By Karl Grossman
There’s a highly threatening and new reality for hurricanes.
Unusually, any hurricanes didn’t strike the East Coast of the United States this year, those extreme cyclonic storms that first meander as minor low-pressure systems and then, in just a day or so after feeding from waters made ever warmer by climate change, can rise to the worst hurricane level, Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
But it’s just a matter of time.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service defines 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 when Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica. It struck the island with sustained winds of 185 mph and higher gusts.
“Hurricane Melissa moved very slowly across the Caribbean, allowing the storm to gather immense destructive energy over very warm ocean waters,” World Weather Attribution, a consortium of researchers from the U.S., the United Kingdom and other nations, concluded. “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.”
The headline in The Guardian about the consortium’s report was, “Climate crisis means super-strength Hurricane Melissa is ‘dangerous new reality.’” The subhead was, “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 headline last month in Scientific American. Its subhead: “Hurricane Melissa’s powerful winds and drenching rains devastated Jamaica. But is its wrath a sign that we need a new designation for monster storms?”
The accompanying story, by experienced science journalist Meghan Bartels, read, “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.”
Bartels continued, “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 East Coast.
Last month, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office issued a 28-page report 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. “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 Trump has a different position. He called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September.
The U.S. government did not join nations from around the world at the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP30, that just convened in Brazil. And, as Politico headlined after Trump’s U.N. speech: “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.”
As for severe hurricanes, in a new book, “Category Five: Superstorms and the Warming Oceans that Feed Them,” author Porter Fox writes, “One of the most alarming trends: a sudden uptick in the violence of hurricanes. … 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.
Karl Grossman has been an investigative reporter in a variety of media for more than 50 years. He is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York at Old Westbury.
