Hurricane Matthew is the strongest hurricane to hit the United States since Wilma in 2005, and it's blowing straight for southeastern United States. Over two million people have been evacuated from their homes in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, making it the largest mandatory evacuation since Hurricane Sandy. Tragically, around 108 people have already lost their lives in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
At the moment, it looks as though Hurricane Matthew might boomerang around and overlap its own path. This storm is wicked strong and shows no signs of slowing down.
At 102 hours long, Matthew is already the longest-lived Category 4-5 hurricane ever recorded in the Eastern Caribbean, and that’s not the only thing that makes this storm atypical. Hurricanes of this strength aren’t supposed to happen in October. The peak of the Atlantic’s hurricane season is the middle of September.
Step back and think about it. What could possibly be causing this freak storm?
Climate change: plain and simple. Warmer ocean waters equal a more intense storm. The scary part? Matthew is only a sign of what’s to come with our rapidly warming world.
“The nearly unprecedented rapid intensification we saw with this storm is favored by warmer oceans and greater ocean heat content…. We can expect to see the season broaden," leading climate scientist and Penn State University's meteorology professor Dr. Michael Mann said to Huffington Post.
Essentially, Hurricane Matthew is only an example of the effects climate change is starting to have on the planet. Global warming is causing and will continue to cause weather patterns and climate behavior to drastically change for the worse.
Here is an excerpt from Democracy Now's interview with Mann:
“You know, it’s unfortunate that some in the weather community are not providing that critical context for understanding this trend towards increasingly devastating tropical storms and hurricanes. Matthew is a very good example of a storm that was unique, unprecedented, in certain respects. It intensified far more quickly than any other storm that we’ve seen in modern history, basically going from not even a tropical depression to a near-hurricane-strength storm over the course of, you know, less than half a day, and then, the next day, of course, strengthening into a major hurricane, a Category 5 hurricane. It’s weakened a little bit, but now it’s re-strengthening.
And where that intensification, where that rapid intensification occurred was in the region of the Caribbean that has the greatest heat content, not just that the ocean surface temperatures are warm, but there’s a very deep layer of warm water. And that’s important, because that helps sustain these storms as they churn up the ocean. The churning doesn’t bring cold water to the surface to weaken the storm, if there’s a deep layer of warmth. And that all has a climate change signature with it, not just the fact that the ocean surface temperatures in the Caribbean are at near-record levels, but the—just the sheer depth of that warm water is unprecedented. And as the surface warming penetrates into the ocean, we are seeing increases in ocean heat content. Last year was the warmest our oceans have ever been on record. And that’s critical context. It’s that warmth that provides the energy that intensifies these storms. And it isn’t a coincidence that we’ve seen the strongest hurricane in both hemispheres within the last year.”
One thing is for sure: Hurricane Matthew is gearing up to be one hell of a storm. There is no doubt that its intensity is fueled by climate change, and Matthew is only a sign of what’s to come as the planet warms.
