Climate change made 2020 hurricanes rainier

Climate change made 2020 hurricanes rainier

This GOES-16 East GeoColor satellite image taken Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2021, at 2:20 p.m. EDT, and provided by NOAA, shows Hurricane Larry in the Atlantic Ocean. The National Weather Service is warning that swells from Hurricane Larry will create dangerous rip current conditions. (NOAA via AP)

(AP)- Human-caused climate change made the record-smashing 2020 Atlantic hurricane season even wetter. A new study on the record busy hurricane year found it was 5% rainier than it would have been had their been no global warming from the burning of fossil fuels. There were a record 30 named storms in 2020 and 11 of them — also a record — made landfall in the United States. The first study to look for a climate change fingerprint on an entire hurricane season found that the storms that reached hurricane status were 8% wetter. Scientists compared the reality to a computer simulated world without climate change.

Photo: This GOES-16 East GeoColor satellite image taken Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2021, at 2:20 p.m. EDT, and provided by NOAA, shows Hurricane Larry in the Atlantic Ocean. (NOAA via AP)