2 thoughts on “PBS: How Climate is Changing Hurricanes”
I’m somewhat disgusted that in a discussion of the mechanics of hurricanes, American media outlets still make reference to US landfalling hurricanes, as if the destruction and death (and migration-fueling) of the hurricanes that devastate places like Cuba and Honduras and Mexico don’t really count.
It doesn’t help that denialists often used the “US landfall drought” as a dismissive talking point in the past.
It makes me think of those weather maps where heat waves and droughts and storms magically disappear off the political border of the map, or pretending that the weather affecting 2% of the globe (the area of the fifty United States) is the only part to be taken seriously with global climate change.
We’ve seen the type of expensive damage a hurricane can do without a technical landfall. Whether loitering off the coast and dumping record amounts of rain (e.g., Hurricane Harvey) or running along offshore and eating beaches and houses along the Atlantic coast (Cat 5 Hurricane Matthew in 2016, or pushing surges up rivers and estuaries to cause inland flooding (Cat 1 Hurricane Isabel flooding Richmond via the James River).
I’m somewhat disgusted that in a discussion of the mechanics of hurricanes, American media outlets still make reference to US landfalling hurricanes, as if the destruction and death (and migration-fueling) of the hurricanes that devastate places like Cuba and Honduras and Mexico don’t really count.
It doesn’t help that denialists often used the “US landfall drought” as a dismissive talking point in the past.
It makes me think of those weather maps where heat waves and droughts and storms magically disappear off the political border of the map, or pretending that the weather affecting 2% of the globe (the area of the fifty United States) is the only part to be taken seriously with global climate change.
Annnnd another thing!
We’ve seen the type of expensive damage a hurricane can do without a technical landfall. Whether loitering off the coast and dumping record amounts of rain (e.g., Hurricane Harvey) or running along offshore and eating beaches and houses along the Atlantic coast (Cat 5 Hurricane Matthew in 2016, or pushing surges up rivers and estuaries to cause inland flooding (Cat 1 Hurricane Isabel flooding Richmond via the James River).