Climate change boosted Helene’s deadly rain and wind and scientists warn of more such monsters

(9 Oct 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:

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ARCHIVE: Pensacola, North Carolina – 3 October 2024
1. Tracking shot of a broken road, debris fell into the river

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London – 8 October 2024
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Ben Clarke, climate researcher at Imperial College London: ++PARTIALLY COVERED++
“Climate change has affected Hurricane Helene, it made it more destructive in multiple ways through enhancing the rainfall that fell over both the coastal area and much further inland over western North Carolina. It also made it kind of windier, more intense, and therefore more destructive in that sense. But not only that, we found that the conditions in which Helene formed, so the Gulf of Mexico, where waters have been unusually warm, all of that has been kind of amplified and made much more likely by climate change as well.”

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ARCHIVE: Asheville, North Carolina – 27 September 2024
3. Various of flooded intersection
4. Water rushing by sign

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ARCHIVE: Progreso, Mexico – 8 October 2024
5. Various of wind and rain, palm trees during Hurricane Milton
6. Wind and rain on stormy seas

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London – 8 October 2024
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Ben Clarke, climate researcher at Imperial College London: ++PARTIALLY COVERED++
“The closeness of these two storms (Helene and Milton) really symbolizes something that could happen in the future and the danger of climate change, which is that you could have multiple events that have been made each more destructive by climate change, affecting the same area in quick succession, which is when the impacts start to become really catastrophic.”

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ARCHIVE: Progreso, Mexico – 8 October 2024
8. Various of wind and rain pelting pier

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Providence, Rhode Island – 7 October 2024
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Kim Cobb, director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society: ++PARTIALLY COVERED++
“And it’s important to remember that it’s not done yet. We are worsening every year with respect to the warming that’s caused by fossil fuel emissions that year on year are still going up. And so the landscape for threat going forward is one where we can look to these recent headlines as a wake up call for what our climate present is right now and and our fossil fuel wrap in particular. But we also have to remember that going forward, additional warming that we know will occur over the next 10 or 20 years will even worsen the statistics of hurricanes, and we will break new records.”

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ARCHIVE: Permian Basin, Texas – 11-15 October 2021
10. Various oil wells

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ARCHIVE: Petersburg, Indiana – 25 October 2023
11. Drone shot of Petersburg Generating Station coal plant

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ARCHIVE: Asheville, North Carolina – 27 September 2024
12. Truck submerged in water
STORYLINE:
Human-caused climate change boosted a devastating Hurricane Helene’s rainfall by about 10% and intensified its winds by about 11%, scientists said in a new flash study released just as a strengthening Hurricane Milton threatens the Florida coast less than two weeks later.

The warming climate boosted Helene’s wind speeds by about 13 miles per hour (20.92 kilometers per hour), and made the high sea temperatures that fueled the storm 200 to 500 times more likely, World Weather Attribution calculated Wednesday from Europe. Ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above average, WWA said.

The organization’s rapid studies aren’t peer-reviewed but use peer-reviewed methods.

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