Central America is bracing for the arrival of Hurricane Iota, the thirtieth storm since the start of the year. Phenomena that are growing ever more frequent and violent due to climate change.
It has been just two weeks since Hurricane Eta, a category 4 storm, struck Central America with winds of 240 kilometres per hour. At least 150 people lost their lives. 2.5 million saw their homes, crops or businesses destroyed. This is according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), which is coordinating the distribution of thousands of food rations, hygiene products, litres of drinking water, face masks and other essential supplies in the worst-affected states. Honduras tops the list, followed by Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. The population has not even had time to recover, and already faces a new threat: Hurricane Iota, which is advancing towards Central America at this very moment. It is currently classified as a category 5 storm, with winds of 257 kilometres per hour, but could make landfall with even greater violence, with a "catastrophic" effect. This is what can be read in the official bulletin of NOAA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is monitoring the development of hurricanes in the Atlantic.
This Atlantic hurricane season is taking on extraordinary proportions. Iota will be the thirtieth since the start of the year, breaking the previous record set in 2015, when 28 were catalogued. This count includes only those assigned a name, as their winds exceed 62 kilometres per hour.
These phenomena are remarkable not only for their frequency but also for their intensity. "In the space of 36 hours, Eta developed from a depression into a powerful category 4 event," Bob Bunting, head of the non-profit organisation Climate Adaptation Center, explained to the Guardian. "It's simply not normal." "Warmer ocean waters, driven by climate change, are projected to further intensify the most violent storms, causing them to strengthen rapidly more frequently and at a faster rate," meteorologist Jess Masters echoed. "These phenomena have already been observed, particularly in the Atlantic, and over the coming decades this will happen with increasing frequency."
Until now, scientific studies on the influence of climate change have focused above all on what happens in the oceans, where storms form, gather strength and accumulate heat. A study published on 11 November in Nature opens up a potentially promising new field of investigation, examining what happens when they make landfall. Lin Li and Pinaki Chakraborty, of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, reviewed data on the 71 hurricanes that struck the North Atlantic coastline between 1967 and 2018. Fifty years ago they would typically have already lost three-quarters of their intensity after 24 hours ashore. Today, in the same period of time, they lose barely half their intensity. According to the scientists, this is because global warming has also caused ocean temperatures to rise, and the heat remains trapped even after the hurricane has moved away from its source.
For now, as the New York Times notes, this is a hypothesis that warrants further investigation. It cannot be ruled out that the observed trend also depends on other factors, such as the size of the phenomenon. But there is no doubt that further research could help in devising the most effective prevention and relief measures, given that it is precisely on land that the sometimes devastating damage occurs — affecting people, buildings and infrastructure.
