Climate change is making hurricanes slower, and that's terrifying
Climate change is making hurricanes slower, and that’s terrifying
Three new studies make clear we've entered a dangerous era of ever-worsening coastal flooding.
Joe Romm
Jun 7, 2018, 1:21 pm
We have entered a dangerous new era of coastal flooding, where slow-moving, city-inundating hurricanes like Harvey are the new normal, new research finds.
NOAA reported Wednesday that, thanks to the rise in sea levels and extreme weather, the flooding from high tides has doubled in just 30 years. Also, “more than a quarter of the coastal locations tied or broke their individual records for high tide flood days.”
At the same time that seas are rising thanks to global warming, NOAA also reports that hurricanes are moving more slowly — and the slower a hurricane moves, the more time it has to deluge a city.
For instance, as climatologist Michael Mann explained during Hurricane Harvey, “the kind of stalled weather pattern that is drenching Houston is precisely the sort of pattern we expect because of climate change.” Climate science predicted a weaker jet stream, and Harvey stalled because the jet stream wasn’t strong enough to move it along.
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https://thinkprogress.org/hurricanes-like-harvey-are-the-new-normal-dd508006902e/
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