Climate Change and Hurricane Ian
Climate Change and Hurricane Ian
Movement Monday 10/3/22
Image courtesy of FWC Response Collier County 11
Hi, all.
Hurricane Ian left a trail of destruction across Florida this past week. The photos and reports of flooding and wind damage boggle the mind, as do the accounts from people who decided to stay through the storm or from rescue teams doing their best to salvage what remains. More and more, we’re also seeing major news stories tie stories about Ian and other hurricanes to climate change, like NPR’s “Climate change makes storms like Ian more common” and the New York Times’ “How Hurricane Ian Became So Powerful.”
Because hurricanes gather strength (high wind speeds and more moisture) with warmer ocean temperatures, we can unfortunately only expect more hurricanes of Ian’s ferocity in the coming years and decades. There is also evidence that climate change is causing storms to intensify faster and stall over land masses, meaning they’re harder to predict and worse when they actually do land. Check out this fact sheet from SciLine for more info on the connections between climate change and hurricanes.
Already, folks are starting to think and talk about how to rebuild after the storm–whether to stay or leave; rebuild how it was or with better protections against flooding; change zoning laws or leave it as is. With Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a wanna-be Trump, at the helm, the prospects of rebuilding with an eye to addressing the impacts of climate change look grim. And without government support, there will be thousands of Floridians who won’t be able to adequately prepare for the next storm and will be at risk of losing everything, again. These next few months could be crucial in determining how the rebuilding happens in southern Florida, and in turn, could determine how well those communities are able to deal with the climate weirding coming down the pipe.
A few other noteworthy pieces of climate news:
Hurricane Ian hit Cuba before sweeping through Florida, and cut electricity for the whole island: Cuba suffers total electrical outage as Hurricane Ian roars through
From Inside Climate News, an article about the climate implications of the Nord Stream pipeline break last week: “Nord Stream’s Explosion Was a Climate Disaster. What It Signals Could Be Worse.”
And from Bill McKibben’s newsletter The Crucial Years, an encouraging update on Joe Manchin’s “dirty deal” he had been trying to pass for the last month or so: “Score it a win!”