, we do know that climate change is worsening the impact of storms like Hurricane Dorian, with higher storm surges, increased rainfall and rising storm intensity.
Given a relatively flat coastal plain, raising water levels by only inches can make a dramatic difference on how far inland the water can travel. "Simply put, warmer air holds more water vapor," according to Jim Kossin, an Atmospheric Research Scientist at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information.
"Precipitation data is pretty messy stuff," he said, explaining that observing stations are few and far between and the satellite data doesn't go back long enough to draw firm conclusions. Whereas the global temperature record goes back more than 150 years, records for hurricanes get very sparse prior to the 1970s, when satellites first began beaming back images covering all the world's oceans.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR DORIAN: Dorian was a Category 5 hurricane , and even though there is no Category 6, if you extrapolated the scale out, Dorian's 185 mph sustained winds would make it one. Dorian is the latest in a series of storms in recent years to impact the Atlantic as a Category 4 or 5 after Harvey, Irma, Maria and Michael.The warmer oceans extend beyond just the surface, going hundreds of meters deep, allowing plenty of ocean heat content for hurricanes to use for fuel.
Klotzbach noted that while the data shows an increase in the number of storms that have rapidly intensified, it also shows an increasing number of storms have rapidly weakened — indicating the increases could just be a function of better observations.