{"id":53076,"date":"2024-05-17T19:04:09","date_gmt":"2024-05-17T19:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/17\/thunderstorms-wind-and-climate-change-heres-what-to-know\/"},"modified":"2024-05-17T19:04:09","modified_gmt":"2024-05-17T19:04:09","slug":"thunderstorms-wind-and-climate-change-heres-what-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/17\/thunderstorms-wind-and-climate-change-heres-what-to-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Thunderstorms, Wind and Climate Change: Here\u2019s What to Know"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1050\" height=\"550\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/05\/17\/multimedia\/17cli-highwinds-gkfm\/17cli-highwinds-gkfm-facebookJumbo.jpg?fit=1050,550&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Thunderstorms, Wind and Climate Change: Here\u2019s What to Know\" title=\"Thunderstorms, Wind and Climate Change: Here\u2019s What to Know\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Shattered windows and caved-in walls. Toppled power lines and trees. The severe storms that <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/05\/16\/us\/texas-flood-tornado-storms-outages.html\" title=\"\">swept through Houston<\/a> and the Gulf Coast on Thursday left all the destructive traces of a hurricane, yet they didn\u2019t blow in from the tropics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Violent clusters of thunderstorms cause extensive damage across the United States each year, not just through rain and flooding, but also through hail, tornadoes and walls of blasting wind. Here\u2019s what to know about such storms, and how they might be changing in our warming climate.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"css-9ycfei eoo0vm40\" id=\"link-165090c0\">Global warming creates conditions more favorable to severe storms.<\/h2>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">As the planet warms, severe storms of all kinds are likely to deliver even bigger payloads of rain. The reason: Warmer air holds more moisture, which effectively increases a storm\u2019s capacity to carry precipitation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Because the air can hold more moisture, that also means there is more water vapor in the sky that can condense into liquid, forming clouds. The heat energy released into the atmosphere by this condensation is what feeds thunderstorms. In short, more condensation, stronger storms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Warming might also increase the amount of instability in the atmosphere, which provides more energy to lift moist air rapidly skyward during storms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<h2 class=\"css-9ycfei eoo0vm40\" id=\"link-3842f58a\">Scientists are still trying to understand how this is playing out.<\/h2>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Just because the ingredients are in place for a powerful storm doesn\u2019t mean a powerful storm always materializes. Plenty of other factors shape when and whether storms form, and how destructive they become, which means it\u2019s not straightforward to determine how global warming might be affecting overall storm trends.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cTheoretically we understand very well what\u2019s happening,\u201d said Andreas F. Prein, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. \u201cBut how this then translates into severe convective storms, and what we saw yesterday, is a little bit more questionable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">There isn\u2019t clear evidence, for instance, that tornadoes have become more frequent or intense in recent decades. They do, however, seem to be happening in <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/05\/08\/climate\/tornadoes-cluster-climate-change.html\" title=\"\">more concentrated bursts<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Thunderstorms can also produce strong winds that fan out in straight lines rather than twisters. <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41558-023-01852-9\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">In a study<\/a> published last year, Dr. Prein estimated that much larger areas of the central United States were now experiencing these straight-line gusts compared with the early 1980s.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"css-9ycfei eoo0vm40\" id=\"link-3929baba\">Thunderstorm damage is already causing big losses to home insurers.<\/h2>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The market for homeowners insurance has been in turmoil in the United States, and not just because of hurricanes and wildfires. As a <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2024\/05\/13\/climate\/insurance-homes-climate-change-weather.html\" title=\"\">New York Times investigation<\/a> documented this week, severe storms are also causing insurers to lose money on homeowner coverage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">These losses are affecting insurers in places like Iowa, Arkansas and Ohio, far from the coastal areas that are most battered by hurricanes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Already, the accumulated losses from drenching thunderstorms are not much less than those from hurricanes, Dr. Prein said. \u201cIt\u2019s much closer than you normally would think.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/05\/17\/climate\/thunderstorms-wind-climate-change.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shattered windows and caved-in walls. Toppled power lines and trees. The severe storms that swept through Houston and the Gulf Coast on Thursday left all the destructive traces of a hurricane, yet they didn\u2019t blow in from the tropics. Violent clusters of thunderstorms cause extensive damage across the United States each year, not just through [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/05\/17\/multimedia\/17cli-highwinds-gkfm\/17cli-highwinds-gkfm-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[487,486,671,28939,7879],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53076"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53078,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53076\/revisions\/53078"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}