(The Hill) — A new study released Wednesday found that climate change intensified recent hurricanes by 18 mph.
The study, titled “Human-caused ocean warming has intensified recent hurricanes,” was published in the journal, “Environmental Research: Climate.”
It found human-driven shifts have already driven changes in 84 percent of hurricane intensities and noted that storms between the 2019 to 2023 seasons were an average of 8.3 meters per second faster than they would have been in a world without climate change.
The team studied 38 hurricanes and discovered their intense impacts are rapidly increasing.
Thirty-two of the 38 storms studied were bolstered by a significant rise in sea-surface temperature.
Tropical cyclones develop over warm oceans and are fueled by heat. In 2023, human-induced global warming spiked the Earth’s climate by 1.1 degrees C, spurring more natural disasters on the planet than ever before according to the World Resources Institute.
Within the past year, flooding, cyclones, wildfires and tropical cyclones have steadily increased.
“The behavior and results from this rapid attribution framework are illustrated with observed storms from five recent hurricane seasons, 2019–2023,” the study’s authors wrote.
“The resulting attributable intensity changes at the location and times of storm lifetime maximums indicate that there are robust and detectable SST-warming influences on recent observed North Atlantic hurricane intensities—a trend expected to continue in the hurricane seasons to come.”
