Climate change made Helen more dangerous. It also makes similar storms more likely.

Question

Researchers found that Hurricane Helene was stronger, rainier, and significantly more likely because of climate change. The U.S. can expect more such storms in the future as warming continues. Researchers with the Word Weather Attribution released multiple studies on the impact of climate change stating that Helene was about 10% heavier due to human-caused climate change, similar to other damaging, climate-fueled hurricanes in the past decade. They also found that climate change made such heavy rainfall up to 70% more likely in central and southern Appalachia where flooding has destroyed homes and businesses leaving thousands of people without power.

Answer 1

This claim is factual. Based on the source given, NPR's article, "Climate Change made Helena more dangerous. It also makes similar storms more likely" (2024), the article heavily refers to scientific findings of the World Weather Attribution. In their scientific report, "Climate change key driver of catastrophic impacts of Hurricane Helene that devastated both coastal and inland communities" (2024), the various authors involved in the report provide their own analytical and observational data built over the years and are accredited in their respective fields. Within their findings, they linked Helene's hurricane intensity to high sea surface temperatures. It is noted current ocean temperatures are more than 1°C than a world without climate change. As a result, higher ocean temperatures allows room for atmospheric instability, humidity, and intensity (28). Hurricane Helene intensified based on this recipe, and with this in mind, future hurricanes have the potential to become more powerful as the sea surface temperature rises in the coming years.

https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/handle/10044/1/115024