Copyright Bloomberg
Hurricane Melissa became the most powerful storm on record to strike Jamaica in part because of water made hotter and air made wetter by global warming, a new analysis has found. The storm was also one of the strongest to ever form in the Atlantic, with winds reaching 185 mph shortly before making landfall in Jamaica. Those extreme wind speeds were five times more likely and 7% more intense because of climate change, according to the new analysis by World Weather Attribution, a scientific group that dissects extreme weather events days after they occur. That’s an important finding because relatively small increases in wind speed cause exponential increases in damage, said Friederike Otto, WWA co-founder and professor in climate science at Imperial College London.
