Not Just Mother Nature: How Climate Change is Making Disasters Unnatural
What are hurricanes and how can climate change make them worse?
In the past two weeks, Hurricanes Helene and Milton made landfall in the United States, battering Florida, traveling inland to North Carolina, and leaving a trail of destruction that stretched all the way up to Kentucky. It may feel like damaging weather events are getting more intense — and the truth is, many of them are. Climate change is making the world hotter and making extreme weather more extreme.
Hurricanes often begin their life as tropical thunderstorms, absorbing warm, moist air over the ocean. The warm air is a source of energy, powering strong winds to rotate in a circle. When wind speeds reach 74 mph, the tropical storm becomes a hurricane.
While wind and rain are destructive, the most dangerous part of a hurricane is actually the storm surge. As the hurricane moves through the ocean, it pushes along with it a wall of water. Once it hits the shore, this wall of water can rise by 20 feet (6 meters) and travel 100 miles (161 kilometers) inland, causing ninety percent of hurricane deaths.
We know that climate change is making both land and oceans hotter. Record high sea surface temperatures (the temperature of the water closest to the ocean’s surface) were recorded in 2023 and data so far in 2024 show that global sea surface temperatures continue to break records.
Warmer water means more fuel for hurricanes, making dangerous storms more common. With more fuel, hurricanes can rapidly intensify, causing higher windspeeds, increased rainfall, and bigger storm surges. The results are devastating, and millions of people can be affected, losing their homes, livelihoods, and, for some, their lives.
How do we know what role climate change is playing in hurricane activity?
Scientists have developed powerful tools that provide almost real-time data and analysis unraveling the effects of climate change on extreme weather events. For example, an eight-step process developed by World Weather Attribution models whether an extreme weather event, such as a hurricane, would have occurred in the late 1800s, before the widespread use of fossil fuels. This method can determine how frequently an extreme weather event would have occurred, at similar intensity, without human-induced warming.
These scientists found that the intensity of Hurricane Helene was 18x more likely because of climate change. Hurricane Milton intensified faster than almost any Atlantic storm in history, driven by record-breaking temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. Thanks to extreme weather attribution, we can now link climate change directly to the intensification of wildfires in Canada, floods in Europe, and drought in the Amazon.
How do we advance extreme weather science and attribution?
The Bezos Earth Fund is proud to be working with grantees to expand attribution science and how it is communicated to the world. To advance the science of extreme weather attribution, we are partnering with World Weather Attribution and Climate Central. To spread communication of the results, we’re supporting the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and Global Strategic Communications Council. Through these partnerships, the Bezos Earth Fund hopes to empower individuals and organizations with data on the climate change driven extreme weather that directly impacts their lives.
It’s clear that extreme weather events, like Hurricanes Milton and Helene, are disastrous. And the loss of life and damage to communities is staggering. But one key message is getting lost. We need to call out these storms for what they are: not natural disasters, but unnatural climate disasters.
As extreme weather increases in intensity across the globe, we must face the undeniable truth that climate change escalates many of these events. The priority today is recovery, but tomorrow we must continue the work to make our communities more resilient and cut emissions. These storms are a stark reminder that the climate crisis is here and the need for collective action is now more critical than ever.
With thanks to Emily Dings for additional reporting contributions