How hurricanes like Milton may be supercharged by climate change
Scientists pointed fingers at climate change for the catastrophic impacts of last month's Hurricane Helene, just as Hurricane Milton was barreling toward Florida's Gulf Coast.
Hurricane Helene, which killed at least 227 people and left nearly 2 million people without power, formed in the Gulf of Mexico above record-high sea surface temperatures, a new report warned.
That temperature spike, which stirred up and strengthened the storm, was made 200-500 times more likely due to human-induced climate change, according to the report, published by the Imperial College of London.
The hurricane's heavy precipitation, combined with previous rainfall events, funneled water from steep terrain into rivers and streams — leading to what the authors described as "extremely sudden flash flooding."
The torrential conditions, which affected large portions of Georgia, western North and South Carolina, eastern Tennessee and Virginia, made evacuations impossible in many areas.
"Climate change is enhancing conditions conducive to the most powerful hurricanes like Helene, with more intense rainfall totals and wind speeds," the authors stated.
The scientists combined observations with climate models to determine that rainfall in both the coastal and inland regions was about 10 percent heavier because of climate change.
These results, the researchers stressed, were "in line with other scientific findings that Atlantic tropical cyclones are becoming wetter under climate change and undergoing more rapid intensification."
Just hours following the report on Helene's publication, Hurricane Milton was heading toward the Tampa Bay region, threatening inland Florida and its western coast.
As many as 5.9 million people were under evacuation orders, including the Tampa area's more than 3.3 million residents.
Welcome to The Hill’s Sustainability newsletter, I'm Sharon Udasin — every week we follow the latest moves in the growing battle over sustainability in the U.S. and around the world.
Hurricane Milton is set to make landfall late Wednesday or early Thursday in the Tampa, Fla., region after undergoing a rapid intensification this week that saw it become the third-fastest storm on record to reach Category 5 status, the most extreme classification on the hurricane scale. Less than two weeks earlier, Hurricane Helene escalated in a similarly short time span in the Gulf of Mexico …
Hurricanes Milton and Helene are exposing holes in the home insurance coverage that many Americans have leaned on for a sense of security in the face of natural disasters. Milton is currently headed for Tampa Bay, where — if the hurricane’s angle of approach is particularly unlucky — the shallow, gentle slope of the continental shelf and crescent shape of the bay could focus and amplify its power for a devastating assault on …
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The exodus of sperm whales from Mexico’s Gulf of California in response to jumbo squid population declines may be indicative of broader ecosystem instability, a new study has found. As apex marine predators, sperm whales are instrumental in controlling oceanic energy flow and can be a key barometer for marine health, according to the study, published on Tuesday in PeerJ Life and Environment. Over the course …
An increasing portion of those Americans who are struggling to pay energy bills reside in the South and Southwest, a new study has found.
This climate-driven shift represents a transition away from heating to air conditioning use, according to the study, published on Wednesday in Science Advances.
Signs of a shift: Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tracked the change in so-called "energy burden" of households in the 48 contiguous United States, from 2015 to 2020.
“Energy burden” is the percentage of income needed to pay for energy necessities.
“Energy poverty” applies to households with a burden of greater than 6 percent of their income.
Digging into the data: The study authors took a sample of about 20,000 from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Residential Energy Consumption Survey.
They then used U.S. Census Bureau data to estimate the average household energy burden in every census tract: 73,057 tracts in 2015 and 84,414 in 2020.
Southern, rural energy poverty: Their findings showed not only a shift in energy burden to the South, but also away from urban areas.
The researchers found that in 2015, Maine, Mississippi, Arkansas, Vermont and Alabama had the highest energy burdens across census tracts.
In 2020, the top five states were Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, West Virginia and Maine.
About 23 percent of the tracts experiencing energy poverty in 2015 were in urban areas, while only 14 percent were in such locations in 2020.
Disproportionate harm: The results, the authors determined, are consistent with the trends of a warming world: The now-milder northern U.S. requires less heat, while the sizzling South needs more air conditioning.
“Who’s going to be harmed most from climate change?” study co-author and MIT energy economist Christopher Knittel asked in a statement.
“In the U.S., not surprisingly, it’s going to be the southern part,” Knittel said.
A burgeoning burden: Not only is the South bearing the brunt of this burden, but the region also lacks sufficient funds and support to cope with such effects, according to the study.
"It’s the southern part of the U.S that’s least able to respond," Knittel said. "If you’re already burdened, the burden’s growing.”
Equitable allocation: Today’s federal energy assistance for low-income households would require a fourfold increase to guarantee that no U.S. household experienced energy poverty, per the study.
But the researchers proposed a new design that would help the worst-off households first and make certain that no family has an energy burden of more than 20.3 percent.
Knittel described this strategy as “the most equitable way to allocate the money” and an effective way to ensure “that no one state is worse off than the others.”
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Judges of the Zayed Sustainability Prizeannounced Wednesday that they had selected 33 finalists across six categories for the United Arab Emirates-based environmental innovation awards. The winners, whose ideas will be presented at a ceremony in January, represent the global health care, food, energy, water and climate action sectors, as well as entrepreneurial high school-led initiatives.
Vice President Harris called into CNN on Wednesday to talk about Hurricane Milton as it approaches Florida, bashing former President Trump for his comments about the federal government’s response to the latest storms.
Florida officials say time is running out for residents to flee ahead of Hurricane Milton’s anticipated landfall Wednesday night, as they make their final evacuation warnings to locals near Tampa Bay and along the west coast of the peninsula.
