HurricanesFuture Texas Hurricanes: Fast Like Ike or Slow Like Harvey?
Climate change will intensify winds that steer hurricanes north over Texas, increasing the odds for fast-moving storms like 2008’s Ike compared with slow-movers like 2017’s Harvey, according to new research.
Climate change will intensify winds that steer hurricanes north over Texas in the final 25 years of this century, increasing the odds for fast-moving storms like 2008’s Ike compared with slow-movers like 2017’s Harvey, according to new research.
The study published online 3 July in Nature Communications examined regional atmospheric wind patterns that are likely to exist over Texas from 2075-2100 as Earth’s climate changes due to increased greenhouse emissions.
The research began in Houston as Harvey deluged the city with 30-40 inches of rain over five days. Rice University researchers riding out the storm began collaborating with colleagues from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) and Harvard University to explore whether climate change would increase the likelihood of slow-moving rainmakers like Harvey.
“We find that the probability of having strong northward steering winds will increase with climate change, meaning hurricanes over Texas will be more likely to move like Ike than Harvey,” said study lead author Pedram Hassanzadeh of Rice.
Rice notes that Harvey caused an estimated $125 billion in damage, matching 2005’s Katrina as the costliest hurricane in U.S. history. Ike was marked by coastal flooding and high winds that caused $38 billion damage across several states. It was the second-costliest U.S. hurricane at the time and has since moved to sixth. Ike struck Galveston around 2 a.m. 13 Sepember 2008, crossed Texas in less than one day and caused record power outages from Arkansas to Ohio on 14 September.
Hassanzadeh, a fluid dynamicist, atmospheric modeler and assistant professor of both mechanical engineering and Earth, environmental and planetary sciences, said the findings don’t suggest that slow-moving storms like Harvey won’t happen in late 21st century. Rather, they suggest that storms during the period will be more likely to be fast-moving than slow-moving. The study found the chances that a Texas hurricane will be fast-moving as opposed to slow-moving will rise by about 50 percent in the last quarter of the 21st century compared with the final quarter of the 20th century.
