In a revealing new report, scientists have determined that human-induced climate change significantly intensified the destructive winds and torrential rains brought by Hurricane Melissa. This analysis, released on Thursday, illustrates how rising temperatures and humidity levels fueled this formidable storm.

Hurricane Melissa ranks among the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes to strike land, wreaking havoc across Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba. The storm left a trail of devastation, resulting in dozens of fatalities throughout the Caribbean. It caused widespread damage, ripping roofs off homes, damaging hospitals, blocking roads with landslides, and devastating crop fields.

The study, conducted by World Weather Attribution, indicated that climate change contributed to increasing Melissa’s peak wind speeds by 7% and made the storm’s rainfall 16% more intense. Researchers also noted that the conditions of increased temperature and humidity, which fueled the storm’s growth, were six times more likely due to climate change than in a pre-industrial era.

Rapid attribution analyses are specialized studies that assess the factors driving extreme weather events, comparing them to scenarios in a climate without human influence. These studies are typically released within days or weeks following such events to provide timely insights.

As Melissa slowly moved through the region, it absorbed vast amounts of energy from unusually warm ocean waters. The report highlighted that the ocean temperatures along Melissa’s path through the Caribbean were approximately 1.4°C (2.5°F) warmer than they would have been in a pre-industrial climate.

“Warmer ocean temperatures are effectively the engine that drives a hurricane … the warmer the ocean temperatures, the greater the wind speed a hurricane can have,” said Theodore Keeping, a climate scientist who works for WWA and contributed to the analysis.

Melissa is the fourth storm in the Atlantic this year to undergo rapid intensification, which is when a tropical cyclone’s maximum sustained winds increase by at least 30 knots (about 35 mph or 56 kph) in 24 hours.

“A hurricane this rare would actually have had wind speeds about 10 mph (16 kph) less extreme” in a pre-industrial climate, said Keeping. He said research links hurricane wind speeds to economic damage and there would have been less destruction caused by Melissa if the winds were slower.

Scientists have linked rapid intensification of hurricanes in the Atlantic to human-caused climate change. Planet-warming gases released by humans, such as carbon dioxide, cause the atmosphere to hold more water vapor and increase ocean temperatures. Warmer oceans give hurricanes fuel to unleash more rain and strengthen more quickly.

“It’s like basically taking a sponge and wringing it out, and climate change is making that sponge even larger,” said Brian Tang, a professor of atmospheric science at University at Albany.

Tang, who was not involved in the WWA research, said the methodology of the study released Thursday seems robust, and one of the more novel aspects of the analysis was the connection the scientists drew between wind speeds and increase in damage, which he said is a challenging area of research.

Andrew Dessler, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, who was not involved in the WWA research, said the findings of the rapid analysis are in line with existing research about climate change and tropical storms in the Atlantic. “This is completely consistent with our expectation of what’s going to happen in the future,” Dessler said.

Rapid attribution analyses help fill the need for an explanation about the influence of climate change shortly after a catastrophic weather event occurs, said Dessler. He said such analyses are “very valuable as a quick look” before the scientists are able to do more time-consuming calculations.

Dessler said one of the scariest aspects of Melissa was the storm’s peak sustained winds of 185 mph (298 kph) winds. “That’s pretty rare to have a storm that strong. And I think that, to the extent that this is a harbinger of the future, it’s not good,” he said.

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