Did climate enhanced weather extremes contribute to the crash of a LearJet in Florida yesterday?
Fox Weather reported ongoing storms as a “1000 year event”, while a business jet caught in a violent thunderstorm lost control, leading to this terrifying audio and video.
Bob Henson and Jeff Masters for Yale Climate Connections:
Florida’s extreme rains have been caused by a moist easterly flow of air steered by a strong high-pressure system to the northeast, along with a weak upper-air low-pressure system over the state. This set-up created slow-moving thunderstorms that passed repeatedly over the same areas, leading to torrential rains and extreme flooding. The record rains have been boosted by record-to-near-record warm ocean temperatures off the east coast of Florida. According to Climate Central’s Ocean Shift Index, waters of this warmth were made 10 to 100 times more likely by human-caused climate change.