Talking About Hurricanes With Climate Change Deniers
The earth is getting warmer. It is a fact. And as the earth gets warmer, we expect to see more and more violent hurricanes. This is also a fact. But there are people who deny these facts, to the point of accusing the liberal media that hurricanes are mentioned in the news.
Don’t expect to “win” the argument here
If you find yourself discussing hurricanes and climate change with such a person, stop and think first. Ask yourself: Do I want to be angry with this person? And how much time should I spend on this? Proceed with caution.
Anyone seriously thinking about climate change is not going to suddenly change course. But you can help them lay the foundation so that they can ultimately see things more clearly.
Understand how climate change affects hurricanes
Ok, smartypants, how does climate change exacerbate hurricanes? Here are the basics you might want to know:
Warm water causes hurricanes . Due to the heat, warm air rises and the surrounding air is sucked in its place. This air also rises upward, and before you notice it, you have an air system in constant motion. (You can learn more about this process in this NASA lesson .) Thus, the warmer the ocean, the more severe hurricanes can form.
Warmer air contributes to more rainfall . Warm air carries more water, so when it rains, a warmer hurricane simply has more moisture to be dumped .
Rising sea levels are exacerbating flooding . The higher the ocean level, the more flooding we can expect from storm surges. Researchers at Climate Central have calculated that rising sea levels alone – apart from any effects from rising temperatures in the oceans – would mean that in many areas, 100-year floods will occur every ten years or so .
By the way, hurricane is just the name for these storms in the Atlantic Ocean; these are typhoons and cyclones in other parts of the world. The general term for all of these phenomena is tropical cyclone because they form cyclical winds and occur over warm tropical waters.
Recognize uncertainty
Hurricanes have always happened and some of them are destructive. This is true even without climate change involved. Thus, you can not with confidence to blame climate change in this hurricane or that it belongs to a category 5, not a category 4. Climate change is causing ever more destructive hurricane seasons, and not necessarily any single hurricane.
Climate scientists disagree over whether this year’s hurricanes owe their strength to climate change. But this is not because they are not sure that climate change is happening (it is) or that warmer oceans are giving rise to stronger hurricanes (they are). No, they are debating if this is the beginning of an uptrend or if this was an unusual “normal” year and we have little time before hurricanes get really strong.
Here is a century-long forecast from the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory ‘s Global Warming and Hurricanes Report , which acknowledges that warming is happening and is human-induced, but refuses to say if the upward trend in hurricanes has begun:
[I] It is likely that climate warming will cause hurricanes in the coming century that will be more intense globally and have higher rainfall rates than current hurricanes. In our opinion, the likelihood that the number of very strong hurricanes (categories 4 and 5) will increase significantly in some basins is higher than even.
Bottom line: Climate change is clearly exacerbating hurricanes; It’s unclear if climate change can be blamed for something as specific as Irma’s record wind speed or Harvey’s exact amount of rain.