Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast of the United States on October 22, 2012. The storm killed 117 people in the United States alone, and displaced countless families during its nine-day rage from Jamaica to Canada. Many things stand out as unusual in the case of Hurricane Sandy, such as how late in the season it came and the path that it took. Many point to climate change is the primary reason for the strange traits of Hurricane Sandy.

Hurricane Sandy destruction.

A major factor in why Hurricane Sandy was so destructive was a high-pressure system. This high-pressure system made the hurricane drive northward and stick over the land and leave a heavy path of destruction. Scientists say that normally during this time of year hurricanes have a hard time gathering strength due to the falling temperatures and low pressure systems. The change of the ocean’s temperature could have contributed to the storm’s intensity and longevity. According to LiveScience.com, the Atlantic Ocean’s surface temperature has gone up by 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century, which can account for the air above these storms to hold 4% more moisture and contributes to vast increases in storm magnitude.

Compared to 25 years ago there have been increasing numbers of category 3 storms to reach our shores (winds with 129 mph gusts). A huge contributing factor to this is the higher sea levels that we have today. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization speculates that today’s sea levels have gone up by 8 inches from where they were 25 years ago. With a higher perch for a hurricane to ride along it can gain much greater speeds than they once could.

A graph showing the change in sea level over time.

Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University points to something else that could have contributed to the path of the storm. She states that the lack of ice in the Arctic Ocean could have been a catylist in pushing the storm westward and hitting most of the east cost of the United States. She says in a New York Times interview, “While it’s impossible to say how this scenario might have unfolded if sea-ice had been as extensive as it was in the 1980s, the situation at hand is completely consistent with what I’d expect to see happen more often as a result of unabated warming and especially the amplification of that warming in the Arctic”.

But what contributed to the melting of this ice was a phenomenon called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Mark Fischetti of scientificamerican.com points out the contributions of the NAO to Hurricane Sandy. The NAO is the type of pressure within the northern Atlantic Ocean, either positive or negative. In the case of Hurricane Sandy, the pressure changed from positive to negative only two weeks before the October 22 land strike of Sandy, which made the jet stream moving across the US to be more amplified. This amplification of the Jet Stream made the storm move in an unusual pattern.

Though not many are doubters of the climate change orgins of Hurricane Sandy, scientists are still cautious. It is clear from my research that no one wants to say that climate change was the one distinctive reason for the storm, but they do provide their hypothesis in establishing potential contributing factors such as the NAO and rising sea levels and temperatures.

Sources:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2012/oct/30/hurricane-sandy-supersized-climate-change

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/10/30/did-climate-change-cause-hurricane-sandy/

http://www.livescience.com/24377-weather-climate-hurricane-sandy.html