The weather is surely getting more extreme

The strength of hurricanes battering the Caribbean and the US are a clear sign that our seas are warmer

he annual hurricane season across the Caribbean region is a rite of passage endured by island nations, Mexico and the southern United States. But this year, those hurricanes are particularly vicious. Since late August, hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Josie and Katia have formed, each powerful tempest that together have stretched our traditional scientific measurements and meteorological definitions of such storms and rewritten our historical records of weather events.

Hurricane Harvey first brought widespread flooding and historic rainfall levels to Houston and western Louisiana, its death toll and repair bill exacerbated by the Texan city’s long-standing opposition to any housing or planning regulations. And then came Irma, now still doing its worst on Florida, brings yet to be fully tabulated deaths and damage but leaving four million without electricity. It seems as if the mass evacuation orders worked, limiting the loss of life if not the loss to property. And across the Caribbean, it had laid waste to a chain of islands, their peoples and their property. Josie and Katia now follow, and there are other tropical storms coming, formed in the waters west of the Cape Verde islands.

These storms draw strength from the waters of the Atlantic, sucking up evaporating moisture from the seas. The warmer the seas, the more moisture is drawn into the storms, feeding their strength, increasing their size, making them more threatening. The reality is that our seas now are warmer than before, and the unprecedented strength of these hurricanes is nature’s testament to climate change. As surely as these storms are more vicious and intense, it’s as if Mother Nature is sending those who deny the science of climate change a loud and clarion message.

For the past three decades, meteorologists, environmentalists, climate researchers and scientists have been offering studies and satellite imagery, empirical and anecdotal evidence that our planet is getting warming, that weather events are more extreme, that our ice caps are melting and glaciers retreating, our deserts becoming hotter and our seasons more intense. The vast preponderance of evidence shows we are to blame, our emissions speeding up the heating process. But there are still those who deny climate change and believe it to be a hoax. Given the events in the Caribbean, Florida and Texas, the effects of climate change are all too real for those who have felt nature’s fury. It is a message that we all must do more to reverse the process before it’s too late.