Deadly Hurricane Beryl Marks Exceptionally Early Start to Atlantic Hurricane Season As Experts Blame Ocean Warming

“The very dangerous and destructive Hurricane Beryl has come and has gone, and it has left in its weak immense destruction, pain, suffering,” the Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, one of the most affected islands, said on Monday.

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Hurricane Beryl roared across the Windward Islands in the Caribbean on Monday as an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 hurricane, leaving one dead, downing power lines, and flooding streets.

It made landfall on Grenada’s Carriacou Island in the Caribbean Sea, leaving a trail of destruction in its path. In a briefing broadcast on social media, Grenada Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said the island had been “flattened” in just half an hour, knocking down trees and power lines and leaving “widespread … destruction and devastation.” A person was reportedly killed in the capital St. George as a tree fell on a house.

At least another death was reported in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, where hundreds of homes and infrastructure have been damaged. “The very dangerous and destructive Hurricane Beryl has come and has gone, and it has left in its weak immense destruction, pain, suffering,” Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said in a live broadcast on social media, warning that the number of fatalities could increase.

“We have no electricity, and while I am talking to you, the rain is beating on the official prime minister’s residence, and the winds are howling. And it’s going to get much worse,” Gonsalves said. “The coming hours are going to be horrendous.”

Beryl – which packed winds up to 155 mph (250 km/h), just 2 mph short of a Category 5 hurricane – is expected to remain an “extremely dangerous major hurricane” as it moves over the eastern Caribbean, eyeing Jamaica, according to a bulletin released Monday evening by the US National Hurricane Center (NHC).

Above-Average Hurricane Season

In May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warned that this year’s Atlantic hurricane season will likely be “above-normal,” owing to near-record ocean heat and La Niña condition. If true, the predictions would make this year the ninth consecutive to see an above-normal hurricane season, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

La Niña, a phenomenon that typically occurs every 3 to 5 years, is expected to develop between July and September this year. It is associated with the periodic cooling of ocean surface temperatures in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific, weaker Atlantic trade winds and less atmospheric stability, conditions that are conductive to Atlantic hurricane activity.

The US-based weather agency predicts a range of 17 to 25 named storms (wind speed of 39 mph or 65 km/h) this year, eight to 13 of which are forecast to become hurricanes (wind speed of 74 mph or 119 km/h). Of these, 4 to 7 are forecast to be major hurricanes. The latter can be classified as category 3, 4, or 5 depending on wind speed, with the highest level assigned to storms with winds blowing at a speed of at least 157 mph or 252 km/h. An average year sees 14 named storms.

Hurricanes – also known as typhoons in the northwestern Pacific and cyclones in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific – are a rather common weather phenomenon, though there has been a significant increase in their intensity in recent decades, which scientific observations link to anthropogenic climate change. These abnormal trends are attributed largely to the increased ocean temperatures. As ocean surfaces warm, so does the air above it, causing water to be carried up to high altitudes to form clouds, while leaving a low pressure zone beneath causing more air to rush in. As these systems build up, thunderstorms are formed, and if there are no strong winds to slow it down, they can become hurricanes. While the number of hurricanes is not necessarily increasing, those that do form are becoming more destructive – generating heavier rain and a higher storm surge.

According to a paper published last year, the 1971 Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale, the most widely recognized risk assessment method for tropical cyclones, which classifies hurricanes into five categories based on their sustained winds, is no longer accurate in measuring the climate change-driven exponential increase in winds.

According to the authors, the fact that the scale is open-ended – meaning that anything beyond 157 mph or 252 km/h is classified as Category 5 and assigned the same level of wind hazard – reflects a flaw in the system, no matter if it is blowing 160 mph (257 km/h), like 2022 Hurricane Ian in the US, or 215 mph (346 km/h), like Mexico’s 2015 Hurricane Patricia. For this reason, they suggested adding a hypothetical new category – Category 6 – to the scale, which would reflect the wind speed that has already been reached in a number of storms that happened in the last decade, including Typhoon Haiyan (2013), Typhoon Meranti (2016), Typhoon Goni (2020), and Typhoon Surigae (2021) in the Western Pacific and Hurricane Patricia (2015) in the Eastern Pacific.

A 2020 analysis of satellite records from 1979 to 2017 found that the likelihood of a storm reaching Category 3 or above, with sustained winds of 185 km/h, increased by 8% per decade. In 2023, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) confirmed these observations, arguing that the proportion of Category 3-5 tropical cyclones as well as the frequency of rapid intensification events have likely increased globally over the past four decades. And with our atmosphere and oceans set to continue warming in the coming years as the climate crisis intensifies, there is little doubt that wind speeds will also progressively strengthen.