Atlantic Storms More Than Twice as Likely to Strengthen Into Hurricanes Along U.S. East Coast, Study Finds

A 3D render of category 4 Hurricane Fiona on Sept. 20, 2022, using satellite data from NASA and NOAA. FrankRamspott / E+ / Getty Images

Hurricanes are becoming stronger due to climate change, but, according to a new study, they’re also gaining strength faster.

A new study by a meteorologist from Rowan University in New Jersey has found that Atlantic Ocean hurricanes are now more than twice as likely to strengthen from a Category 1 storm to a Category 3 hurricane in only 24 hours.

“Tropical cyclones (TCs) are the most damaging natural hazard to regularly impact the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts. From 2012 to 2022, over 160 ‘billion-dollar’ weather and climate disasters impacted the U.S.; 24 of these events were TCs, including the six costliest disasters on record during this time. Many of the most damaging TCs to impact the U.S. in recent years have been notable for the speed at which they have intensified,” study author Dr. Andra J. Garner wrote.

In the study, Garner found that, over the past two decades, the likelihood that a storm in the Atlantic Basin would strengthen that much that quickly was 8.12 percent, compared with 3.23 percent from 1970 to 1990, reported Reuters.

The study, “Observed increases in North Atlantic tropical cyclone peak intensification rates,” was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

It is also more likely for storms to gain strength quickly in the southern Caribbean Sea and off the East Coast of the U.S., but they are slower to ramp up in the Gulf of Mexico, the study said.

“It’s become more common for storms to intensify near the U.S. East Coast,” Garner said, as Reuters reported. “Those areas do need to be thinking about how they prepare for the possibility of having storms strengthen especially quickly in their region.”

Garner looked at National Hurricane Center data that analyzed recorded wind speeds from all the tropical cyclones that formed in the Atlantic Ocean from 1970 to 2020, and observed that there were consistent increases in the probability that storms would intensify quickly.

Hurricane Maria is a recent example of a deadly hurricane that went from a Category 1 storm to a Category 5 hurricane in less than 24 hours, reported The New York Times. Hurricane Maria killed more than 3,000 Puerto Rican residents in 2017.

“These findings should serve as an urgent warning,” Garner said, as The New York Times reported. “Without limiting future warming, this is a trend that we could expect to continue to get more extreme.”

The study is the latest in a growing number that have found climate change is causing hurricanes to become more intense around the globe.

Hurricanes gain strength from warming sea surface temperatures. The ocean has absorbed roughly 90 percent of warming from greenhouse gas emissions in the past four decades, which has caused water temperatures to become unusually warm, reported Reuters.

“You go to bed, figuratively speaking, at 10 at night, and there’s a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico. And you wake up the next morning and it’s a Cat 4, eight hours from landfall. And now you don’t have time to evacuate anybody, to warn them,” said Dr. Kerry Emanuel, a professor emeritus of atmospheric science at MIT who was not involved in Garner’s study, but conducted earlier research on the subject, as The New York Times reported.

Subscribe to get exclusive updates in our daily newsletter!