Hurricane Beryl, the first of what promises to be an extraordinary season in the North Atlantic, has already left scientists speechless by gaining intensity very quickly and becoming very powerful so early in the year.
While it broke several records, it also happens to be a perfect example of what experts predict will be more likely due to climate change. Here are the main characteristics of this hurricane and their main reason: a much warmer than normal ocean.
Formed far from the coast
Beryl formed off the southeast coast of the Antilles on Friday and quickly became a Category 1 hurricane on Saturday.
It formed “much further east in the Atlantic than is typical for this time of year,” Andra Garner, a climatologist at Rowan University, told AFP. This is related, she said, to the current temperature of the Atlantic Ocean, which is not usually warm enough in these areas at this time of year to allow such a storm to form.
“We’ve never had a hurricane form this far east, this early in the year,” Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami, wrote on his blog.
Rapid intensification
Hurricane Beryl then intensified very quickly, in less than a day, into a major Category 4 hurricane.
“It’s hard to express how incredible this is,” said Brian McNoldy.
But while it’s “surprising to see this happening right before our eyes,” it’s also “consistent with what science tells us we can expect from a warmer world,” said Andra Garner, who published a study on the intensifying phenomenon.
“Over the last 50 years, we’ve seen that it’s now more than twice as likely for hurricanes to go from a relatively weak storm — Category 1 or lower — to a major hurricane, Category 3 or higher, in the space of 24 hours,” she said. “That’s what Beryl did.”
The most powerful so early
Beryl was upgraded to Category 4 on Sunday, the last day of June. A hurricane of this category has never been recorded in June before.
The hurricane then reached Category 5 strength on Monday, breaking the record for the earliest hurricane of that category in the season by two weeks, experts said.
Hurricane season runs from early June to late November in the North Atlantic. But according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the first major hurricanes (category 3 and above) usually begin to form in late August or early September.
The culprit: the overheating Atlantic
The main culprit is the temperature of the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, which have been at record levels for more than a year.
“When we wake up in the morning, we have a cup of caffeinated coffee to get us going,” says Garner. “The warm waters of a hurricane are kind of like the caffeine in our coffee, it helps the storm get going and get stronger.”
Waters in the North Atlantic, as well as the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, are currently 1°C to 3°C above normal, according to NOAA. Temperatures in May were already close to those expected in August.
So, even if Beryl is “unprecedented”, “I cannot say that it is unexpected from a scientific point of view”, underlines the expert.
“We know that when we warm the planet and the oceans, we make these kinds of events more likely,” she adds, pointing to human greenhouse gas emissions. “Beryl is almost exactly what we would expect from a climate science perspective.”