Why Hurricane Patricia Can’t Be Blamed on Climate Change
Is climate change to blame for this record-breaking storm’s ferocious rise?
The answer is complex, and shows why it’s so hard to tie a single weather event to global warming.
Between Thursday and Friday, Patricia underwent what hurricane researchers call “rapid intensification,” a phenomenon by which storms gather strength at an astonishing speed.
“It’s a little bit like a perfect storm; lots of things come together in order to produce rapid intensification,” says Ben Kirtman an atmospheric scientist at the University of Miami.
Researchers aren’t great at predicting when storms will rapidly intensify, but they do know a lot about why it happens.
More: Why Hurricane Patricia Can’t Be Blamed on Climate Change : The Two-Way : NPR