Hurricanes Will be Wetter, Stronger and Slower in the Future, New Study Says

The research, published in the Journal of Climate and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), compared high-resolution computer simulations of more than 20 hurricanes in a warmer climate to the same cyclones in today's cooler climate.

While the results of individual simulations varied substantially from one hurricane to the next, the story of the entire study paints a picture that could bring more devastating impacts to the areas commonly affected by hurricanes: nearly 25 percent more rainfall, hurricanes that move nine percent slower and storms that have wind speeds about six percent stronger, on average, than today's cyclones.

None of the simulated future hurricanes were drier.

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“Our research suggests that future hurricanes could drop significantly more rain,” said Ethan Gutmann, NCAR scientist and lead scientist for this study, in an NSF press release.

Imagine Hurricane Harvey, a storm that produced more than 60 inches of rain over southeastern Texas following a stall just inland of the coastline, producing even more rainfall and moving even slower. Harvey caused $125 billion in damage and losses largely due to its catastrophic rainfall, according to the National Hurricane Center.

"This study shows that the number of strong hurricanes, as a percent of total hurricanes each year, may increase," Ed Bensman, a program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, said in the press release.

2008's Hurricane Ike, one of the simulated hurricanes, produced 13 percent stronger winds in this study.

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There were a couple of questions that this study was not able to answer.

For instance, in this simulated future climate, the authors did not find out how a warmer environment would affect the birth of a cyclone, known as cyclogenesis. Other recent research suggests that cyclogenesis might become more difficult for atmospheric disturbances like tropical waves in the warmer regime due to increased wind shear and a more stable atmosphere.

The authors also did not answer why these simulations found stronger, wetter and slower hurricanes. These questions may be unclear, but some may be easier to answer.

In particular, hurricane movement, which in the grand scheme of the world's weather is dictated by the movement of heat from the tropics to the poles, would be slowed if there was less of a difference between heat content in the tropics versus the higher latitudes. Hurricanes would be in less of a rush to deposit tropical heat in the polar regions if there was more warmth there already.