Climate Change Supercharged Hurricane Wind Speeds

Hurricane Beryl in the Caribbean in early July.
New study indicates hurricanes like this have 
stronger winds due to climate change. 

 Scientists have long said climate change is making hurricanes worse. 

A recent post I wrote talked about how

some hurricane' forward motion is slowing to a crawl, intensify flooding that tends to happen with these storms.

Additionally, a new study involving hurricane wind speeds is adding to that pile of research. 

As Axios reports, the study indicates that climate change increased the wind speeds of all 11 Atlantic hurricanes that formed this year. 

The increase in wind speeds among those hurricanes ranged from 9 to 28 mph. 

Hurricane Helene's maximum wind speed was 16 mph higher than it otherwise would have been. Hurricane Milton's peak intensity was 23 mph more than it would have been without climate change, according to the study. 

"Every hurricane in 2024 was stronger than it would have been 100 years ago," said Daniel Gifford, who led this new research. 

Damage potential increases exponentially with higher wind speeds.  A hurricane with top winds of 110 mph has a damage potential 21 times greater than that of a hurricane with just 75 mph winds.

A doubling of wind speed from 75 mph to 150 mph does not mean doubling potential damage. It's actually a 256 times increase, says NOAA.

The higher wind speeds in hurricanes wasn't just this year. More than two dozen such storms in recent years were studies and the same conclusion emerged. 

"The research......  found that 30 hurricanes in the study reached intensities that were one category higher than they otherwise would have been. 

The study found three hurricanes that reached Category 5 intensity largely because of climate change: Hurricane Lorenzo in 2019, Ian in 2022 and Lee in 2023."

Some scientists point out one caveat to this research.  It appears that a warmer Atlantic Ocean fed these hurricanes and made them stronger. But was that warming entirely due to climate change? Or were other factors involved, like pollution controls that allow brighter sun to penetrate and heat the water. Or natural cycles could have contributed to the ocean water warming. 

That will take even more study. But climate change is surely one factor making all these hurricanes more intense.