Hurricane Laura’s rapid intensification is a sign of a warming climate, scientists say

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/tales-storm-how-four-scientists-tracked-hurricane-laura

Source: By Chris Mooney and Andrew Freedman. 

Excerpt: Surveying the Gulf of Mexico late Tuesday afternoon, National Hurricane Center experts saw a Category 1 hurricane — dangerous, but not likely to cause major damage. Forecaster Jack Beven put the storm’s maximum sustained wind speed at around 80 mph, forecasting a strong Category 2 storm by the next day. Twenty-four hours later, Hurricane Laura was unrecognizable. It had rocketed into a high-end Category 4 storm, with wind speeds of nearly 145 mph, and was teetering toward Category 5 — the most dangerous. It was one of the fastest transformations on record in the Gulf of Mexico. Experts call the phenomenon “rapid intensification” and say it’s happening more frequently, thanks in part to warming ocean temperatures driven by climate change. ...Jim Kossin, a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Wisconsin, says the warm ocean waters and exchange of heat between the ocean and atmosphere, plus the lack of dry air or strong upper-level winds, created an ideal environment for Hurricane Laura to rapidly intensify all the way to the Louisiana coastline. Kossin said the unusually warm waters of the Gulf are tied in part to human-caused global warming, since the vast majority of the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gas emissions ends up in the ocean.... [https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/08/27/hurricane-laura-rapid-intensification/] See also Science Magazine article, Tales from the storm: how four scientists tracked Hurricane Laura