Hurricane Ian was still heading toward Florida on September 27 when CNN anchor Don Lemon asked one of the country’s leading meteorologists a question about climate change.
“Can you tell us what this is and what is the impact of climate change on this phenomenon?” asked Lemon as Acting National Hurricane Center Administrator Jimmy Romy stood in front of a screen displaying swirling graphics of the Category 4 storm that swept through the Gulf of Mexico.
“We can go back and talk about climate change later,” Rohm replied. “I want to focus on the here and now.” He then returned to his screen to see what he described as a second eye wall forming around the inner eye wall.
Lemon looked dissatisfied: “You said you wanted to talk about climate change, but what is the impact of climate change on this phenomenon that is happening now,” he asked again. “Because it looks like these storms are getting bigger.”
“I don’t think you can link climate change to any one event,” Rohm replied. “Cumulatively, climate change may make storms worse, but to tie them to any single event, I would caution against that.”
Lemon, who is from Louisiana, replied, “Listen, I grew up there. These storms are getting worse. Something is making them intensify.”
The exchange He caused some uproar with critics, who suggested that Lemon was pushing the climate change agenda. Twitter Users And the Both news outlets joined in.
It is amazing. Don Lemon tries to blame Hurricane Ian for climate change. NOAA’s director of hurricanes shut it down. pic.twitter.com/svTjHtE8hl
– Alex Pfeiffer (@__Pfeiffer) September 28, 2022
But it does seem to clarify a common question – one that takes longer to explain than Lemon or Rohme asked.
So PolitiFact has taken this question (and many others) to the experts.
Hurricanes form when moist air over warm ocean waters flows upward, creating clouds of water that are released by the air, according to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. Air circulates as it rises, growing as warm ocean water and warm, moist air nourishes it.
The more warm the air, and the warmer the ocean waters, the stronger the hurricane.
Hurricanes occurred before the climate crisis. Climate scientists say it is difficult to say how much climate change will affect them on a brief point of discussion.
“The problem is like having a grandfather who died of lung cancer and smoked two packs a day,” Keri Emanuel, a climatologist specializing in hurricane physics at MIT, wrote in an email. “You could say that smoking it increased his likelihood of developing cancer, but some people who never smoked still had lung cancer, and some who smoked heavily lived into their 90s.
“Climate change has increased the likelihood of high-speed storms like Ian.”
However, the science is complex, as described by Phil Klotzbach, senior researcher in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University.
“The relationship between hurricanes and climate change is the subject of strong scientific debate,” Klotsbach wrote in an email. “If you were to email some of my colleagues, they might give you a somewhat different opinion than I would give you, highlighting the uncertainty we still have about the relationship.”
A consensus paper published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in 2019 did not yield a clear “yes” or “no” answer about the extent to which human-caused climate change affects the frequency and intensity of hurricanes.
Klotzbach also said climate change is raising sea levels and increasing the air’s ability to hold moisture, which means storms are penetrating inland and producing more rain. But then, warmer temperatures can stabilize the atmosphere and reduce the intensity of a hurricane, and many other factors are still being studied.
NOAA has published a page of resources and discussions about the potential links between climate change and hurricanes. A representative from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) also noted that “the NHC’s acting director has clearly stated that ‘on the whole, on the whole, climate change may exacerbate storms.'” This is supported by the very clear science about what climate change means for storms like Ian in general…” in an email to Time.
Yes and no.
Global hurricane numbers and cumulative hurricane energy have fallen dramatically since 1990, according to a 2022 research paper in Geophysical Research Letters. But the so-called short-lived storms and the phenomena of extremely rapid intensification have increased.
The 2022 paper reports that hurricane damage has also increased. Part of the reason, Klotzbach said, is that there are “more people and property in the way of damage,” noting that the population in Fort Myers, southwest Florida, has increased dramatically over the years.
Mark Borassa, professor of meteorology in the Department of Earth, Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Florida State University’s Center for Oceanic and Atmospheric Prediction Studies, corroborates Rohm’s statement.
“The statement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is true that it is statistically impossible for hurricane researchers to attribute any single event to climate change,” he wrote in an email. “There is a lot of variation in hurricane strength that we don’t understand. This likely overshadows Variation on climate change signal”.
In short, hurricanes occur for a variety of reasons, with or without man-made climate change. No hurricane will ever be caused by just one thing, but many elements coming together – hence the phrase “perfect storm.”
Many of these are affected by climate change, and they may make storms of certain types and severity more common, but the science is still complex and sophisticated.
This article was originally published by PolitiFact, part of the Poynter Institute. It is republished here with permission. See the sources here and more news validations here.
from San Jose News Bulletin https://sjnewsbulletin.com/climate-change-is-not-the-only-cause-of-any-hurricane-but-it-may-affect-them/
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