At least 24 people were killed by storms that hit eight U.S. states in early April. A study released this week says that climate change made those storms much worse.
A climate science group called World Weather Attribution found that the record-breaking rains were about 9% stronger because of global warming caused by humans. Strong storms damaged farms, homes, and roads.
It rained a record amount in Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and other states from April 3 to April 6. The storms moved through the Midwest and South. The study found that the four days of rain were the wettest ever seen in the area. The storm got stronger in part because the Gulf of Mexico’s sea surface temperatures were about 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than average because of climate change, the study found.
This made the storms 14 times more likely, according to the WWA study.
The researchers said that tough predictions and early warnings probably kept the damage from being too bad, but they are worried about what will happen because the National Weather Service is still short-staffed.
According to Fredi Otto, one of the report’s authors, a co-founder of World Weather Attribution, and a senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute in Imperial College London, many of its field offices are under a lot of pressure. Almost half of those offices now have vacancy rates of over 20%, and 30 of those offices don’t have a senior meteorologist.
To keep people safe, these offices are in charge of sending out real-time warnings and working with disaster management.
It’s also becoming clear that climate change is putting a lot of stress on insurance markets as bad weather happens more often. Insurance rates are already going up a lot for people who live in places with a lot of risk. This is because insurance companies are having to adapt to the higher risk.
“We think that insurance rates have gone up by an average of $1,100 in the top 20% of the riskiest zip codes from 2020 to 2024,” said Ben Keys, co-author of the study and a professor of real estate and finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, in a call with reporters.
Researchers say that extreme weather will get even worse and happen more often if we don’t quickly move away from fossil fuels.
The study says that four-day rain events like the ones that happened in early April could become 7% stronger and twice as likely if global warming reaches 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit). This is what researchers with World Weather Attribution think will happen by the year 2100 if things keep going the way they are.
“It’s really a moment for us to understand what this means not only now but also for the future,” Shel Winkley, a weather and climate engagement expert for the nonprofit news group Climate Central and a co-author of the study, said on the call. When events happen right after each other, what does that mean for these places? What does that mean for where we rebuild, how we rebuild, or whether we rebuild? Will this be a place where people can live in the future? And if it is, how do we make sure that it’s livable and safe?”