Hurricane Ian, one of the most deadly hurricanes to have hit Florida since 1935, made landfall on September 28, 2022 killing over 120 people and causing extremely severe damage to the west coast of Florida. However, that was not the end of it for Florida this hurricane season. Hurricane Nicole made landfall on the east coast of Florida on November 10, 2022, at 3:00 a.m. Though it was not nearly as deadly as Hurricane Ian, this was only the third hurricane to have made landfall in the month of November since 1935. Did Florida simply have a bad year or is it due to the worsening effects of climate change?
According to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, “displacement will increase with intensification of heavy precipitation and associated flooding, tropical cyclones, drought and, increasingly, seal left rise (high confidence).” Displacement involves people around the world moving due to the natural disasters and climate change effects that are occurring. As it can be observed from Hurricane Ian, rapid intensification of winds, rainfall, and storm surge further portrays how climate change has been affecting our planet. Additionally, it has been researched that although climate change is causing hurricanes and other natural disasters to become much more intense, they may be less frequent.
According to The Economist, “[a]s a result of humans pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the world is on average 1.1-1.3ºC hotter than it was before the Industrial Revolution.” It appears that this increase in temperature is not creating more hurricanes but actually creating hurricanes that are far more intense. Additionally, climate change is possibly influencing the path that hurricanes are taking over land. Not only is climate change affecting natural disasters for the worse but has caused sea levels to rise due to the melting of ice caps and glaciers. Since there has been an increase in sea levels, this also increases the intensity of hurricanes by causing storm surges to travel even farther inland. The Economist stated that “sea levels are 33.7cm higher today than they were a century ago. The storm surge there was up to 3.7 meters, submerging cars and homes.”
Our world needs to come to a solution soon and quickly. Although there have been many attempts to prevent further climate change with solutions such as electronic cars—this is not sufficient. An MIT Climate Portal article discusses the various ways to help climate change. A major cause of climate change is due to the increased amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. In order to mitigate this issue would be to “use nearly ‘carbon-free’ alternatives” including solar, wind and nuclear power. Although this seems like a very possible solution, this would require every country to follow this which may not be easy. However, even if just one country makes the change, it will make a major difference in the atmosphere.
