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Experts warn Hurricane Beryl could offer terrifying glimpse of future storms

Posted on by angelo

As Hurricane Beryl barreled toward Jamaica Tuesday after killing at least four people in the Caribbean’s Windward Islands, climate scientists warned that the record-breaking Category 5 storm was a living example of what’s to come on a rapidly warming planet.

Even before the Atlantic hurricane season began on June 1, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted an 85 percent chance of above-normal activity and 17 to 25 named storms in total this year. Matthew Cappucci, a meteorologist for The Washington PostThe Capital Weather Gang highlighted some of the records Beryl has already broken.

“There is a strong and well-documented link between the effects of human-induced climate change and the development of stronger, wetter storms that are more likely to intensify rapidly,” he wrote Tuesday. “Beryl strengthened from a tropical depression to a Category 4 hurricane in just 48 hours, the fastest strengthening rate ever recorded for a storm prior to September.”

Beryl is also the earliest Category 4 and 5 hurricane on record in the Atlantic, Cappucci noted. Previously, the earliest storm to reach the highest level of the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale was Emily in mid-July 2005.

The Capital Weather Gang reported that Beryl “strengthened again Monday night, with peak winds reaching 165 mph. It surpassed Emily (2005) as the strongest July hurricane on record. It’s early July, but the Atlantic is behaving like late August.”

Chris Gloninger, a certified consulting meteorologist, pointed out that “the climate crisis has driven seawater temperatures well above average and contributed to the explosion of this storm.”

As Stefan Rahmstorf from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the University of Potsdam explains: “The heat from the upper ocean is the energy source for tropical cyclones. This heat is reaching record levels, mainly due to emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. That’s why an extreme hurricane season is predicted for this year. It’s off to a bad start!”

Colorado State University meteorologist Philip Klotzbach shared graphs Monday showing that “the heat content of the Caribbean Ocean today is what we normally get in mid-September.”

While some expressed disbelief at the storm, CNN Extreme Weather Editor Eric Zerkel pointed out that “Beryl isn’t ‘incredible’ or ‘defying logic,’ it’s what happens when you warm the planet with fossil fuel pollution for decades. The oceans store about 90 percent of that excess heat. The ocean is as warm as it usually is when Category 4 storms form. June is now August.”

Acknowledging Beryl’s historic strength, Steve Bowen, meteorologist and chief scientific officer at global reinsurance firm Gallagher Re, concluded that “this is a massive warning sign for the rest of the season.”

Beyond this hurricane season, which ends in November, David Ho, a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and co-founder of (C)Worthy, said, “Let’s not forget that things are only going to get worse as we continue to consume nearly 100 million barrels of oil every day.”

The current storm is sparking calls for action to phase out fossil fuels worldwide. Noting that Beryl is “breaking records and leaving a trail of destruction across the Caribbean,” the U.S.-based Sunrise Movement said that “we must prosecute big oil for their role in the devastation they have wrought.”

In response to a climate scientist who shared a photo of some of the damage already caused by Beryl, Rahmstorf expressed hope that people around the world “will not wait for extremes to hit their homes before voting for climate stabilization.”

Beryl made landfall Monday as a Category 4 hurricane on Carriacou, an island in Grenada, and also hit St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The Associated PressAt least four people were killed.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Tuesday afternoon that on its current track, “the center of Beryl will move rapidly over the central Caribbean Sea today and is expected to pass near Jamaica on Wednesday and the Cayman Islands on Thursday. The center is expected to approach the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico on Thursday evening.”