Powerful storm sweeps into Georgia after hitting Florida

Climate, Hurricanes, and Flooding: How Tropical Cyclones Are Slowed and Wetter Compared to Hurricanes in the United States

In a 2017 paper based on climate and hurricane models, Dr. Emanuel wrote that storms that intensify rapidly — the ones whose wind speed increases by 70 miles per hour or more in the 24 hours before landfall — were rare from 1976 through 2005. Their likelihood in those years was equal to about one per century on average.

Researchers are unsure about whether human-caused climate change will mean longer or more active hurricane seasons in the future, but there is broad agreement on one thing: Global warming is changing storms.

There is a “migration of tropical cyclones out of the tropics and toward subtropics and middle latitudes,” Dr. Kossin said. More storms could hit higher latitudes, like in the United States and Japan.

Slower, wetter storms also worsen flooding. Dr. Kossin likened the problem to walking around your back yard while using a hose to spray water on the ground. If you walk fast, the water won’t have a chance to start pooling. But if you walk slowly, he said, “you’ll get a lot of rain below you.”

According to Dr. Kossin’s paper, hurricanes have slowed 17 percent since 1947. Combined with the increase in rain rates, storms are causing a 25 percent increase in local rainfall in the United States, he said.

  1. Slower storms. Storms are moving more slowly but researchers don’t know why. Some say a slowdown in global atmospheric circulation, or global winds, could be partly to blame.

  2. There was more rain. Warming also increases the amount of water vapor that the atmosphere can hold. The air can hold 7 percent more water with every degree Celsius of warming.

Rapid intensification of hurricanes since 1980s: The possibility that climate change is driving the hurricanes on high-speed winds is accelerating up to 30 knots

Rapid intensification technically refers to an increase of at least 30 knots, or 35 m.p.h., in the maximum sustained winds over a 24-hour period, according to the National Hurricane Center. The researchers have found that the chance of a hurricanes rapid intensification has increased since the 1980s.

“Potential intensity is going up,” said Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We predicted it would go up 30 years ago, and the observations show it going up.”

“It’s very likely that human-caused climate change contributed to that anomalously warm ocean,” said James P. Kossin, a climate scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Climate change is making it more likely for hurricanes to behave in certain ways.”

“It’s a forecaster’s nightmare,” Dr. Emanuel said. If a tropical storm or Category 1 hurricane develops into a Category 4 hurricane overnight, he said, “there’s no time to evacuate people.”

There is less time to make a decision. If officials issue an emergency order too soon, they will have to send hundreds of thousands of people, jamming highways and snarling transit systems. In some cases, that could be more dangerous, disruptive and costly than staying in place.

Tropical Storm Idalia: The Florida coastline is going to get bigger, faster, safer and more active than before it gets out of the woods

With Idalia the first major Hurricane to threaten the U.S. mainland this Atlantic season, activity is expected to be more active. Climate change appears to have contributed to record-breaking ocean temperatures off the Florida coast.

More than half of Florida’s western coastline is at risk of life-threatening storm surges, as rising ocean water floods towns. “You’re not going to be able to survive that,” Gov. Ron DeSantis warned. Here are the latest updates:

In Florida, more than 50,000 customers are without power. Tallahassee is preparing for outages that could last days, expecting its strongest storm in decades.

The Florida National Guard is fully mobilized, with more than 55,000 soldiers and airmen either deployed or deploying, and help is coming from as far away as California.

Many communities along hundreds of miles of coastline emptied grocery store shelves of water and boarded up windows. Many people have left Cedar Key, a city with about 700 people. “My family has been here for many generations,” said the mayor, Heath Davis. “We haven’t seen a storm this bad, ever.”

Cyclones in US are travelling faster and are causing a 25% increase in local rainfall compared to hurricanes, a researcher said. The researchers called it “a forecaster’s nightmare”. “It’s very likely that human-caused climate change contributed to…unusually warm ocean,” the researcher said, adding, “Climate change is making it more likely for hurricanes to behave in certain ways.”