Climate change has amped up hurricane wind speeds by 30 kph on average

As if hurricanes needed from now on kick.

Human-brought about climate change is boosting the intensity of Atlantic hurricanes by a whole category on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, which rates hurricanes in response to their peak sustained wind speed, researchers report November 20 in two new studies.

From 2019 to 2023, climate change enhanced the utmost wind speeds of hurricanes by a mean of about 29 kilometers per hour (18 miles per hour), or roughly the breadth of a Saffir-Simpson category, researchers report in Environmental Research: Climate. Climate change in the same way increased the intensities of all hurricanes in 2024 by a mean of about 29 kph (18 mph), escalating the risk of wind damage, a companion analysis from Climate Central shows.

As climate change heats up the equator, nature seeks to redistribute that heat to other parts of the arena, says Climate Central’s Daniel Gilford, a climate scientist based within the Orlando, Fla., area. “The way that our atmosphere does it truly is with hurricanes.”

Gilford and colleagues developed a fresh attribution framework to hastily measure climate change’s influence on a most recent storm’s wind speeds. Drawing from historical sea surface temperature records that stretch back over a century and computer simulations of Earth’s climate, the researchers generated simulations of the up to date North Atlantic Ocean in an international without climate change. They then calculated what the wind speeds of most recent hurricanes would have been over these cooler Atlantic Oceans, and at last when put next the hypothetical speeds to observed hurricane wind speeds.

Of 38 hurricanes that took place from 2019 to 2023, 30 reached intensities roughly one category higher on account of climate change. Three — Lorenzo in 2019, Ian in 2022 and Lee in 2023 — grew into Category 5 hurricanes.

In the same fashion in 2024, climate change increased the utmost intensities of each hurricane by 14 to 43 kph (9 to twenty-eight mph). The tip wind speeds of hurricanes Helene and Milton were respectively enhanced by roughly 25 kph (16 mph) and forty kph (23 mph), pushing them from Category four to Category 5 (SN: 10/1/24; SN: 10/9/24).

Hurricane Rafael became enhanced by a whopping 45 kph (28 mph), going from Category 1 to Category three as it bore down on Cuba in November. “Climate change is now allowing very intense storms to persist later into the season,” Gilford says.