With the start of a hurricane season looming on Friday, a new study out of Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research predicts that hurricanes at the end of this century could move slower and be stronger and wetter.
Researchers led by NCAR project scientist Ethan Gutmann, in a study published recently in the Journal of Climate, leveraged a large, new data set created by running NCAR’s Weather Research and Forecasting model to compare high-resolution computer simulations of 22 historical, named Atlantic storms with a second set of simulations. The second set was identical except for a wetter, warmer climate that was consistent with the average outcome of scientific projections for the end of this century.
As one example, according to an NCAR news release, they found that Hurricane Ike, which claimed at least 195 lives along the Gulf Coast in September 2008, would be 17 percent slower, carry 13 percent stronger winds and be 34 percent wetter if it formed in a warmer, future climate.
The study found that other storms, such as Hurricane Ernesto in 2006, would become slightly weaker, or, in the case of 2008’s Hurricane Gustav, move a bit faster. But all would be wetter, by an average of 24 percent.
“It makes it far more likely that future hurricane-related floods will be more intense, and potentially more damaging,” Gutmann said in an interview.
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