Throughout the past few years, the number of intense natural disasters has increased significantly. Events like Hurricane Hilary, the Libyan flood, and the Maui wildfires all have exerted more damage than expected due to climate change. As more human activity intensifies climate change, natural disasters begin to worsen.
For a while now, climate experts have been expressing warnings of climate change affecting natural disasters. On August 20, 2023, hurricane Hilary was coming for California, and was the first hurricane since 1939. By the time it reached California, it was downgraded to a tropical storm, but was still the first tropical storm since 1939. As air and ocean temperatures rise, more water vapor is produced, causing wetter storms. Climate scientist Daniel Swain explains that “Warmer oceans are hurricane fuel.” These high temperatures fueled the hurricane to come through the United States.
“Cold ocean temperatures along the state’s coast tend to deflate tropical storms,” wrote Maanvi Singh in the Guardian. In past decades with cooler temperatures, hurricanes have been avoided. However, as climate change has brought warmer temperatures to coasts these hurricanes cannot be avoided.
Climate change doesn’t only affect hurricanes. Recently, Maui was hit with disastrous wildfires that impacted many people on the island. Hawaii had been experiencing a drought that had just arrived in the few weeks before the fires. “Maui experienced a two-category increase in drought severity in just three weeks from May to June…” said Jason Otkin, explaining the rapid change. He explains that “droughts are becoming more common as Earth warms by human-caused climate change.” Even with perception, high temperatures can still dry out an area. The city of Lahaina, where the wildfires took place is located on the wet side of the island. The invasive grasses on that side of the island dried out from the temperatures and even precipitation didn’t help.
Another natural disaster that climate change contributed to were the Libyan floods. This flood went through two dams, flooding neighborhoods. It killed around 11,000 people and had extreme damage. AP News states that this flood “was up to 50 times more likely to occur and 50% more intense because of human-caused climate change.” If this flood occurred during pre-climate change, it would be far less disastrous. This shows how much climate change has affected society over the past century.
Other sources have potentially contributed to these natural disasters, but climate change has contributed significantly to the amount of lives lost and damaged. Climate change is a threat to infrastructure and raises concerns about preparation before natural disasters. As climate change progresses and gets worse, it is expected that it will only fuel these natural disasters more to produce immense destruction and deaths.
