Hurricane Sandy came rolling in late October of last year, devastating portions of the Caribbean  Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast U.S. The Category 2 storm became the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, spanning 1,100 miles. Many were left without shelter and remain in recovery, while others were left with questions about its intensity and what to expect in the future. While it is difficult to say that global warming caused the storm, we can definitely say that it affected its severity (Sharp).

Global warming has increased the overall surface temperature by one degree since the 1970’s. This observation explains that the higher than normal surface temperature of the Atlantic Ocean could have easily contributed to the size of the hurricane. Additionally, summer sea ice in the Arctic has fallen by roughly half since the late 1970s, a change most climate scientists believe has also been caused largely by human-induced warming. The idea of this second observation is that the loss of sea ice is altering the flow of the atmosphere enough to heighten the risk of severe weather in midlatitude regions like the United States (Gillis). Kevin E. Trenberth, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Co., said that natural variability very likely accounted for the bulk of that temperature extreme. And many of Sandy’s odd features derived from its origin as a “hybrid” storm — a merger of several weather systems, including a hurricane and a midlatitude storm that had earlier dumped snow in Colorado (Gillis).

Climate change also adds other basic factors that contribute to big storms. For example, the oceans have warmed, providing more energy for storms. And the Earth’s atmosphere has warmed, so it retains more moisture, which is drawn into storms and is then dumped on us. These changes contribute to all sorts of extreme weather.

However, global warming isn’t going to increase the number of storms, Actually, extensive computer modeling suggests that Atlantic hurricanes might even even decrease with global warming, but the intensity of the storms that do occur is likely to increase (Fischetti).

Sources

Gillis, Justin. “Did Global Warming Contribute to Hurricane Sandy’s Devastation?”. New York Times. Green. October 20,2012.

Fischetti, Mark. “Did Climate Change Cause Hurricane Sandy?”. Scientific American. Blogs. October 30, 2012.

Sharp, Tim. “Hurricane Sandy: Facts & Data”. LiveScience. http://www.livescience.com/24380-hurricane-sandy-status-data.html. 27 November, 2012.