How can humans create hurricanes?

By: Glendyn King

Hurricane Hermine is the most recent of the great storms since hurricane Wilma to make landfall in Florida since 2005. Hermine claimed the lives of five Americans before dissipating on the sixth of September, just about a month ago. After hurricane Katrina, there has been a lot of attention that has been allocated from the public and the government concerning the subject, with the focus given to hurricanes and the climate and how they are related. These means that the topic is very controversial and political at the moment especially when it can be used at a way of claiming someone has no knowledge on science if they don’t agree, they can be painted as a climate change denier.

 This election has been a brutal fight of name calling and scandals between the two nominees of the main parties, Donald trump and Hillary Clinton, and anything is up for grabs when it comes to trying to smear the other person. Hillary Clinton claimed that the hurricane is due to climate change in an argument against trump. She says that 2015 was the hottest year, and that the climate change associated with that is the direct cause of the hurricane. She then goes on to say that there are more storms coming to Florida in the future.

Hillary Clinton said;

"the science is clear, [climate change] is real, its wreaking havoc... last weeks hurricane is another reminder of the devastation that extreme weather can cause"

The claims that Hillary Clinton made were that climate change caused the hurricane, there are more hurricanes coming, and that climate change is real. I say this last because I will say now that climate change is too big of a topic to cover, instead the claims that climate change caused the hurricane, or at least if hurricanes are on the rise will be looked at.

This issue is very controversial from its base argument that the earth is warming, to the more surface topic that is the focus here, are hurricanes on the rise? It is common to find arguments for both sides, for one, some people are saying that the “US is in the Longest “Hurricane Drought” in recorded history.” The article talks about how the frequency of hurricanes is at an all-time low since the 1800s. While many others say that hurricanes in the Atlantic are on the rise, This article provides this graph of hurricanes over the years

The graph on the left illustrates that hurricanes are on the rise, where the graph on the right shows that cyclones are on the decline. While cyclones are on the fall, the intensity of cyclones are on the rise. This article from a journal points out that “Increasing sea surface temperature, at least partially forced by increased greenhouse gases, as a direct cause of concomitant increase in tropical cyclone intensity” meaning that they may be less frequent but they are stronger.

On the other side, some people will argue against the climate change such as the article

The article used that graph to try and demonstrate the downfall of hurricanes, and to try and point out that Hillary Clinton is wrong. However, these two graphs are not completely different, looking closely at this graph you can see that this is another graph depicting the downfall of cyclones, which is true, but it has nothing to do with Hillary Clintons statement about hurricanes. The trendline of CYCLONES are in fact on the decline. Hurricanes on the other hand are on the rise. The climate change deniers citing the cyclone decline as proof that hurricanes are declining fail to realize or acknowledge that cyclones are not hurricanes. The difference is that cyclones are in the Pacific Ocean and hurricanes are in the Atlantic Ocean. The people, such as Hillary Clinton, that say that hurricanes are on the rise are correct.

Not only are hurricanes on the rise, but there intensity, like the cyclone is on the rise. “We're seeing fewer hurricanes, but the ones we do see are more intense,” This is due to the same reason as was given for the increased intensity of cyclones, the increased temperature of the ocean surface. The National Centers For Environmental Information gives some reasoning behind the increased ocean temperature, stating that the average sea surface temperature in 2014 was 1.03 degrees above the average 20^th century temperature.

            Another point that is made to argue against these points is that hurricanes have existed long before the industrial age. And there has been a big hurricane spotted on Saturn. The point isn’t that people are the only cause of hurricanes, the point is that people are become a cause of hurricanes, or at least indirectly affecting the weather through pollution. there are just too many factors that play into hurricanes to be able to say that one is ‘caused by humans producing greenhouse gases’.

Hillary didn’t know what she was talking about, despite there being some facts in her statement, the point behind it was a false point. She is a politician not a scientist. There are many factors that go into a hurricane. However, what she said was correct, hurricanes are on the rise due to increased temperatures on the surface of the oceans, caused by climate change.