CBS News in Los Angeles recently aired a weather segment titled “Helen Gains Strength from Climate Change Impacts,” in which a meteorologist claimed that climate change had strengthened Hurricane Helene and that the hurricane was increasing in strength and power. [emphasis, links added]
This is wrong.
It’s shocking how wrong CBS is with the actual hurricane data showing that hurricanes are not getting more intense, frequent, or powerful.
CBS describes the film as follows: “…Helen is gaining strength from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, an effect linked to climate change that appears to make hurricanes and storms more powerful.”
The CBS anchor turned the segment over to meteorologist Marina Jurica, who claimed, “The increase in hurricane intensity is basically rooted in physics… Hurricanes draw from warmer ocean waters. energy, and climate change increases sea surface temperatures, increasing the energy available for hurricanes.”
Warm sea surface temperatures do help hurricanes form. However, they are far from the only elements, in fact For much of this hurricane season, storms have struggled to form despite above-average sea surface temperatures.
Eureka stuck to the common refrain that warmer water leads to stronger winds and more moisture, which leads to more rainfall. “One of the most significant impacts of climate change is its impact on hurricane intensity… That's why we're seeing more catastrophic floods related to all of this.
The anchor claimed that hurricanes have become more intense in recent years and “the levels of storms are rising,” and Eureka added that “storms have moved slower over the past few decades,” citing Harvey as an example of this effect. Most of these claims are baseless and complete nonsense.
Start with the anecdote of Hurricane Harvey, when the storm hit Texas in 2017, it was the first major hurricane to make landfall in the United States since 2005. One of the world's most active tropical storm regions has been hit by a severe 12-year hurricane drought.
This is the longest severe hurricane drought on record in the United States.
Eureka claims in the CBS clip that Harvey stopped and dumped more water on Texas because global warming brought more moisture to the air, although the region did not receive as much precipitation It was unprecedented, but reality showed that the region's warmer-than-normal low-pressure trough prevented the storm from over Houston.
As professional meteorologist and hurricane historian Joe Bastadi points out, storm stalls are nothing new. As a meteorologist, Jurica’s Work Check this before going on live TV.
There is no measured hurricane data to support the notion that hurricanes are becoming more intense. This is only found in flawed computer model output.
public data records No trend Tropical cyclones are increasing in frequency or intensity in the Atlantic Ocean or elsewhere around the world.
Cumulative cyclone energy is an indicator used to track the overall intensity, if any, of a tropical cyclone over time. Dr. Ryan Maue presented data showing that their power has been waning since the 1990s. (see picture below)
Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agrees, stating that only “There is low confidence that any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity can be attributed to human influence.”
The CBS segment aired before Helen made landfall, and while Hurricane Helene proved to be highly destructive, it was not unprecedented.
Past hurricanes have also caused severe flooding, wind damage, and tornado damage inland areas of the Appalachian Mountains and surrounding areasFor example, Category 4 Hurricane Gracie made landfall in South Carolina in 1959, resulting in 13 tornado deaths in Virginia.
There are many other examples, the most devastating of which was the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, a Category 4 storm that claimed 6,000 to 12,000 lives, mostly caused by storm surge and flooding of.
Every major storm involving loss of life and property is a tragedy and needs to be taken seriously, which is why it is so when the mainstream media reports on the fear people have before dangerous storms and the loss and pain that follows. Shocking.
CBS meteorologists are shockingly Although she was trained as a meteorologist, she had little knowledge of hurricane data or no care for the facts.
Read more Climate Realism
