A hurricane is a powerful storm that brings destructive winds, rain, and storm surge. The strength of a hurricane is usually defined by its strength, or maximum sustained wind speed. Hurricanes generally strengthen gradually and then decay, but their strength can fluctuate over their lifetime due to a variety of factors.
Hurricanes can sometimes develop rapidly. By definition, this would give him a development of 35 knots, or 40 mph, in a 24-hour time frame. To give you an idea of ​​how fast this intensification is, 35 knots is the difference between a Category 1 hurricane and a Category 3 hurricane. Extremely rapid intensification can be particularly dangerous, especially if the rapid intensification occurs shortly before landfall, as there is not much time to evacuate coastal areas exposed to weather-related hazards.
Unfortunately, just last week, this is exactly what happened as Hurricane Otis reached Category 5 strength just before making landfall near Acapulco, Mexico. Otis exhibited the most extreme rate of intensification ever observed. Around midnight on October 24, Otis became a weak tropical storm with an intensity of 50 knots. Just 24 hours later, Hurricane Otis became a Category 5 hurricane with a strength of 145 knots. This corresponds to an increased speed of 95 knots in 24 hours. This is almost three times faster than the common definition of rapid acceleration.
A frequently asked question is whether rapidly intensifying phenomena like Otis will occur more frequently as the planet warms. Although this is still a topic of active research, models generally predict that rapid intensification events will become more frequent due to greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, and recent research suggests that Atlantic hurricane intensification rate increases are allowed. One possible explanation is that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions are warming the oceans and making atmospheric conditions more suitable for the rapid intensification of hurricanes.
Unfortunately, the bad news doesn’t end there. In general, rapid intensification events are very difficult to predict. In fact, Otis was his one extreme example. Most notably, All commonly used hurricane models failed to predict Otis’ rapid intensification into a major hurricane. The spectacular failure of our hurricane models in predicting Otis’ intensification will need to be analyzed in a post-mortem study. Either way, the increasing frequency of rapidly intensifying events suggests that global warming may make hurricanes more difficult to predict. Unfortunately, this is the current state of affairs, and it only increases the need to strengthen the resilience of coastal communities around the world.