Global warming is adding more moisture to the atmosphere, providing more fuel for big storms like hurricanes. But tropical cyclones are extremely complicated. How much can we really link them to human-induced climate change?

It depends on the link. We know we're raising sea levels, for example, which can worsen storm surges. Extra moisture can also cause major flooding when a cyclone stalls, as storms like Irene and Harvey have shown. Researchers now know tropical cyclones have slowed down in recent decades as global temperatures rise. A 2018 study published in Nature notes that cyclones have decreased in speed by 10 percent from 1949 to 2016. And computer models suggest climate change can help intensify storms, although that is still speculative, notes the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

"It is premature to conclude that human activities — and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming — have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity," NOAA explains in a 2017 research overview about hurricanes and climate change. "That said, human activities may have already caused changes that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of the changes or observational limitations, or are not yet confidently modeled."

The issue is largely a lack of long-term data, as NOAA research meteorologist Thomas R. Knutson, who studies Atlantic hurricane activity and the impacts of greenhouse gas-induced warming, told MNN in 2012. "Our most reliable intensity records go back to 1980 or so, but things are a little trickier if you try to figure out if intensities were greater in the 1950s versus recently, or if there's a rise over time. That's more difficult to answer because of limitations in the data sets."

Harvey made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, but grew even more dangerous afterward. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Still, Knutson and many of his colleagues expect global warming to boost hurricane intensity, based on their knowledge of how hurricanes work as well as the forecasts of advanced computer models. Thanks to those models, scientists can simulate storms under past, present and future conditions, helping them recreate recent storm activity and project what might happen next.

"These models are indicating, at least the higher-resolution models, a greater intensity of hurricanes in the warmer climate, even though some models have fewer hurricanes overall," Knutson says. "So the picture that's emerging is fewer tropical storms and hurricanes globally, but the ones we have would be a little more intense than the ones we have today, and the rainfall amounts would also be greater."

Climate change may also encourage storms to stall and cause flooding, as Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann noted in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, which flooded swaths of Texas with unprecedented rainfall.

"The stalling is due to very weak prevailing winds which are failing to steer the storm off to sea, allowing it to spin around and wobble back and forth like a top with no direction," Mann wrote in a Facebook post. "This pattern, in turn, is associated with a greatly expanded subtropical high pressure system over much of the U.S. right now, with the jet stream pushed well to the north. This pattern of subtropical expansion is predicted in model simulations of human-caused climate change."

Hurricane intensity

The most recent research looking at long-term data shows that hurricanes are, in fact, getting stronger.

In a study published in May 2020 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers looked at 39 years of data — from 1979 to 2017 — and found that storms are getting stronger in general, and major tropical cyclones are occurring more frequently.

"Through modeling and our understanding of atmospheric physics, the study agrees with what we would expect to see in a warming climate like ours," says James Kossin, a NOAA scientist based at UW-Madison and lead author of the paper, in a university release.

The scientists solved the problem of marrying data from different technological eras by muting the newer technology to make it comply with the old.

"Our results show that these storms have become stronger on global and regional levels, which is consistent with expectations of how hurricanes respond to a warming world," Kossin says. "It's a good step forward and increases our confidence that global warming has made hurricanes stronger, but our results don't tell us precisely how much of the trends are caused by human activities and how much may be just natural variability."

The research is built on the groundwork of previous study.

One measure of hurricane intensity is the power dissipation index (PDI), developed by MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel to measure how much power a cyclone releases during its life span. Below is a time series, produced by Emanuel, that shows tropical Atlantic sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) each September compared with the annual PDI of hurricanes. (Note: The yearly data are smoothed to emphasize fluctuations on time scales of at least three years.)

(Photo: NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory)

Image: NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory

The graph shows a strong correlation between SSTs and how much power a hurricane releases, and also reveals that the overall PDI of Atlantic storms has doubled since the 1970s. But it's worth noting this isn't due to rising SSTs alone, Knutson says. That's because other natural and man-made factors are also at work — like the multidecadal variation in Atlantic hurricane intensity, some of which may be due to a different kind of anthropogenic emissions: aerosols.

"It's possible that aerosols over the Atlantic have caused some changes in hurricane activity over time, and I'm thinking specifically of the relative lull in activity in the 1970s and '80s," Knutson tells MNN. "That's an example of a possible anthropogenic effect on hurricane climate activity, but not strictly a long-term trend like you'd expect from the effect of greenhouse gases. There are some preliminary indications that aerosol forcing may have caused at least part of that temporary reduction."

That leads some skeptics to argue that recent big storms are only a rebound from this lull, but Knutson says there's increasing evidence it's not that simple. And while it would be premature to blame observed PDI increases entirely on human-induced climate change, the latter is still widely forecast to affect the former at some point this century, even if its influence isn't clear in the data for several decades.

"There are better than even odds that anthropogenic warming over the next century will lead to an increase in the numbers of very intense hurricanes in some basins," according to a NOAA overview written by Knutson, who adds this "would be substantially larger in percentage terms than the 2-11% increase in the average storm intensity." These two graphs project this through 2100, with the first modeling hurricane activity based on local tropical Atlantic SST, and the second modeling it based on tropical Atlantic SST relative to average SST from the rest of the tropics:

(Photo: NOAA GFDL)

Image: NOAA GFDL

There may be fewer tropical storms overall in coming decades, but one high-res model predicts "a doubling of the frequency of very intense hurricanes in the Atlantic basin by the end of the 21st century," according to NOAA. Used in a 2010 study published in Science that Knutson co-authored, this model not only foresees twice as many category 4s and 5s in 90 years, but also tells researchers "the effect of increasing category 4-5 storms outweighs the reduction in overall hurricane numbers such that we project (very roughly) a 30% increase in potential damage in the Atlantic basin by 2100."

Wind and storm surge

Much of this damage would be wrought by wind, since Category 4s and 5s are defined by wind speeds of at least 130 mph. Storm surges are another threat, and Knutson says warming could amplify these regardless of its effect on cyclones themselves.

"Even if hurricane activity overall were to remain unchanged in the coming century, I would still expect an increase in the risk of coastal flooding from storm surges just owing to the sea-level rise, because the hurricanes would occur on a higher baseline sea level." And compared with hurricane activity, he adds, "there is relatively more confidence in attributing past sea-level rise at least in part to human influence, and higher confidence that sea-level rise will continue in the coming century."

Rainfall

Hurricane Harvey dumped a record-breaking 50 inches of rain in parts of Texas. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

As seen with many recent U.S. hurricanes, rain is sometimes more dangerous than wind or seawater. The threat depends on factors like local topography and whether a storm stalls in place, like Irene in 2011 or Harvey in 2017. And according to Charles H. Greene, a professor of oceanography at Cornell University, the atmospheric forces that helped stall those storms can be traced back to a warming Arctic.

"With sea ice loss and Arctic amplification of greenhouse warming, the Jet Stream slows down, meanders more, and frequently results in stalled weather systems," Greene says in a statement. "One such stalled weather system, a high-pressure block over the Labrador Sea, prevented Sandy from veering out into the North Atlantic like 90 percent of most late-season hurricanes. Instead, it made a historically unprecedented beeline for New York and New Jersey, and the rest is history."

Similarly, he adds, "Houston would have suffered much less damage if category 4 Hurricane Harvey had just crashed through the city and petered out in west Texas."

Plus, as Knutson points out, warming may help storms deliver more rain in general. "Anthropogenic warming by the end of the 21st century will likely cause hurricanes to have substantially higher rainfall rates than present-day hurricanes," he says, noting that models project a 20 percent average spike within 60 miles of a storm's center.

What can we expect from future hurricanes?

To illustrate how warmer seawater might affect the frequency of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, the graphic below models their behavior under two scenarios: the current climate and a warmer climate in the late 21st century. It's virtually impossible to accurately predict hurricane tracks even a few days in advance, but this graph offers a general idea of how things could change over time:

(Photo: NOAA GFDL)

Image: NOAA GFDL

Despite a general agreement that warmer seas will yield more intense cyclones, there is still widespread caution not only in blaming climate change for individual storms, but also in blaming it for any tropical cyclone activity to date.

"[W]e estimate that detection of this projected anthropogenic influence on hurricanes should not be expected for a number of decades," Knutson writes. "While there is a large rising trend since the mid-1940s in category 4-5 numbers in the Atlantic, our view is that these data are not reliable for trend calculations until they have been further assessed for data homogeneity problems, such as those due to changing observing practices."

Nonetheless, this caution shouldn't necessarily be seen as doubt. Some skeptics conflate a recent lull in U.S. landfalls with an overall drop in major hurricanes, for example, ignoring storms that hit other countries or remain at sea. Others point to a single year like 2012, which had relatively few major hurricanes (although it did have Sandy), and argue it proves such storms are growing rare. But scientists note that seasonal twists like wind shear or dry air can temporarily suppress long-term trends, making it unwise to tout any one storm or season as proof of something broader.

We may have to wait decades to learn precisely how global warming affects hurricanes, but Knutson also warns against confusing this uncertainty with a lack of consensus about warming itself.

"The relatively conservative confidence levels attached to [hurricane] projections, and the lack of a claim of detectable anthropogenic influence at this time, contrasts with the situation for other climate metrics such as global mean temperature," he writes, adding that international research "presents a strong body of scientific evidence that most of the global warming observed over the past half century is very likely due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions."

For more about the relationship between climate change and hurricanes, check out this PBS NewsHour interview with MIT's Kerry Emanuel on the subject: