Hurricane Laura

Aug. 26, 2020

 A Facebook post from Katherine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist and professor of political science at Texas Tech University, where she is director of the Climate Science Center.  She is an evangelical Christian.

 Laura has strengthened to category four as it approaches the U.S. coast.

https://www.facebook.com/katharine.hayhoe/posts/2693902104167993

Aug. 25, 2020

Hurricane Laura is currently projected to make landfall just east of Houston as a category 3 storm, three years after Harvey.

Tropical storms are powered by warm ocean water. As the ocean warms, storms get bigger, stronger, intensify faster, and have a lot more rain.

Hurricanes are not getting more frequent in a warmer world, and climate change is not affecting their path or the likelihood that they make landfall, as far as we know.

But with over 90% of the extra heat trapped by the extra blanket of heat-trapping gases we humans are wrapping around our planet going into the ocean, hurricanes are becoming much more damaging.

It's estimated that human-caused climate change increased the rainfall associated with Hurricane Harvey by a best estimate of nearly 40% and tripled its economic damages. That's staggering.

Climate change is a threat multiplier. It takes events like hurricanes that already occur naturally, and makes them worse. That's why it's so important to cut our carbon emissions as soon as possible and prepare for those changes we can no longer avoid.

 

tags: severe weather, extreme weather,