Hurricane Melissa’s path through the Caribbean last month was made more violent by climate change, according to a scientific analysis released Thursday.
Researchers from the group World Weather Attribution found that the storm had 7 percent stronger wind speeds than a similar one in a world that has not been warmed by the burning of fossil fuels. They also found the rate of rainfall inside the eyewall of the storm was 16 percent more intense.
Melissa made landfall as a Category 5 storm in Jamaica on Oct. 28 with wind speeds of 185 miles per hour, collapsing buildings and knocking out internet to most of the island. It continued on to Cuba as a Category 3 storm, forcing hundreds to evacuate, and pummeled Haiti with catastrophic flooding. Dozens of people in hard-hit areas have died.
Even a small increase in wind speed can cause substantial damage, said Friederike Otto, one of the group’s founders and a climatologist at Imperial College London. While the economic toll of Melissa is still unfolding, Dr. Otto estimated that the increase in wind speed may have added more than one billion dollars in additional damages. For a country with a small gross domestic product, that is a “huge percentage of the damages,” she said.
Since World Weather Attribution was founded in 2014, it has published more than 100 studies that quickly link the impact of global warming to heat waves, drought, wildfires and storms. It has found that other damaging storms, like Hurricane Helene and Milton last year, were more intense and devastating because of climate change.
Climate change “absolutely has its ‘finger on the scale,’ but that doesn’t automatically mean all hurricanes will become powerful,” said Brian McNoldy, a senior researcher of atmospheric science at the University of Miami. Rather, an average storm is more likely to encounter factors that help it intensify, he said.
The frequency of hurricanes may actually be decreasing as the climate warms, according to a 2022 study. But those that do form are more likely to become extreme, according to the United Nations’ leading climate report.
Hurricanes draw energy from ocean heat. Melissa formed in the central Caribbean, where temperatures were 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than usual. The analysis found that climate change made these temperatures, and the humidity that helped Melissa intensify, six times more likely.
“It is very clear that the oceans have warmed in recent decades due to climate change,” said Mr. McNoldy. “All other things being equal, that would act to enhance hurricane activity.”
Hurricanes born in hot ocean waters are also more likely to rapidly intensify, a designation that means a storm’s sustained wind speeds jumped by 35 miles per hour, or roughly equivalent to two storm categories, in 24 hours. Melissa’s wind speeds doubled in less than a day and raced through multiple categories over a weekend.
Heat in the atmosphere matters, too. Each degree of Celsius warming can cause the air to hold 7 percent more moisture. Almost like a giant sponge being wrung out, this means hurricanes can carry larger cargoes of rain that can be dumped on areas they pass over.
The mountainous regions of Jamaica received a staggering amount of rain that triggered landslides. In Black River, a community in Southwestern Jamaica, critically important hospitals and firehouses were overwhelmed by the floods.
The immense damage from Melissa was made worse because some areas of Jamaica and Cuba were still recovering from last year’s hurricanes, Beryl and Oscar, said Roop Singh, a climate specialist with the Red Cross and one of the report’s authors. “These types of back-to-back shocks make it harder for people to fully recover,” she said. “The full picture is still unraveling as people reach communities that have been cut off by flooding and landslides.”
The Caribbean is the world’s most exposed region to climate-fueled disasters, according to the International Monetary Fund. The WWA analysis comes as business and government leaders are preparing to meet for annual global climate talks in Brazil.
There, a main focus for a United Nations group of small island nations that includes Jamaica will be to call for more funding from rich nations to help more vulnerable nations adapt, according to Kishan Khoday, who represents the United Nations Development Program in Jamaica.
Melissa was one of three Category 5 hurricanes to form this year, which has seen 13 named storms so far. The first two weeks of September, the typical peak of the Hurricane season, saw no tropical cyclone activity.
Sachi Kitajima Mulkey covers climate and the environment for The Times.
The post Global Warning Made Hurricane Melissa More Damaging, Researchers Say appeared first on New York Times.
