Hurricane Helene is heading for Florida's northwest coast as it rapidly intensifies.
"Rapid intensification" is a technical term meaning a tropical cyclone is strengthening dramatically in a short period of time.
WUSF's Jessica Meszaros spoke to Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami, about that phenomenon and other storm impacts from a warming climate.
Why are we hearing more about [rapid intensification] now?
There are published papers that have shown that there are more instances, a higher frequency of rapid intensification now. So, although our observing technology is improving, I wouldn't say it's improving to account for that change in frequency. I mean, we still just fly airplanes through storms and measure winds that way, and you know, there hasn't been some amazing breakthrough recently to say that we can all of a sudden see everything.
So, I think there is a real trend in rapid intensification frequency. And one of the primary suspects to that is just a warming ocean that plays a role in the likelihood of rapid intensification. And climate change: It's hard to pinpoint any exact year. It's not like each year is sequentially warmer than the last. There are still ups and downs, but the overall trend is upward, and climate change is warming the oceans. There is not a debate about that.
Have you noticed any trends in storms recently, in terms of like, how frequently they come around, or how quick they move, or intensity?
That has been a lot harder of a nut to crack, I guess. Long-term trends are pretty hard to come by because our record is not uniform, going back a lot of years. So that complicates looking for trends when the thing you're measuring has not always been measured the same.
But from what we have, I don't think there are really strong trends in storm count or storm intensities, yet. What we might expect — at least some people who have looked at this would project that — in a warming climate, we might not actually have as many storms, but the storms that do form could become more intense. Now, we haven't really seen that completely work itself out in the real world yet, but maybe we will.
So, talking about warming oceans and climate change, is there any evidence that you know of to suggest that climate change is impacting storms?
The largest effects of climate change that we seem to be seeing on tropical cyclones so far, is one: that increased frequency of rapid intensification that we talked about, and the other one that is really important, but not maybe doesn't get as much attention, is just the heavier rainfall that comes out of hurricanes and tropical storms and tropical depressions, in general.
So, a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture — you can get more rain that way. A warmer ocean is able to evaporate more moisture into the air. There's just all sorts of compounding effects that hurricanes can dump more rain now than they used to.
