If we don’t act on climate change, the destruction potential of slow-moving storms such as Harvey and Florence will only get worse
Just a year ago we were dealing with an historically devastating Atlantic hurricane season. It was marked by the strongest Hurricane – Irma – ever observed in the open Atlantic, the near total devastation of Puerto Rico by a similarly powerful category 5 monster Maria, and Hurricane Harvey – the worst flooding event in US history. At the time, I commented here and elsewhere about the role climate change had played in amplifying the destructive characteristics of these storms.
Not to be outdone, the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season, initially predicted to be quiet – quelled by an incipient El Niño event and cool, early summer ocean waters – has suddenly erupted. If the current disturbance in the western Gulf of Mexico known as “95L” earns the status of tropical storm, the 2018 season will be the second time in recorded history that we’ve seen five tropical storms simultaneously present in the Atlantic basin (the last time was in 1971).
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2MqU5Al
via
0 Comments