Powerful storm sweeps into Georgia after hit Florida coast
More Hurricanes as the Climate Warms: Why Do More Storms Slide Into More Atmospheres and Why Do We Need More Water?
As Earth’s climate warms, more storms are intensifying quickly, growing from weak tropical storms to Category 3 or higher hurricanes in under 24 hours, sometimes stunning forecasters and giving residents little time to prepare.
There are 5. More swings in fortune. According to researchers, storms will intensify as the climate warms. They are unsure of why it is happening, but the trend appears to be clear.
There is a “migration of tropical cyclones out of the tropics and toward subtropics and middle latitudes,” Dr. Kossin said. That could mean more storms making landfall in 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. The water will not have a chance to start pooling if you walk fast. He said if you walk slowly you will get lots of rain.
In his paper, Dr. Kossin wrote that hurricanes over the US had slowed 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.
-
Slower storms. Researchers do not yet know why storms are moving more slowly, but they are. Some say the global winds may be to blame.
-
There is more rain. Warming also increases the amount of water vapor that the atmosphere can hold. In fact, every degree Celsius of warming allows the air to hold about 7 percent more water.
Climate Change Is Making It More Likely For A Category 4 Hurricane To Be a Major Storm, Dr. Corresponding Professor Kerry Emanuel
According to the National Hurricane Center, rapid intensification describes an increase in the sustained maximum winds over a 24 hour period. The likelihood of a hurricanes becoming a major storm has increased from 1 percent in the 1980s to 5 percent today.
“Potential intensity is going up,” said Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We predicted 30 years ago that it would go 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.”
The window of time to make a decision gets smaller, Dr. Emanuel said. For example, if officials, working with forecasters, issue an evacuation order too early, then they risk unnecessarily sending hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, scrambling, jamming highways and snarling transit systems. In some cases, that could be more dangerous, disruptive and costly than staying in place.
The Tropical Category 4 Hurricane Idalia: Landfall, Power Outage and Flooding in Tallahassee During the Strong Outage Event
Hurricane Idalia was upgraded to a category 4 storm as it moved toward the Gulf Coast. It has wind speeds of 130 miles an hour and is expected to make landfall around 8 a.m Eastern, bringing catastrophic waves and potentially submerging the coast in up to 16 feet of flooding. You can track the storm’s path here.
Florida has a long peninsula and Panhandle which will make for the strongest part of the storm. Governors in Georgia and the Carolinas declared states of emergency because of concerns about tornadoes and heavy rains, despite the fact that the region is not very populated.
More than 50,000 customers in Florida are already without power. Tallahassee is preparing for outages that could last days, expecting its strongest storm in decades.
More than five thousand soldiers and airmen from the Florida National Guard have either deployed or are currently deployed, and help from as far away as California is coming.
Communities along hundreds of miles of coastline boarded up windows, sandbagged buildings and emptied grocery store shelves of water. Many people have fled Cedar Key, an island city that is home to roughly 700 people. “My family has been here for many generations,” said the mayor, Heath Davis. We have never seen a storm like this before.
