There’s a highly threatening and new reality for hurricanes.
Unusually, the East Coast of the United States was not struck this year by any hurricanes. And thus, luckily, we were not hit by one of these extreme hurricanes that first meanders as a minor storm and then, in just a day or so after feeding from waters made ever-hotter by climate change, rise to the worst hurricane level, Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale.
But it’s just a matter of time.
The National Weather Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency defines online Category 5 as: “Winds 157 mph or higher. Catastrophic damage will occur. A high percentage of framed homes will be destroyed, with total roof failure and wall collapse. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last for weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks …”
That’s what just happened as Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica. It struck the island with sustained winds of 185 mph and with higher gusts.
“Hurricane Melissa moved very slowly across the Caribbean, allowing the storm to gather immense destructive energy over very warm ocean waters. When it finally made landfall in Jamaica as a Category 5 hurricane, the storm hit a region familiar with hurricanes but unaccustomed to one of such exceptional strength and intensity,” concluded World Weather Attribution, a consortium of researchers from the U.S., United Kingdom, Sweden, Dominican Republic, the Netherlands and other nations.
As the British publication The Guardian, in its headline over its article citing the consortium’s report, said: “Climate crisis means super-strength Hurricane Melissa is ‘dangerous new reality.’”
The subhead: “Winds of Melissa’s strength are now five times more frequent due to the climate crisis, research says.”
“Is It Time To Classify Hurricanes as Category 6?” was the heading of an article last month in Scientific American magazine. Its subhead: “Hurricane Melissa’s powerful winds and drenching rains devastated Jamaica. But is it a sign that we need a new designation for monster forms?”
The piece, by experienced science journalist Meghan Bartels, said that “scientists are already confident that climate change contributed to the storm’s horrifying strength, which sent winds gusting far beyond the minimum required for a Category 5.”
Last year, she related, “hurricane scientists suggested that … the Saffir-Simpson scale is no longer sufficient to convey the reality of modern hurricanes. They proposed the establishment of Category 6.”
She continued that “scientists know that hurricanes are becoming more severe as climate change accelerates. Warmer ocean water fuels stronger winds, and warmer air holds more water, which can then become rainfall. Meanwhile, rising sea levels make coastal regions more vulnerable to storm surge.”
This very much includes us on the U.S. East Coast.
Last month, the office of New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli issued a 28-page report on “severe weather events,” titled “Severe Weather Events and Resiliency in New York State.” An accompanying press release was headed: “Suffolk County Had Most Severe Weather Events.”
The report opened with a “message” from DiNapoli, who hails from Great Neck Plaza on Long Island. “This month marks the 13th anniversary of Superstorm Sandy’s landfall, causing catastrophic damage to property, lives and livelihoods. The incidence of extreme weather events is growing and impacting an increasing share of New Yorkers,” he wrote.
“Some have called the more frequent incidence of damaging storms the new normal, but the scientific community and our experiences tell us that this is just the beginning if we aren’t successful in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases globally.”
President Donald Trump has a different position. “This ‘climate change,’ it’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion,” he declared in a speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations in September.
He went on: “All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people … If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.”
The U.S. government is not joining nations from around the world in attending the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30) that just convened in Brazil, part of the series of yearly international meetings on climate change.
And, as the Washington-based publication Politico headlined after Trump’s speech at the U.N.: “Energy Dept. adds ‘climate change’ and ‘emissions’ to banned words list.”
Said Politico of the U.S. Department of Energy move: “It is the latest in a series of Trump administration efforts to dispute, silence or downplay climate change.”
It “is part of a larger effort by the Trump administration to restrict access to information about climate change and undercut federal efforts to address its causes,” said Politico. “The administration has canceled billions of dollars in research funding and shuttered federal websites that made public critical data about sea level rise, extreme weather and other effects of climate change. Scientists who advise the government about clean air and clean water regulations have also been let go, as have scientists who were synthesizing the latest research about how climate change affects the United States.”
As for severe hurricanes, just published is the book “Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans That Feed Them.” Author Porter Fox writes: “As decades passed and the world grudgingly came to terms with climate change, numbers detailing how much the planet might warm came into view.
“One of the most alarming trends: a sudden uptick in the violence of hurricanes. More Category 4 and 5 hurricanes hit the U.S. mainland from 2017 to 2021 than from 1963 to 2016. Since the 1970s, the likelihood of a Category 3 storm or higher increased by about 8 percent per decade. The number of major hurricanes, including a new breed of ‘ultra-intense’ Category 5 storms with winds of at least 190 miles per hour, was expected to increase by 20 percent by 2100.”
I would add: This is, unless the climate crisis, caused largely by the burning of fossil fuels, is not dealt with rather than being denied.
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