UN chief says 300 kph storms ‘new normal’
UNITED NATIONS— Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is heading for the hurricane-battered Caribbean, where he said on Wednesday that scientists predicted that extreme storms during this year’s Atlantic hurricane season “will be the new normal of a warming world.”
The UN chief told reporters that Hurricane “Irma,” which devastated Barbuda, was a Category 5 storm for three consecutive days—“the longest on satellite record”—and its winds that reached 300 kilometers per hour for 37 hours were “the longest on record at that intensity.”
Hurricanes “Harvey” and Irma marked the first time two Category 4 storms made landfall on the United States mainland in the same year, Guterres said, and Hurricane “Maria,” a Category 5 storm, followed up by decimating Dominica and devastating Puerto Rico.
The secretary-general said “scientists are learning more and more about the links between climate change and extreme weather.”
Turbocharge
A warmer climate “turbocharges the intensity of hurricanes,” which pick up energy as they move across the ocean, he said.
“The melting of glaciers, and the thermal expansion of the seas, means bigger storm surges” and with more people living along coastlines, “the damage is and will be that much greater.”
As for changes in major cli- mate systems, Guterres said sea levels had risen more than 25 centimeters since 1870 and over the last 30 years, “the number of annual weather-related disasters has nearly tripled, and economic losses have quintupled.”
He said the world had “the tools, the technologies and the wealth to address climate change, but we must show more determination in moving towards a green, clean, sustainable energy future”—and in stepping up implementation of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
$1-B recovery
The secretary-general said he would travel to Antigua and Barbuda, and Dominica, on Saturday to survey the damage and assess what more the United Nations could do.
Stephen O’Malley, UN resident coordinator for Barbados and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, said on Tuesday that the United Nations, World Bank and Antigua government had conducted a postdisaster needs assessment for Barbuda, whose 1,800 residents had been evacuated to Antigua before Irma damaged 95 percent of its structures on Sept. 14.
He said a similar assessment would be done in Dominica, which was ravaged on Sept. 18 by Maria, probably in about three weeks.
O’Malley said the recovery of eastern Caribbean islands hardest hit by recent hurricanes, including Dominica, Barbuda, Turks and Caicos, the British Virgin Islands and Anguilla, could cost up to $1 billion.—