If you live on the coast

 

Important Science paper on hurricane risk.  After Ida, everyone living on the southern East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico coast needs to be aware of this (as do our elected representatives and government employees concerned with natural hazards and disasters).

Increased U.S. coastal hurricane risk under climate change

ABSTRACT

Several pathways for how climate change may influence the U.S. coastal hurricane risk have been proposed, but the physical mechanisms and possible connections between various pathways remain unclear. Here, future projections of hurricane activity (1980–2100), downscaled from multiple climate models using a synthetic hurricane model, show an enhanced hurricane frequency for the Gulf and lower East coast regions. The increase in coastal hurricane frequency is driven primarily by changes in steering flow, which can be attributed to the development of an upper-level cyclonic circulation over the western Atlantic. The latter is part of the baroclinic stationary Rossby waves forced mainly by increased diabatic heating in the eastern tropical Pacific, a robust signal across the multimodel ensemble. Last, these heating changes also play a key role in decreasing wind shear near the U.S. coast, further aggravating coastal hurricane risk enhanced by the physically connected steering flow changes.

Climate change deniers won't like this.

Especially if they live in Florida.

Here's how this increased risk works.

Fig. 6. Schematic illustration of the main mechanisms of coastal hurricane frequency (CHF) changes identified in this study. As the climate warms, an increase in CHF for the U.S. Gulf and lower East coasts is projected to occur and is driven primarily by changes in steering flow. The strengthening upper tropospheric cyclonic circulation above the western Atlantic plays a pivotal role in the steering flow changes. Also, the contrasting upper- and lower-level circulation anomalies reduce the vertical wind shear near the U.S. coastal regions. These changes in circulation can be regarded as a response to the projected increases in diabatic heating and warmer sea surface temperature (SST) over the eastern tropical Pacific, which is a robust signal across the phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) multimodel ensemble.