Over 500,000 Americans Had To Evacuate This Week. Climate Change Might Be To Blame.

TOPLINE

Hundreds of thousands of Americans were told to pack up and leave their homes over the past week ahead of natural disasters like wildfires in California and two hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, as concern grows that extreme weather will continue to worsen as a result of climate change.

KEY FACTS

KEY BACKGROUND

Storms are forming at a record pace during this 2020 Atlantic hurricane season—faster than any season since record-keeping started in 1851, and forecasters expect this season will end up being one of the most active ever. Sea surface temperatures are warmer than normal, which fuel storm development, and can cause quick strengthening like what happened with Hurricane Laura and Hurricane Marco. In California, heat waves have helped contribute to fires. The scientific consensus is that a warming world may lead to more natural disasters like these.

CRITICAL QUOTE

“Bottom line: every extreme event has potentially been exacerbated by our amped-up climate, and the same is true for Marco, Laura, and the California wildfires,” Dr. Philip Mote, the founding director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute, told Forbes. 

BIG NUMBER

5. Adjusted for inflation, all five of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history have occurred within the past 15 years, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and all have been hurricanes—Katrina (2005), Sandy (2012), Harvey (2017), Maria (2017) and Irma (2017). Evidence “continues to mount” that human-caused climate change is leading to stronger hurricanes, AAAS says, while saying “Human-caused climate change is a significant contributor to the increasing size and intensity of, and damage from, western U.S. wildfires.”

CHIEF CRITIC

Joe Bastardi, a meteorologist best known for working over 30 years at the popular forecasting company AccuWeather, is an outspoken critic of the idea that human-caused climate change plays a role in weather events. “When you see comments that Laura is climate change all it does is reveal ignorance of past patterns similar to this that produce in close deepening hurricanes,” Bastardi said Tuesday.

FURTHER READING

Hundreds of thousands flee US coast ahead of Hurricane Laura (Associated Press)

Hurricane Laura, Projected To Be Devastating Major Hurricane, Taking Aim At Texas And Louisiana (Forbes)

About 560 wildfires burn in California as more than 100,000 people evacuate: Here’s what we know (USA Today)

California wildfire death toll up to seven as huge blazes burn on (The Guardian)

Louisiana Could Be Hit By 2 Hurricanes In The Next 3 Days (Forbes)