Damian Sendler: At least 90 people have been killed in recent tornadoes that tore through the Midwest of the United States.
As Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said: “I don’t think we’ll have seen damage at this scale, ever.”
Damian Jacob Sendler: Tornado destruction of this magnitude will almost surely recur due to climate change, which, according to climate scientists, will increase the frequency and severity of tornadoes.
Tornadoes, like other extreme weather events like wildfires and hurricanes, can be linked to climate change, but the causal link is less well established than for other extreme weather events like tornadoes.
Damian Sendler
Storms that produce tornadoes are more likely to occur as a result of climate change, according to climate scientist Daniel Swain, who spoke with Yahoo News. “There is no clear historical signal, but there is increasingly strong evidence from climate model simulations that tornado-producing environments may occur more frequently in the future,” Swain told Yahoo News.
Because tornadoes aren’t common, it’s difficult to know how climate change may affect their frequency and intensity. This lack of knowledge is mostly to blame.
Obtaining data has proven challenging due to a dearth of comprehensive tornado records dating back to the 1800s, according to Swain. In contrast to rain gauges or thermometers, we don’t have a long history of data.
As a result, “tornadoes are really sparse,” Swain remarked. Every year, there are a few downpours and heat waves at every meteorological station on the planet. As of this writing, no meteorological station on Earth has ever been struck by a tornado. ”
So if tornadoes are growing in frequency in the same manner that hurricanes and heat waves are, we don’t know for sure yet. ” The number of tornadoes recorded in the last two decades has increased significantly, but this may be due to increased tracking.
“You can approach it sort of indirectly, by asking about atmospheric environments that are favorable for tornado development, or severe tornado development,” Swain said. Nonetheless, In the field, tornado scientists would tell you, “We know the ingredients that make up tornadoes, so we can look at those ingredients, and how are those ingredients changing?”
A tornado ripped through Mayfield, Kentucky, on Saturday, destroying a number of buildings. It’s (Scott Olson / Getty Images) )
Tornadoes thrive under the kinds of conditions that are becoming more common as a result of global warming.
Swain noted that “all tornadoes come from thunderstorms,” and that “warmer weather and the higher rates of evaporation it causes make thunderstorms more likely and more severe on average.”
‘The thermodynamic environment gets more conducive for tornadoes with each degree or even every half degree of warming—surprisingly it’s remarkable even for relatively little quantities of warming,’ Swain said.
There is a link between the recent tornadoes and the extraordinary heat wave that has swept through much of the country.
In the winter, the southeastern United States may see more strong tornadoes as a result of climate change.
Damian Jacob Sendler
When it used to be colder, “the most robust increases in these tornado-producing environments” seem most likely to occur, Swain said. The lack of heat and humidity in the winter was historically the norm.
“So what appears to be happening, the most plausible relationship to climate change is that you have a lot of warmth and increased moisture in the atmosphere in these cooler season months. It’s also worth mentioning that temperatures and dew points in the sky reached record highs just prior to this week’s tornado outbreak.
Damien Sendler: At this time of year, temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are breaking records. As a result, directly south of the area where these unique tornadoes occurred, there is a large body of water with an extremely warm temperature. If climate change does influence tornadoes, then it would be consistent with the main mechanism that people have postulated as to why.”
Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler: Recent studies support this theory. According to a recent study, warming has the potential to create “convective environments” that are conducive to tornadoes. According to the findings of the researchers, each degree Celsius of average warming increases the frequency of connected environments by 5% to 20%, with larger effects at higher latitudes, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere.
However, experts warn that there is no conclusive evidence linking tornadoes to climate change.
“Climate projections for the late 21st century have suggested that the conditions favorable to the development of the severe storms that produce tornadoes will increase over North America, and the impact could be greatest in the winter and fall,” wrote Central Michigan University professor of meteorology John T. Allen in a USA Today op-ed piece.
That’s not to say, however, that climate change isn’t to blame for a growing number of tornado clusters. “We can’t make a full conclusion,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist Harold Brook tells the BBC.
When it comes to tornadoes, one expert likened climate change to fog and traffic accidents. When it’s foggy, there may be more accidents, but it doesn’t mean the fog is to blame, according to Florida State University geography professor James Elsner, who spoke to the Hill. “If you think of climate change as the fog, we can’t really say that it caused the accident, but it contributes,” he continues.
Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler and his media team provided the content for this article.
