The relationship between ocean water temperatures and the intensity of hurricanes is probably one of the easiest components of global warming to understand. Since hurricanes draw their strength from the surface of the ocean, warmer waters=greater hurricane intensity. It’s common sense in that respect. Hurricane Erin has demonstrated that, as did last year’s Gulf coast hurricanes.
Hurricane Erin is whipping up the Atlantic Ocean at speeds over 100 miles per hour. The trajectory of the storm has it staying out to sea,
though many effects will be felt close to shore and on land. And some of those effects are made worse by global warming.
Overnight on Friday, Hurricane Erin ratcheted up to a Category 5 storm, from a Category 1, becoming one of the top five most quickly intensifying hurricanes on record. As the planet warms,
scientists say that rapidly intensifying hurricanes are becoming ever more likely.
"It’s a very easy set of dots to connect,” said Jim Kossin, who worked at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as a hurricane specialist and climate scientist before he retired. “These rapid intensification events are linked pretty directly to that human fingerprint.”
According to the National Hurricane Center, rapid intensification is an increase in a storm’s sustained wind speeds of at least 35 miles per hour in a 24-hour period. Between Friday morning and Saturday morning, Hurricane Erin’s wind speeds increased by nearly 85 miles per hour, peaking at 161 mph.
Daniel Gilford, a climate scientist at Climate Central, a science communication nonprofit, likens hurricanes to the engine of a car. “They need some fuel source in order to spin, and the fuel source is the ocean surface,” he said. “So as the temperature of the ocean surface goes up, that adds more fuel that these storms can use to intensify.”
For over a century, greenhouse gases emitted by human activity have trapped heat inside the planet’s atmosphere. A recent streak of record-breaking temperatures crowned 2024 as the hottest year on record.
By May of 2024,
super marine heat waves had turned nearly a quarter of the world’s ocean area into bath water, and this year’s Atlantic Ocean remains warmer than average. Earlier this summer, forecasters anticipated a busier than usual Atlantic hurricane season because of this lingering heat, along with other regional factors. Erin is the first named storm to become a hurricane this year.
As a storm moves across warm oceans, it gathers more fuel and becomes stronger. Because warmer air can hold more moisture, hurricanes in hotter conditions can also carry more rain.
According to Climate Central’s analysis of the storm, human-caused climate change made the warm water temperature around where Erin formed 90 percent more likely. The group’s early estimate, using a statistical model developed by NOAA, also found that the extra heat could drive 50 percent greater damage, like tidal erosion and flooding, to coastal areas.
Other features of storms have been exacerbated by the warming planet, too. As polar regions melt and sea levels rise, Dr. Gilford said, the rising tidal base line means that any coastal flooding from storms becomes correspondingly larger, too.
During Hurricane Sandy, floods were four inches deeper than they would have been without sea level rise, according to a Climate Central paper published
in the journal Nature. “That doesn’t sound like a lot, but four inches could be the difference between over topping the bottom floor of a building or not,” he said.
After intensifying, Hurricane Erin grew a second larger eyewall, which is the meteorological term for the thick ring of clouds at the cyclone’s center. Hurricanes that go through an eyewall replacement cycle are larger in size but tend to have weaker wind speeds.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Hurricane Erin was 530 miles wide, an expanse that would smother New England. While the storm’s strongest winds aren’t expected to reach coastlines, the powerful waves and riptides that are generated will.
Faster intensification makes eyewall replacement more likely, Dr. Kossin said. “All of these behaviors are ultimately linked to the warm water that these storms are sitting on top of,” he said. “The water is warm because the planet is heating up.”
