Climate Change Made Hurricane Melissa 4 Times More Likely, Study Suggests

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Driven by unusually warm waters, Hurricane Melissa has become one of the strongest Atlantic storms on record this week. Now a new one Rapid attribution studies Human-induced climate change has quadrupled the likelihood of severe tropical cyclones.

Hurricane Melissa slammed into Jamaica on Tuesday, wreaking havoc across the island before tearing through nearby Haiti and Cuba. The storm, which reached Category 5, reserved for hurricanes with the strongest winds, has so far killed at least 40 people across the Caribbean. Now weakened to a Category 2, according to the National Hurricane Center, it continues its path toward Bermuda, where landfall is likely Thursday night.

Initial reports of damage are dire, particularly in western Jamaica worst hit. Winds gusting to 185 miles per hour and torrential rain flattened entire neighborhoods, destroying large tracts of farmland and forcing more than 25,000 people — locals and tourists alike — to shelter in shelters or hotel ballrooms. According to a new attribution study from Imperial College London, climate change increased Melissa’s wind speed by 7 percent, increasing damage by 12 percent.

Damages could add up to several billion dollars, experts say.

The results resonated similar to Report How global warming contributed to Hurricane Melissa’s potential and intensity was revealed earlier this week. Each analysis adds to a growing body of research showing how ocean warming caused by climate change is fueling the conditions necessary for stronger tropical storms.

Hurricane Melissa “is a textbook example of what we expect in terms of how hurricanes respond to a warming climate,” said Brian Soden, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Miami, who was not involved in the recent analysis. “We know that ocean temperatures are warming [are] The increase is being driven almost exclusively by greenhouse gases.”

The storm disrupted every aspect of life in this part of the Caribbean.

“There has been massive displacement of services,” Denis Zulu, the UN’s resident coordinator in Jamaica, told a news conference on Wednesday.

Climate Connection

To study rapid attribution, Imperial College researchers used the peer-reviewed Imperial College Storm Model, known as IRIS, which has created a database of millions of synthetic tropical cyclone tracks that can help fill in the gaps of how storms behave in the real world.

The model essentially runs simulations on the probability of a given storm’s wind speed — often the most damaging factor — in the pre-industrial climate versus the current climate. Applying IRIS to Hurricane Melissa is how researchers determined that human-induced warming supercharged the hurricane’s wind speed by 7 percent.