intense

Earlier today, a groundbreaking study was released that officially linked climate change to increased intensity of hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin (Nothern Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico). The authors found that all 11 hurricanes this year had intensified by somewhere between 9 and 28 miles per hour. In most cases, this was enough to bump the respective storms up a category on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. They also found that, on average, storms over the last 5 years have been one category stronger than they would have been without the impact of climate change.

They found this by combining observational and model data to simulate what conditions would have been had the extra warming from climate change never happened. Ocean waters were more than 2°F warmer this season than they would have been without climate change. As a reminder, warm ocean waters are the fuel for tropical cyclones, the warmer temperatures translate to more energy in the hurricanes. That extra energy is released in the form of stronger, more intense winds.

You can learn more here: https://www.climatecentral.org/report/2024-hurricane-attribution