Thermometer
Climate change is driving hurricanes to stay stronger as they pass over land.
Hurricane Michael, which bulldozed the Florida Panhandle as a Category 5 storm in October 2018, remained dangerously intense even as it made its way over land, producing hurricane-force wind gusts 140 miles inland.
“Now a new study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, shows that storms such as Michael that extend their damaging path far inland are becoming more likely to occur as ocean temperatures increase in response to human-caused global warming,” our colleagues Andrew Freedman and Chris Mooney report.
The study, which looked at hurricanes in the North Atlantic between 1967 and 2018, found that they were decreasing in intensity at a slower rate now compared to 50 years ago. Computer models suggest that warming oceans due to climate change are leading storms to pick up more moisture that they can feed on even as they move inland.
Meanwhile, Eta is threatening Florida.
On Wednesday, Eta briefly became a hurricane west of the Florida Peninsula, making it the latest-forming hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico in 35 years. The long-lived system continued churning northeast as a Tropical Storm on Wednesday afternoon and is expected to make landfall north of Tampa Bay.
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