How Climate Change Fueled the Historic 2025 Hurricane Season

Transcript

David Dickson, CCNow: Good morning, good afternoon — wherever you might be joining us! We’ll go ahead and get things started. My name is David Dickson, I’m a meteorologist and TV engagement coordinator with the nonprofit Covering Climate Now. For those of you that might be new to Covering Climate Now, we are a global collaboration of more than 500 newsrooms across 60 countries. We’re organized by journalists for journalists to help us all do a better coverage of climate change and its local impacts. Head to our website coveringclimatenow.org to learn more and sign up for our newsletters as well as our newsroom trainings and other webinars like this one, all of which are free of charge. For this webinar, we’re also thrilled to be partnering with Climate Central, a nonprofit, non advocacy organization of scientists and communicators dedicated to researching, reporting and storytelling around the data and science of our changing climate. You can head over to their website to find compelling broadcast and publish ready climate content to make crucial links between extreme weather events and human-caused climate change, to better communicate these to your audience. Now, speaking of extreme weather events, it is impossible to ignore the sheer intensity of some of the storms that this year’s Atlantic hurricane season produced, the most notable of which was Melissa, which slammed into Jamaica with winds up to 185 miles per hour and leaving a path of destruction across the Caribbean that has left at least 60 dead and caused billions in damage. In the weeks since, Jamaica has started down the long road of recovery, and climate scientists already have a sense on how climate change helped this storm make history. We’ve got a lot to talk about, not only with Melissa, but the season as a whole. So let’s go ahead and jump right in. And just really quick as an FYI, this webinar is being recorded with the video and a recap being made for all of you and your colleagues that couldn’t make it available on our website coveringclimatenow.org. We also have time and space for questions, and we encourage you to ask questions using that Q and A function at the bottom of your screen. We do ask that you include your name and the name of your news outlet. We’ll read them out for the panelists to answer. And while this webinar is open to everyone, just know that we are taking and prioritizing questions from working journalists and meteorologists and newsrooms only. I am so grateful to be joined by some of my colleagues who are going to help us better understand how climate change influenced this year’s hurricane season and also highlight how to better cover these future storms as climate journalists. First off, we have Bernadette Woods Placky, she is the chief meteorologist and vice president for engagement at the nonprofit Climate Central. She directs Climate Central’s Climate Matters program, where she leads a team that creates weekly data and other reporting resources for media professionals on the links between climate change and weather. We also have Jeff Berardelli, the chief meteorologist and climate specialist at WFLA in Tampa. With over two decades of experience forecasting Florida’s extreme weather, he understands firsthand the changes to tropical systems driven by our warming atmosphere, and has become one of the leading climate communicators in the state. And finally, we have Carlos Berrios Polanco, a freelance journalist from Puerto Rico. He mostly focuses on reporting about climate and security. He is a collaborator with the Puerto Rico based solutions journalism network 9 Millones, and the Deputy Director for the Latino Newsletter, which focuses on Latinx issues. Please give me a warm hand and reaction for all of our colleagues joining us here today, and a very warm virtual welcome. All right, I want to dive into this and start briefly by hearing from each of you. What do you think was the biggest takeaway from this year’s hurricane season? Bernadette, we’ll go ahead and start with you.

Bernadette Woods Placky: Sure, and I apologize, by now, I have a little bit of a cold, so got my tea with me. First of all, thanks for having us here today, David and organizing this. To me, the biggest takeaway from this year’s season is that we are seeing climate change already affecting our tropical cyclones, and why that matters is because of how it’s affecting people. There’s going to be a lot of talk today about Melissa, and there should be. One of the strongest ever to be recorded. However, other storms that may not have gotten as much coverage, such as Erin, which was out to sea for a lot of people, was so large that we saw coastal erosion from our rising seas, from Nantucket all the way down to North Carolina. And on top of that, even the storms that formed just exploded in their rapid, intensification, their extreme, rapid intensification. And another thing that we’ve known with climate change is that it doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll get more storms, but the ones that we get are going to grow stronger and be more impactful. And that’s what we saw this season.

David Dickson, CCNow: We’re going to be touching on all of that. Jeff, over to you. I think you are muted real quick.

Jeff Berardelli: Okay, there we go. Um, my takeaway, the two things, one, obviously, is that is the main thing that Bern mentioned, is that, you know, although we’re not seeing necessarily more storms, the one that we the ones that we are seeing, have a much greater tendency of not only rapid intensifying, but becoming a major hurricane. This year, there were only five hurricanes. Four of them were major hurricanes. Three were Category Fives. I think it’s the only the second time in the Atlantic we’ve had three Category Five hurricanes. The other thing that stood out is that part of the season was shut down, and it happened last year too, where August and the beginning of September, nothing happened at all. And so in my mind, I’m looking back to what predictions were to, you know, a decade or two ago, and the talk about climate change creating more stability, but that when storms do form, they’ll have a greater tendency to become monster storms, and so I think we’re seeing the future play out right now,

David Dickson, CCNow: Yeah, and in many ways, I think this is going to be kind of a bellwether that we see for future seasons. What about you, Carlos, again, based in island community, I think you have a different perspective compared to kind of us here in the US mainland.

Carlos Polanco: Yeah, so I want to echo what Burton and Jeff said about how that this is kind of the season of rapid intensification, and how it serves this season served as a preview, kind of what we’re going to see in future hurricane seasons. But as well, from the kind of Caribbean perspective, I you know, there’s usually a tension that starts when hurricane season starts and ends when it ends. And for a lot of people, before Melissa started forming, that tension was started, starting to ease up, and then Melissa came and rapidly intensified. And for a lot of people, I think it was a little bit of a wake up call, of like no now for the entire season, and maybe even a little bit before and a little bit after. We have to be on our guard, constantly prepared and ready for when something kind of comes out of the blue.

David Dickson, CCNow: And we’ll talk a bit about that, because, as you mentioned, as well as Jeff, there was a period of general quiet through what normally we see as the more active part of the season, and it could provide a false sense of security. But to… I know it’s a little silly, and we hear it all the time, all it takes is one storm to really change the course of history and change communities drastically. So we’re going to dig a lot deeper into all these topics throughout this next hour or so. And I see a few of you typing in the Q and A, I still encourage you to continue to do that, but I think to properly understand this season and kind of how it has shaken out, we actually have to go back even further to before it actually began, because we came off of one of the deadliest and costliest hurricane seasons in history this year with 2024. Again, all eyes were on the Atlantic well before the season even started. Beryl, Helene, Milton… these all were still very fresh on the minds of those impacted most by these devastating storms, and definitely on the minds of all the meteorologists looking at the Atlantic, which has fueled questions like, well, just how bad will it be this year? Now our first hint came in mid May, when, as always, at this time of year, we saw the first of several outlooks released by universities, along with NOAA’s official outlook, which predicted an above normal Atlantic hurricane season, with… just going to throw numbers at you for a second here, 13 to 19 named storms, and of those three to five major hurricanes. So if we look into the actual stats this year with NOAA’s numbers were actually pretty close to what we saw. The final number were 13 named storms, five hurricanes, as Jeff said, and then four of them reached category three and above. Now I want to touch on this, because every year, and you’ll see this again next year, once we get into May and the month before the hurricane season officially starts, we see these outlooks start to make headlines, and a lot of people start talking about it. Jeff, I want to pass it over to you how important or not is this outlook and is there a common misconception with these preseason predictions that people need to understand when recapping this season over the next month or so?

Jeff Berardelli: I think it used to be that these outlooks were almost useless and. But I think that they become useful, because I think your accuracy is improving, but oftentimes it doesn’t really tell you that much about where the storms are going to make landfall. So I’ll go back even further and talk about our sub seasonal forecasting and our seasonal forecasting, our computer models are getting much better. Back before the 2024 Season, the models were very robust, aggressive and bold in showing that it was going to be active across the Caribbean into the Gulf. And they were right on spot. I mean, they nailed it. And there were a lot of other things that, you know, the Atlantic was record hot on fire. So there are a lot of signs in 2024 not only about that there will be a lot of storms, or strong storms, but the track that they would take through the Caribbean, and it was right. Fast forward to this past spring, and the sub seasonal and seasonal models were forecasting basically dry across the Caribbean, dry into the Gulf. And if there was any hint of of a storm track, it was towards Bermuda. That’s exactly what played out. It generally was quiet in the Gulf, quiet in the Caribbean, until Melissa and the storm track played out by going across Bermuda, which is exactly what it did over and over again. And by the way, the seasonal models forecast generally a pretty slow season. So let me clarify that in numbers. And it did turn out to be a year where we just basically reached the average number of storms, but that we had these really strong storms and Rapid Intensification, which is what we expected climate change, all to say that our sub seasonal, seasonal models were getting better, to where I raised a red flag at the beginning of 2024 on air and said, folks, buckle up in. I did this in my market this year. I said to everyone in my market, I said, look, I don’t think that this year is going to be anything like last year based upon the seasonal forecasting. Bottom line is, I think seasonal forecasting 10 years ago was like palm reading, and I apologize to anybody out there who likes palm reading, but nowadays, I actually think it’s getting really good.

David Dickson, CCNow: And I encourage you all, if you haven’t done so already, and we’ll be sure to post it in the chat. My colleague, Shel from Climate Central is handling the chat, follow Jeff on his social media platforms and follow up, because he is a great source of information… expert, really, when talking about these hurricanes, and again, preseason, during the season, and also making that climate connection. What I do find interesting. I just want to throw this out there, but it’s not unexpected. Back to NOAA’s official outlook that this year, there was no mention at all in the text about climate change, instead highlighting some of what we’ve talked about, higher heat content in oceans, which will provide more energy to fuel storm development. Now compare this to what they said last year, which connected the main reason behind this added heat in our ocean by specifically mentioning human caused climate change is warming our ocean globally. I want to dig into this, because in the absence of climate language from federal agencies, it is likely up to us as reporters, as meteorologists and as newsrooms to make that connection when talking about this season and future hurricane seasons as well. Bernadette, your organization, Climate Central, does a lot of work quantifying climate change is influence on these storms, and often it all comes back to the ocean, which, as we know, absorbs over 90% of the Earth’s excess heat. So the question I have for you is, why is there such a focus on water when it comes to talking about tropical systems, and what can climate science tell us about our current trends in the Atlantic as well as throughout other ocean basins, like we’re seeing in the Pacific right now?

Speaker 1: So there’s a lot to unpack from that. So I’ll take a couple of pieces at a time, David and remind me or prompt me if I miss parts of it. First, the reason there’s so much conversation with oceans when it comes to tropical cyclones, and I’m using that term broadly, because around the world, they have different names. As we know they’re hurricanes in the Atlantic, we get to typhoon status. So more broadly, they’re called tropical cyclones. So if I’m saying it, that’s why…that is how they form. They are water based storms, and they get their fuel from warm water. It’s why we get them during the summer months and not during the winter months, when you need temperature at a certain level to even give the support for the structure. And I won’t get too geeky here, but the structure that really supports the storm from being a thunderstorm to growing, and we say ventilating, to a level that it can spin and just keep gaining speed, gaining momentum, gaining strength, all of that comes from the warm water that is a tropical cyclone. It’s interesting. We could go a little deeper on this too, if we wanted to get geeky, when Sandy made landfall in the United States, there was some confusion around that, because what we call tropical cyclone to an extra tropical cyclone, gets down to the physics at the center of the storm, and it transitioned from warm to cold, and that’s why there was some confusion. So we talk about warm water, because that is the source for all tropical cyclones. Now you’ve referenced that over 90% of our excess heat that is trapped in our Earth system because of greenhouse gasses, carbon pollution that really put that thick blanket around the atmosphere, over 90% are going into the oceans. And our world is a water world. Over 70% of it is made of water. And sometimes, if we’re living interior, we forget that. So water plays a big role in our weather patterns in general, and when you add so much extra heat to that water, it’s going to do a lot of things. Now let’s connect that back to tropical cyclones. What we’re seeing, and this is what we referenced earlier, was rapid intensification, or extreme rapid intensification. And the real definition of that is 35 miles per hour increase in strength over a 24 hour period. We are now pushing these levels of extreme rapid intensification, which is a term, which is 58 miles per hour in that 24 hour segment, and that all comes from the amount of heat, most of it, I shouldn’t say all of it. I know we do have some scientists on here, but the vast majority of that strength is coming from all of that heat that’s in the ocean. You add more, it gets more explosive to these levels that just didn’t happen so frequently in the past. And then we can also get into attribution science. But I feel like I’m kind of droning on here so you can redirect me if need be. So attribution science is to bring everyone along. I know many of you know what that is, but those who don’t, it’s where we can now quantify the role of climate change within individual weather events or daily temperatures. And at Climate Central, we have a couple of tools to help you understand that. We have the climate shift index, which looks at air temperatures. We have climate shift index ocean which looks at ocean temperatures. And now we’ve even built that into climate shift index tropical cyclones, which does a combination with the water temperatures and the strength of the store and all of these are tools to help us understand, through peer reviewed science how much climate change is affecting these individual events. And we saw across the board, with rapid intensification, that the water it was going over was made warmer because of climate change, and it led to these big jumps in wind speeds in our storms, because of the warm water and because of climate change.

David Dickson, CCNow: Definitely bookmark these tools, especially climate shift ocean climate shift tropical cyclones. It’s it’s a fantastic attribution tool. It’s super useful. And we’ll actually come back to that a little bit. If you need some information on how to use that actually, check out a previous webinar that we at Covering Climate Now, and Climate Central did at the start of the hurricane season with your prep your climate coverage webinar focused not only on hurricanes, but also extreme heat, because it’s going to be very essential. But in that, we also included some really simple language that you can use to make the climate connection when talking about extreme weather events, namely tropical cyclones. As we have heard, everyone kind of mentioned that, and here’s that language that you can use: The science research is clear that climate change supercharges hurricanes, increasing their intensity, rainfall and storm surge. Now we saw this firsthand with Melissa, as Jeff said, one of the three Category Five storms this season, the other two, Erin and Humberto, thankfully did not make landfall, but still did cause some impacts, which we’ll talk about in a moment. But unfortunately, this was not the case for Melissa as it crashed ashore in Jamaica late last month with winds, again, 185 miles per hour, tying the record for the strongest Atlantic landfall in history, and left widespread devastation in its wake, not only in Jamaica, but also nearby Cuba, Haiti and across the Bahamas and even up in Bermuda, We’re going to talk about the climate angle, much more in detail in just a moment. But first, we do have to talk about the human toll of these catastrophic storms. Carlos, in Puerto Rico, which is no stranger to hurricanes, you’ve covered the long process of recovery and rebuilding that lingers long after the storm has passed. What does recovery look like for island communities after these storms, and what should newsrooms pay attention to, specifically in Jamaica and in the Bahamas, as they tackled the mammoth task out ahead of them?

Carlos Polanco: Well, the sad truth for Island Island communities is that recovery and adaptation will likely take years, maybe even decades, depending on the impacts they receive from different natural disasters. For example, here in Puerto Rico, we experienced hurricane Maria in 2017 and we’re still dealing with the aftermaths alongside the compounding effects of other disasters that have happened. So one of the things that newsroom should definitely keep in mind is if there is any sort of right… governments will usually try to attack short term fixes and short term ways that they can help the populace, but try to investigate or see if there’s any sort of long term vision for how they can adapt and recover over a period of years having to deal with different disasters, and if they’re working on ways in which, in which they’re not just going to become to suffer through a disaster after disaster, but if they have, like rapid response units, storage areas where they have food, but not a central storage location, instead, food and water distribution centers across however big of an area that disaster strikes. You know, one of the things here is that we had, we had some food and water during Hurricane Maria in 2017 and Hurricane Fiona in 2022 but that food and water was just not getting to the people in the locations that were affected by this disaster. And you know, on the on the flip flip side, newsrooms should definitely keep in mind and start looking out for the ways in which community organizations or nonprofits are rising to the occasion. We know that this is super common in every disaster that happens, but from my experience in Puerto Rico, especially community based organizations, tend to be the first ones into a disaster, because, you know, if a hurricane passed through their neighborhood, they’re the ones who are there and ready to act in many occasions. So even if they don’t have any, like, formal training in search and rescue or anything like that, they are, you know, the first ones to be like, hey, check check on my neighbor. Do they have, like, water, electricity and a food, pet sort of situation? And also see if the why the government couldn’t, or wasn’t able to bring that help to them when they needed it. I guess is, is my main thing that people should be aware of.

David Dickson, CCNow: Yeah, to quote the great Mr. Rogers, find the helpers.

Carlos Polanco: Exactly.

David Dickson, CCNow: It makes great stories. I want to talk a little bit about a piece that you wrote about again a few years ago, during… after, I should say, Hurricane Fiona, which, as you said, in 2022 destroyed up to 80% of the island’s plantain and banana crops in Puerto Rico, and we’re seeing this potentially also play out now in Jamaica, because the part that was hit hardest was described as the bread basket of the country. What did you learn from this story? Specifically, I know you’ve talked a little bit about it, but talking about, you know, food security and a food crisis. And do you have any advice for reporters, again, for not just focusing on tourism, which I think a lot of us kind of link with these islands, but rather talking about what real recovery and what real adaptation look like for these Island communities.

Carlos Polanco: Well, the main thing that I learned from that piece is only semi related, and it’s that our cultural norms and the things that we’re used to are going to have to change in a planet, in a planet that’s getting warmer, right? Plantains are a big thing in in Puerto Rico and a lot of Caribbean cultures. But since we’re seeing these hurricanes devastate this these crops, like we saw in 2022 that’s leading some people to go without, whether because there just isn’t any or because they’re thinking, well maybe they’re already thinking, well maybe I’m not going to be able to get it, so I might need to switch traditions. But when it comes to food security, a lot of what I learned is that we are just incredibly food insecure, especially right in Puerto Rico, where I’m based, we import about between 80 and 90% of the food that we eat. So when a hurricane comes, like Fiona destroyed all those plantains, we didn’t have homegrown food. But also, when a hurricane comes, it damages ports, so food can’t get in another way. So there ends up being the situation where there’s no food to eat.

David Dickson, CCNow: All of this to say, the impacts of these storms linger long, long after the storms are done. And unfortunately… I this is my own opinion, I have seen some of the coverage this year just talk about, you know, the disaster side of these storms, which is completely true in the stats numbers, but the coverage has kind of really waned while we’re still seeing these impacts again in Jamaica and across the Caribbean and in the Bahamas, that I personally think it’s just because it’s not in the US, it’s not here, and so we got to pay attention especially and check in on these communities.

Bernadette Woods Placky: David, one thing I’d like to add to your reflection of coverage posted is, and… it’s not either or it’s and, from what I understand, and Carlos, if you have more to offer, please jump in. There was such devastation that we still can’t even see a lot of it. People can’t get to a lot of it. And for anyone who’s been on one of these islands or been on dirt roads, you understand it’s harder to drive along a dirt road, and then if that road’s eaten up, and then if there are trees down across it and poles down across it that you keep having to stop to even move that, to move a car along, so to get supplies to places, to assess the situation has been so extra challenging, and to the point of ports and helicopters and airports and infrastructure was hit everywhere, and there are only so many helicopters to go around, and they’re small, so to be able to use those to get to places and back and bring supplies and even assess what’s going on is that’s another reason that we just don’t even know the extent of some of this damage from at least what I’ve understood, but maybe I’m just missing something too?

Carlos Polanco: No, absolutely, that’s completely true, right? Anytime that there’s a storm, a powerful storm, some communities, especially up in the mountains or areas that are more rural, become completely, completely uncommunicable, like through, you know, sometimes even like telephones or text doesn’t work. So the only way to get to speak with those people is to actually go there, but then the roads are blocked, which only is what I’m talking about, the compounding effects of these storm damages. You know, maybe that road was was already to begin with, not an easy road to navigate because of a previous storm, which has happened to me, but then you go in right after a storm hits, and it’s impossible. So these people are kind of left to their own devices if there’s nobody that can reach them. Because, like you said, there’s only a limited amount of helicopters. The best way to get to this these places are through land, and that’s incredibly hard.

Jeff Berardelli: You know, I just want to quickly jump in, on, on, on, on the impacts of these storms. You want to dial back to 2020, when Eta and Iota hit very late in the season. They were both Cat four storms. They hit almost exactly the same place. Nicaragua and Honduras got hit so hard that about 600,000 people were displaced, and the vast majority of the agriculture that was grown there was wiped out. Most of these people are working in agriculture, oh, and they also rely on that agriculture for sustenance, to be able to eat. And so I sent a crew down there, and we did a story with a couple of families and two men we interviewed. One of them broke down in tears because he knew that his only chance of feeding his family was to try to migrate to the United States. He didn’t want to. He realized he was risking his life just trying to do it, but he was willing to do it because he realized there was no future for him anymore, because the hurricanes had wiped out his future and his home in Nicaragua. I think, I think he personally lived in Honduras, and he was getting on one of those caravans to come to the United States. So we, you know, I don’t want to open up a can of worms here, but the migration issue is huge when you destroy people’s homes and livelihoods.

David Dickson, CCNow: And that’s why so much of what we say here at Covering Climate Now is climate change is not just a weather story. Climate change provides a lens that we can look at and see how it influences so much else, because it is a threat multiplier, not just, you know, intensifying hurricanes, but how is it impacting infrastructure? How is it impacting food security? And to Jeff’s point, how is it impacting migration patterns in these areas. So it’s all a human issue, but it’s also a justice issue. This has been a great conversation. I do want to come back to it, but I do think we want to talk a little bit about how Melissa got so intense in the first place, because we had talked a little bit about this, but I think we should kind of dive in, into that extreme rapid intensification that burn debt mentioned earlier, because in just 24 hours, Melissa went from a tropical storm to a category four hurricane, an increase of 70 miles per hour again in about a day. Climate Central analysis found that during this rapid intensification, the storm slowly drifted over exceptionally warm waters that were made about two and a half degrees Fahrenheit, warmer on average. These conditions were made up to 700 times more likely because of human caused climate change. But as we are seeing time and time again, this rapid strengthening isn’t an outlier in our climate change present this season, Erin went from a category one storm to a Category five storm in one day and this other, the other Category five storm that we saw this year, Humberto also saw similar rapid intensification. So I want to go back to you Bernadette, and I also want to feel free for Jeff and Carlos to chime in as well. What does this, I would say, season of rapid intensification tell us for future hurricane seasons?

Bernadette Woods Placky: I don’t know if it’s this for next I think it’s part of the bigger picture that we’re seeing of how more storms are intensifying rapidly, and so why does this matter? Right? That’s we can get super science-y, especially Jeff and I will go to town here, but it matters for people living on land, and if you’re preparing, even if the forecast models are showing that the storm will intensify. But if you’re preparing for a category one to make landfall and overnight, that becomes a four or five, that is a completely different evacuation preparation. And anyone who lives in one of these areas knows what that means. But for those who don’t, there are so many layers to evacuations there. Who leaves when there’s what closes down when there’s what shelters open, when there’s what hospitals are designated, what what within the different shelter zones can have pets don’t have… I mean, there’s so many layers to evacuations, and it takes time to implement those, and it takes time for people to get out of their house, get in a car and go somewhere that is not an easy thing to do if you’re not in the area. It’s easy to think, oh, evacuate, but the logistics of it are extraordinary. So if you’re preparing for a one, it might not make sense to evacuate in certain zones, but a four or five, it will. And everything changes overnight. And so what that does for people, is it just dramatically changes how we prepare and the amount of risk that we’re facing. And so we are seeing in our computer models, they are picking up on these rapid intensifications, but it’s going above in certain levels. And I think collectively in the meteorological community, when we saw that wind go to 185 and we saw also, at the same time, the central pressure of the storm drop below 900 millibars. Now that’s important, because the two are connected. As pressure drops, wind goes up, and when you see that pressure drop below a 900 the wind go to 185 and it’s about to make landfall, and it’s still strengthening. You just know from past what that’s going to look like on the ground, and even the best evacuations and preparation 185 is pushing anything that we’ve prepared for.

David Dickson, CCNow: Yeah, I know my time in Charleston, I’m curious, Jeff, what the numbers are for you, to evacuate an area of that size takes around 36 to 48 hours. What does it look like for Tampa?

Jeff Berardelli: Yeah, it’s it’s somewhat similar, and Bernadette’s right. If a storm’s gonna gonna rapidly intensify and you don’t expect it, everything changes when you wake up in the morning. It’s totally different from when you went to sleep the night before and trying to evacuate, especially a place like Tampa, where there are a million bridges and bays and, you know, intercoastal waterways, and it’s very difficult to get that many people outta Dodge and we have a lot of waterfront property. You know, one thing I want to mention. I pinned one tweet to my to my Twitter account so you can see it. I did two different analyzes of of rapid intensification, and also of cat four and cat five storms. And I’ll just say, in terms of rapid intensification, I looked at the period between 1980 and 2020 excuse me, 2002. 1980 – 2002, so a 23 year period. And then I looked at the period 2003 through 2025 so this this year. So 2 23 year periods, one from the 1980s and 90s, and one from the last two decades, and found that extreme rapid intensification happened three times in the first period, only three times. This is a 60 mile an hour or more increase in 24 hours, but in the last 20 years, or 23 years, it’s happened 18 times. So there’s a six times increase since the period of the 80s and 90s to now in extreme rapid intensification. Now, some of that could be due to natural cycles, like what we call the AMO, although I’m always skeptical of the AMO, I think it’s more due to pollution and aerosol changes. But some of it is obviously due to the warming waters, which, by the way, is also caused by the reduction in aerosols as well, and greenhouse warming. Bottom line is, something has changed right six times increase in rapid intensification. It’s not just, it is not just, you know, just changes in the way that we can actually look at or, you know, analyze storms, or the amount of satellites we have, or the data that we have, data collection techniques that we have anyway, that’s a lot. That’s not the only thing. And the other one I pinned to my to my post, is the amount of cat fours and cat fives has doubled in that same period. So if you compare the two, we’ve had double in the last 20 years. I went back and even looked at the active period back in the 1920s 30s, 40s. And of course, then we couldn’t actually see anything, but it still was double. Now that probably has something to do with being able to observe storms anyway, a lot of information very quickly.

Bernadette Woods Placky: One piece to add to that for people who like these kind of data points, because a lot of us do. Phil Klotzbach is another person to follow. He’s a hurricane researcher and one of the leads in the forecast that you see out of Colorado State University. And so he is someone very active on social media also, and will constantly share these kinds of statistics with you. And one other context piece there to which Jeff was saying is we couldn’t see these storms. Sometimes people forget that, pre 1980 ish, there’s now, depending on which data set you use when it comes to hurricanes, it’s a different sort of period of record, of start that is the trustworthy one. But before we had satellites, we still had knowledge of hurricanes, especially the big ones, whether it’s from ships moving around or if they made landfall. But we didn’t have a complete record. That’s why it’s more so from the 1980s but between 1980s and now, we’re getting enough data that you can pull out the longer term warming trend impacts of climate change from these cycles that can operate on orders of decades that that Jeff was talking about. So we’re starting to see this climate change signal emerge even more so from the satellite data.

David Dickson, CCNow: I just want to quickly flag a colleague of ours, Jim Gandy, longtime meteorologist out at Columbia, where he says that South Carolina Emergency Management Division now estimates to evacuate Charleston takes up to 80 hours due to increased population, and we’re seeing that because people want to be on the coast, a lot of people are moving in. So again, this all goes into like, how do we communicate these impacts? How do we change, like, evacuation orders and how all of this, what will need to change? And we’ll get back to that, because I think it’s a great comment and great question. But I want to kind of open, you know, a can of worms here. We’ve seen a lot of discussion about this over the past couple of weeks, even over the past two years, even going back to the 2024 season, because we have to discuss it. It’s a long, heated topic amongst meteorologists, and that is, is a category six needed? I know that we have a few folks joining us from all across the globe. So just really quick in the Atlantic, meteorologists classify a tropical systems intensity through the wind driven Saffir Simpson scale, which measures the amount of damage expected, capping off at catastrophic, maximum sustained winds of 157 miles per hour. Just a note five tropical cyclones that formed since 2013 that was Maria, Irma, Dorian, Milton, and Melissa would have likely been deemed a category six if such a classification existed. And I know we have a lot of meteorologists on the panel right now, but I want to kick it off first by hearing from you, Carlos, as the climate reporter in the room, what do you think about the use or this ongoing argument, again, all of us meteorologists about a category six?

Carlos Polanco: I understand why people suggest it, but I don’t think it’s super useful, particularly as like someone as a news person, because once it reaches category four or five, it’s already pretty clear that it’s going to be extremely bad, right? So adding an extra bad to that isn’t going to tell people a lot of what’s going to happen. And we were talking about this before it started, but there’s no inclusion of water in that cat one through five scale as well, which we’ve seen is impacting more in certain locations. So for Puerto Rico, Hurricane Fiona, category one, dumped more water in certain places than hurricane Maria, category four or five, depending on when you measure it right. So this adding this an extra number isn’t going to do much to tell people how dangerous it is. It’s a shorthand, and our kind of great big challenge as news people is explaining to people the impacts beyond just saying cat five, really bad. Um. So that’s why I don’t think it’s super useful, although I’ll let the meteorologists and people with more knowledge of the data speak.

David Dickson, CCNow: It’s like moving the goalposts, essentially, where it’s like, I, you know, I can’t tell you the number of times, and Jeff and Bernadette chime in as well, where it’s like, well, I It’s a category one or two storm. I don’t evacuate…. a category four storm, and then what if it’s well, yeah, I don’t evacuate for a category four storm, but a category six, yeah, I’ll do that. Jeff, I know you joined this discourse on Twitter recently saying that you don’t firmly feel either direction, but posted that if these storms continue, we might need to find a way to separate the men from the boys to so to speak.

Jeff Berardelli: I thought I’d get in trouble for that. So Bern. I want you Bern. I’m calling on you, and I’ll tell you why, because I can see you’re giddy about this question. You’re very excited about it. You have the enthusiasm to answer it, and she’s gonna answer it better than me, but I will chime in after Bern. But Bern, I’m tossing it. I’m talk catch this if you can. Because, because you look at her, you see her face, she’s very excited about this. So let’s let Bern talk about it.

Speaker 1: I just love these scientific discussions. And it gets people going. You see people come out? Yes, no, it that? That always just fascinates me, because I love science. So the arguments of both sides. I’ll lay them out. Carlos hit on some of it. If a five, technically Category Five is destruction and catastrophe, what’s more than destruction and catastrophe? Can you add to that? That’s one side of the discussion. And then it also brings in the social science piece of what does that mean for preparedness? What does that mean for insurance claims? What does that mean for people’s risk assessment? Will it be moving, as you were just saying, David, will people then devalue the lower side at different level, which is all really good, important questions on the other side too. I lean in on where Carlos is going with this. I I believe we need to rethink a scale. But it’s not just about wind. It has to include water. The vast majority of storms deadly impact is around water. Now, when you’re talking 185 miles per hour, that’s that’s a whole, that is a whole different level. And we’re right now. We’re discussing a five, a six, whatever that might be, which is that, but some of the lower level wind is more survivable if you’re safe. But often the water becomes the issue, whether it’s coming up as a storm surge or whether it’s coming down from the sky from more intense, heavy rainfall with which is another connection with climate change, both all pieces of that are getting worse with climate change. Winds are increasing more intensely and more rapidly. Storm surge is getting higher and going farther inland, and we’re getting more heavy rainfall with these storms. And the Saffir Simpson scale is purely wind. It’s a wind measurement scale. It does not incorporate water at all, which is something that I think should be rethought. Now I’m going to play another piece of this. In here is the tornado scale, so the Enhanced Fujita scale for tornadoes, how we assess tornado damage, is a post scale. It doesn’t match, match it or measure it during it goes back and assesses the damage, and then it gives it a grade from an EF zero all the way up to an EFI based on the damage. And it has been shifted at times because of our building codes, because of our assessments all of that. So it has gotten we have stronger building codes now. Storms can withhold more now, but the enhanced Fujita scale is more of a damage scale. Saffir Simpson is a wind scale. Hurricanes have a lot of water with them. We need something that incorporates water. That’s my take on all of this.

Jeff Berardelli: Jeff, yeah, and she might made my job very easy, because I’m going to reiterate exactly what berb said. I feel the same way. I don’t feel strongly that we need a cat six. I do think that we need a scale that incorporates water and the other impacts of a hurricane. It’s really simple for me. Yes, storms are getting stronger, but oftentimes it’s the water, not the wind, that kills although wind is very dangerous. So that’s all to say that what Bern said is pretty much exactly the way I feel.

David Dickson, CCNow: Absolutely and I think this is going to be a conversation that continues and gets brought up at every bar that you’ll…

Bernadette Woods Placky: —hope it does and not just continues. I hope there’s a way to advance this. And this is where some of our scientific meetings are critical for these conversations. And when you get people so fired up on something like this, this is often a way to prompt action, instead of just talking about it. All right, I know we’re coming up on around 15 minutes till the end of the hour. I do want to spend some time to get into some audience questions, but I want to just quickly finish by exploring a comment that we’ve seen a lot when discussing this season, and that it was a quiet one. And by some accounts, yeah, it absolutely wasn’t. In some sense it also was for the US. Is there was no hurricane landfalls in the US this season, for the first time in just about a decade. And by the way, this isn’t that uncommon. If you look back 25 years, you’ll find that roughly a quarter of the seasons have been hurricane landfall free in the continental US. That’s not to say that we’ve been completely spared the season, either as Bernadette, as mentioned earlier, Hurricane Erin, brought significant coastal erosion throughout all the eastern seaboard, or most of the eastern seaboard, north of the Carolinas, but then also, torrential rainfall from Tropical Storm Chantal triggered widespread flash flooding, causing $4 billion worth of damage and at least six deaths. So we can talk about a little bit about that, but I also want to get to a question that we had gotten in our registrations, because looking back on the season, there were periods where not much happened, specifically a long period through parts of August and September, which were typically the peak of hurricane season. Jeff, why is this the case? And did Saharan dust save us this season?

Speaker 1: No I don’t think Saharan dust was abnormal. To be honest with you, we always talk about Saharan dust. We get great pictures of Saharan dust. But overall, Saharan dust was not a factor, necessarily. At times, it’s always a factor. It’s a factor every season, but not more than any other season. Oh, look, you know, this is somewhat theoretical, but there’s a little bit more confidence in this theory because the computer models are kind of predicting it. What’s happening is everything’s warming. It’s not just the tropical Atlantic that’s warming. It’s the mid latitudes that are warming. It’s the subtropics that are warming. And so your concentrated warming isn’t concentrated at all. The relative warmth is everywhere. It’s not just in the tropics. And storms tend to form where the relative warmest blob of water is. And so we saw a lot of those storms in the subtropics this year, because that’s where the relatively warmest water was not the warmest, but the relatively warmest, so the one most above normal water. So what the climate science says is that it’s possible that the Atlantic overall could become a little bit more stable, because it’s not just a warm pocket in the tropics anymore. It’s warming in the mid latitudes too, but that when the atmosphere is favorable for development, that in those cases, because the water is so much warmer in that pocket, that those storms will get stronger faster and become and much more likely to become a major hurricane. So I think what we’re seeing because we’ve seen it now two seasons in a row, where it’s quiet in August and in parts of September as well, is that we are likely starting to see the impacts of climate change take fold, where things are just stable because everything is warm during August, then as soon as things start to cool off in September and October. Now you have a contrast. You have more pockets of relative warmth, and not just warmth overall. Now you have the areas where storms will form, and it’s a concern for me, I would say David, because, and everybody else is watching, because I’m on the west coast of Florida. So we keep back loading seasons, rather than having August where storms will hit the East Coast of Florida, now we’re getting storms that form at the end of September and October. Now these storms are coming back across the Gulf, or from the Caribbean into the west coast of Florida. So for me, as a meteorologist on the west coast of Florida, I am concerned about back loaded seasons, which is are stable in August and the beginning of September, and then all of a sudden light up later September and October. This is a theory. It may just be a coincidence that this has happened two years in a row, but this is kind of what the climate science has been saying for a couple of decades.

David Dickson, CCNow: Bernadette, you have anything to chime in?

Speaker 1: I’ll add. Well, that’s an interesting reflection there, because a few years… so nothing happens in isolation, as Jeff’s explaining so well how and so the peak heat, even of this season, gets pushed to the other seasons, right? So it warms up earlier, the heat lingers longer. And for a while, there was the conversation was, do we need to start the hurricane season in the Atlantic earlier? Because we were seeing some earlier storms spin up, because the water temperatures were getting to the critical threshold, and we’re able to support storms. So in other basins around the world, there are different defined seasons, but as we’re spreading this heat over the year, you can hit that point, and you can get those tropical systems earlier and later. And what are your what else you’re saying there? Jeff is interesting, because they don’t learn it somewhat with what we’re seeing with other types of weather, right? It’s just the way we experience these types of extreme weather are changing, and that’s happening with tornadoes too. Is tornado season, which used to be a typical peaky when all these factors meet up, is shifting. It’s shifting in geography. It’s shifting in seasonality, pushing out of maybe what was the peak into what would have been colder seasons, but it still has enough, so the way, and then that all fact… that’s so dangerous, back to what we were just talking about with humans being at risk. Because if you live in Oklahoma and may and you see a thunderstorm, you intuitively think of that storm differently than you would in January. And so the same thing with some of these coastal storms in the summer versus January. So there’s a risk piece of this that that needs to be learned along the way too, and so that we can keep people prepared and saved as the way we’re experiencing extreme weather is really shifting in distribution.

David Dickson, CCNow: I want to jump into some audience questions, because we have about 10 minutes left or so, and I do want to get to some of these. I want to talk about this one from Cynthia Curtis, because this was a conversation that we saw before the season actually started. You know, with the reduction of NOAA staff and their question is, what impact will the discontinuing of the public sharing of data from our scientists have on forecasting and trending information? Up to Bernadette or Jeff, if you want to chime in on that,

Bernadette Woods Placky: I’ll let Jeff. Jeff, jump on this one first.

Jeff Berardelli: Umm, so I do think it has an effect, but it’s very hard to measure an effect like that, right? Because it’s subtle. So I think over time, the less we share, the less open we are with our information, the less able other scientists are to kind of piggyback on that information and make new findings, and so it slows the whole machine down. I think you see the results of this kind of thing, acutely in events when you have less staff and less sharing, to some degree, but it’s not measurable. I think the bigger impact you see over the course of decades where your whole scientific establishment is degraded, and it no longer performs at its peak ability like it has performed over the past, you know, 30, 40, 50 years or so. I think that’s probably the answer. I think, and I think we can probably find, like the GFS has been absolutely horrible in terms of its hurricane forecasting this year. Is that due to less balloon launches? Is it due… just I don’t know, and I think I’ll leave it to the experts to kind of diagnose what’s going on. There are computer models a little less accurate, the traditional ones, the ones that are driven off of physics, rather than the AI ones. So, so that’s what I would say. I’m I’m not necessarily an expert in this, but I feel like we’ll see the fruits, unfortunately, of this labor right now, years to come, but I don’t know how measurable it is at the moment.

Bernadette Woods Placky: Measurability is hard. That is that is true, but we know that we have gotten much better at hurricane forecasting, and one of the key reasons we’ve gotten better is more accurate timely data. And if we take that away, it ups risk for accuracy, for timeliness, and it also can halt our advancements. And as all the things we’re talking about now are how things are changing, and so we need to not only stay up with what’s happening, but get ahead of these changes too, so that we can keep people safe and prepared. And if we start to take away the key pieces of information that allow us to do that, we’re putting everything at risk.

David Dickson, CCNow: If you want to really dive into this, we did a webinar earlier this year with Climate Central, Covering Climate Now, as well as the American Meteorological Society, that really touched on the importance of NOAA and why we need it more than ever, and how this data that we get forms the invisible backbone for so much of our daily life. We do have a question about the role in AI and climate modeling and weather modeling, and that’s a conversation that unfortunately, we don’t have enough time to talk about today, because there were some AI weather models that actually did pretty good job in this hurricane season. Feel free to seek that out. But I want to hear from you, Carlos, because you brought up something at the very beginning of this session. I think it’s so important, especially again, we were talking about mainland communities being able to evacuate. What has the impact been, kind of on the psyche and just the minds of these people living in the Caribbean with these intensifying storms and what, what is the kind of feeling as this season comes to an end, but knowing that we’re going to have to do it all over again next year,

Carlos Polanco: Oh, man, that’s a, that’s a really tough thing to answer. Well, I think generally things aren’t great. But you know, the thing about people is that they can pretty much go for anything and get used to it. So it’s, it’s a situation of, yes, it’s hurricane season was bad. Or, Yes, we experienced this terrible disaster, and we’re really worried about it happening again in the future, but we’re living or there’s, how do I explain this? There, in a lot of ways, people are living through other kind of situations that put hurricane season in the back of mind until it’s it’s like happening to them right now. So for example, here, since Hurricane Maria, we’ve had a problem with the electrical grid that is now right there was a huge blackout post Maria, very long, and now we’re dealing with in some locations, sometimes daily or weekly blackouts, and that’s just become the new normal. People are very angry, very upset about it, but we’ve kind of gotten used to it. And if another or when another hurricane comes and damages the grid, even more, I’m sure that we’ll end up getting used to that as well. So in some ways, people are trying to combat that, that getting used to it, but I it’s, it definitely weighs on people, is what I’ll say. And it’s, I think, back of mind, not the hurricane season itself, and I know I’m going along, sorry, not the hurricane season itself, but the after effects that come from that those events.

David Dickson, CCNow: We are just about out of time. I want to thank all of our panelists for really chiming in. I do want to just really quickly give each of you a space, just for a quick elevator pitch for everyone in the room that is going to be recapping or talking about this hurricane season in the coming weeks. How can they make the climate connection with this hurricane season? Bernadette, we’ll start with you.

Bernadette Woods Placky: So quick recap several ways you can make the connection. A we covered it here, but to summarize that. One, you can get into the attribution science links that have been shared here, they are quantifiable ways that climate change has affected specific storms. You can also get into rapid intensification. We seem to have links here too of what rapid intensification is, and we’re seeing more of it in a warming world. Also tropical cyclones in general, the way we know that they’re being affected is higher, stronger storm surge, more extreme rapid intensification, pushing these storms to a different level, and more heavy rainfall when they make landfall. So those are the connections we’re here to help. If you have any additional follow up questions, we can do that.

Jeff Berardelli: Yeah, and I would say the same thing. I can also help as well. You can also. You can reach me on, probably the easiest way is Twitter or x, as they call it. Now you can just, I am me. I’m pretty active there, so you can find me pretty easily. Also, I would look at some of my old posts, because I’ve done some analysis on this stuff, and you’ll see some pretty amazing stats in terms of how many more of these cat fours and cat fives we have, or how much more rapid intensification. Also, one thing I’ve seen Jeff Masters write about at Yale, and you might want to look it up is how much more damage we see just by increasing the wind of a storm by 10 to 20 miles an hour, it’s something like double, double the amount of damage by increasing the storm’s winds by 10 or 20 miles an hour, which seems ludicrous, but it is, in fact, the case, because it’s not just damage from the wind. It’s damaged from the water. It’s damaged from all the other things get get worse when the storm gets stronger. So I would encourage you to look up Dr Masters’ article about how much more damage is caused by just an incremental increase in wind. So I would say it’s not just, you know, interesting scientifically to diagnose why climate change is making hurricanes more impactful, but just how much more impactful is just an extra 10 or 20 miles an hour? Because that’s what we’re seeing in terms of the extra strength from hurricanes. Last year, Climate Central did an analysis on all the hurricanes of 2024 and found that all of them were made about a category stronger than they otherwise would have been. Well, that means they’re almost double the amount that they would cause, it about double the amount of damage if they made landfall at that higher category.

David Dickson, CCNow: And finally, Carlos.

Carlos Polanco: I would add focus on not just the immediate aftermath, but the midterm aftermath and the long term aftermath and how effects compound on each other after each hurricane season.

David Dickson, CCNow: And to Bernadette’s point, and I think we’ll leave it on that don’t forget about Jamaica. Don’t forget about the human aspect. We’re still seeing this play out where, where I am in the Carolinas. Helene still remains to be a problem, and for these areas that are impacted by these intense storms, again influenced by climate change, these stories don’t end just as the season ends. So with that, I want to thank all of you for our wonderful panelists, for joining us today. It’s been incredibly insightful. I urge you all not only to connect with them on their social media platforms, but also to sign up for our newsletters at Covering Climate Now and Climate Central so you can stay informed. And by the way, I hope that you’ll join us with Covering Climate Now and Climate Central for our next webinar together, which is going to be the final prep your climate coverage session of the year, focusing on the impacts climate change is having on winter weather. It’s going to provide more resources like we discussed today, get very practical and really help you in your climate reporting. So until then, thank you all once again and stay in touch.