karpenter wrote:
Just Curious
What Were These Storms Rankings When They Made Landfall
They All Get Names, Don't They ??
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/27/extreme-global-weather-climate-change-michael-mannThe extreme heatwaves and wildfires wreaking havoc around the globe are “the face of climate change,” one of the world’s leading climate scientists has declared, with the impacts of global warming now “playing out in real time.”
Climate change has long been predicted to increase extreme weather incidents, and scientists are now confident these predictions are coming true. Scientists say the global warming has contributed to the scorching temperatures that have baked the UK and northern Europe for weeks.
The hot spell was made more than twice as likely by climate change, a new analysis found, demonstrating an “unambiguous” link.
Extreme weather has struck across Europe, from the Arctic Circle to Greece, and across the world, from North America to Japan. “This is the face of climate change,” said Prof Michael Mann, at Penn State University, and one the world’s most eminent climate scientists. “We literally would not have seen these extremes in the absence of climate change.”
“The impacts of climate change are no longer subtle,” he told the Guardian. “We are seeing them play out in real time and what is happening this summer is a perfect example of that.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42251921The past year has been a busy one for hurricanes.
There were 17 named storms in 2017, 10 hurricanes and six major hurricanes (category 3 or higher) - an above average year in each respect.
The 10 hurricanes formed consecutively, without weaker tropical storms interrupting the sequence.
The only other time this has been recorded was in 1893.
Are these storms getting worse? And does climate change have anything to do with it?
A year of records
This Atlantic hurricane season has been particularly bad.
There was Harvey, which pummelled the United States in August.
It brought the largest amount of rain on record from any tropical system - 1,539mm.
It caused the sort of flooding you'd expect to see once every 500 years, causing $200bn of damage to Houston, Texas.
Ironically, this was the third such "one every 500 years" flood Houston had suffered in three years.
September brought Irma, which devastated Caribbean communities. It was the joint second strongest Atlantic hurricane ever, with sustained winds of 185mph.
Those winds were sustained for 37 hours - longer than any tropical system on record, anywhere in the world.
Next came Hurricane Maria - another category 5 hurricane, with sustained winds of 175mph - which destroyed Puerto Rico's power grid.
Finally, Hurricane Ophelia span past Portugal and Spain - the farthest east any major Atlantic hurricane has ever gone.
There have been 33 of the strongest category 5 hurricanes since 1924. Eleven of these have occurred in the past 14 years.