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Janae Pierre: I'm Janae Pierre, filling in for Melissa Harris-Perry. Hurricane Ian's wind speeds went from 75 miles per hour last Monday, to 155 miles per hour by the time it hit Florida on Wednesday. The category four hurricane decimated the Florida coast, leaving at least 2 million Florida residents without power. Many Floridians, expecting a low in hurricane, based on Monday night's predictions, made the choice to stay home.

Ian's rapid intensification caught some in Florida completely unprepared for the strength of the storm. Climate scientists across the US are now pointing to the impact of climate change on hurricanes like Ian. Joining me now is Kasha Patel, deputy weather editor at the Washington Post, who has been covering these impacts. Kasha, thanks for being with us on The Takeaway.

Kasha Patel: Thank you for having me.

Janae Pierre: What makes Hurricane Ian different from other hurricanes that we've seen in recent years?

Kasha Patel: That's an interesting question. I would say that, in a way, Hurricane Ian is similar to hurricanes that we've seen in recent years, which is worrying, right? When I talk to climate scientists and I ask them, "How is climate change affecting hurricane activity?" They can say how much climate change impacted one hurricane, but that's a little bit different. Here we're talking about that Ian is actually a trend over the past few decades, of rapidly intensifying hurricanes, especially at major, stronger, higher winds.

It was very slow moving and it was destructive. Since 2017, we've had six storms, rated category four or stronger, that have hit the US shoreline. Then we got a 7th, which is-- Maria hit Puerto Rico. Ian just follows in with that group.

Janae Pierre: What exactly is a rapid intensification event and what can you tell us about their frequency?

Kasha Patel: Rapid intensification event is jargon in the science world. Basically, that means when a storm speed increases, their wind speed increases by at least 35 miles per hour within 24 hours. Here with Hurricane Ian, we saw that-- We went to sleep, it was a category three, then we woke up and it was almost near a category five. That's a huge, huge, rapid intensification. There's still more research that needs to be out because climate change does hinge on decades of data, not just one or two data points.

What we've seen so far, over the past three to four decades, is that these rapid intensification events, especially in these stronger storms, are increasing. For instance, I was talking to a scientist and he told me that-- This is based off of his findings, these are hypothetical numbers, but it helps give you an idea. He said that if a storm in the Caribbean sea four decades ago intensified by 34 miles in a day, that same storm would increase by 48 miles per hour in today's climate.

Janae Pierre: Wow. Talk to me about the relationship between the severity of these hurricanes and climate change.

Kasha Patel: Climate change can affect hurricanes in several different ways. I think it might be hard for people to think about, because climate change, we hear it's from burning of fossil fuels, the extra greenhouse gas goes into the atmosphere and it warms the atmosphere. The thing is-- The ocean absorbs about 90% of the excess heat on earth, which is from those human-emitted greenhouse gases. 90%. As you can imagine, the ocean is heating up at unprecedented rates.

Every year we talk about, "Oh, earth was this warm, earth was the hottest ever, this month was the hottest ever," and sometimes earth is maybe the second hottest year that we've had on record, the fifth, the sixth, it fluctuates, but Ocean has been consistently breaking records, in terms of its ocean heat content, is what we call it every single year. Basically, what that means is-- All of that heat that is trapped in that ocean provides fuel for hurricanes, especially when the hurricane is going over, let's say, in the Gulf.

The Gulf was very warm around this time, for when Ian was passing through. The Gulf was warm. All of that heat evaporates, it provides energy to Ian, so it helps make more storm clouds. It helps make it bigger. It also helps slow it down. That way, as it slows down, it can tap into that heat in the ocean even more and intensify more. That's just one example of how sea surface temperatures can intensify or make these hurricanes more severe.

Janae Pierre: I want to talk a bit about a study out of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. it states that Hurricane Ian was 10% wetter due to the effects of climate change. Could you break that down for me?

Kasha Patel: Yes. That's an interesting analysis. In recent years, I would say maybe just in the past decade, there's been this emerging field in climate science called climate attribution. I mentioned a little bit earlier in our conversation, where basically scientists are able to use models and compare an event, let's say, Hurricane Ian. They'll see what happened now with rainfall observations, then they'll compare that into a computer model world, where there is no human-emitted greenhouse gases.

Essentially, a world without climate change. They look at those differences and see, "Oh, my gosh. Ian is this much worse?" If we didn't have human-caused climate change, this is what it would've been like. These scientists, they found that without climate change, Hurricane Ian's most extreme rainfall events would've been 10% less. This result is not surprising, it's not unexpected. This follows a lot of other studies that we've seen.

Hurricane Maria, Hurricane Harvey. A lot of these huge storms also have their rainfall rates exacerbated by climate change. The reason this is is because, like I said, with climate change, you have a warmer atmosphere. A warmer atmosphere can actually hold more water. If it can hold more water, that means the hurricane can have more storage, so when it's ready to fall, when the rain is ready to fall, more rain will come down. We see this in non-hurricane events.

Just flooding events, over this summer, we had so many in the US. A lot of climate attribution studies will probably come out and say that those flooding events were also exacerbated by climate change.

Janae Pierre: Wow. What does that mean for storms like this one, in the long term?

Kasha Patel: Oh, boy.

Janae Pierre: No, I hate to think about it. [chuckles]

Kasha Patel: [chuckles] Well, it depends on a couple of things. If we are able to reduce our greenhouse gas submissions, if we are able to do the things that we need to do to reduce global warming, maybe in a few decades it won't be as bad. However, that is going to take a lot of time. Let's say we get to a place that we're not going to emit an excess of greenhouse gases. It's still going to take our Earth system a while before it can reach and feel the effects of that.

There's so much energy trapped into our atmosphere right now, just from past decades, that we're probably going to see more intense hurricanes for a bit.

Janae Pierre: What's something that people get wrong when talking about the relationship between climate change and hurricane severity?

Kasha Patel: People always think that, "Oh, everything is done by climate change," and people often accuse climate scientists being climate alarmists. I can tell you, I talk to a lot of climate scientists and they are the first ones to tell you that something is not related to climate change. Science is a very rigorous process. It's not just one study, necessarily, that a scientist will do and be like, "This trend that we're seeing is climate change." It's a community, it's verified, there's peer review.

Now, having said that, there are things that we don't find evidence yet, that it is influenced by climate change. For instance, the frequency of hurricanes still seems like it's going on its natural cycle, and that makes sense. Climate change doesn't really create weather events. The weather events are done through meteorological processes in our atmosphere, on our land. These interactions have already been there. What climate change does is, it just adds a boost to these weather systems.

Some people say it's like weather or an extreme event on steroids. I think it's important to know that we're painting this picture but it's subtle in how climate change is affecting it. When I say, "Subtle," you're like, "Well, if it's subtle, then how come it's creating all these large catastrophic events?" The thing about climate change is-- Like I said, it exacerbates these weather events and it makes the extremes more extreme. These rapid intensification events that I said, they're going to make them intensify a little faster.

They're going to make these floods a little worse. Like the study that you mentioned, about the 10% of hurricane Ian, it's going to make their extreme rainfall rates a little worse. The problem with that is that is an issue for our infrastructure. We build our buildings, we build our infrastructure and our society is built on, sometimes, what we think historically has happened in the past. We think, "Okay, if we have this much rain, we're good," but now, we're seeing extremes that we've never seen before. That becomes a problem for how we build up our society.

Janae Pierre: Kasha Patel is the Deputy Weather Editor for the Washington Post. Kasha, thanks so much for joining us.

Kasha Patel: Thank you for having me.

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