USA: How a warming world may have caused Hurricane Florence to stall

Source(s): PBS NewsHour, MacNeil/Lehrer Productions

By Miles O'Brien

[...]

The really extraordinary thing about this storm wasn't the wind category when it hit the coast. It was the fact that it stalled out, enabling it to dump days of tremendous rainfall in places like North Carolina. So there's a growing body of evidence that this may be related with climate change.

[...]

Weather systems are pushed by steering currents like the jet stream, which is fueled in part by the temperature difference, or gradient, between the Arctic and the Tropics.

Climate change is causing the poles to warm faster than the Tropics, reducing the temperature gradient. And that reduces the energy that drives the currents, slowing them and weather systems down.

[...]

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Hazards Cyclone
Country and region United States of America
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