We heard plenty about Hurricane Melissa, the monster storm that hit Jamaica in late October with 185-mile-an-hour winds and flooding, causing roughly 100 deaths across the Caribbean. Headlines screamed that climate change was to blame. Attribution studies quickly followed, concluding that human-induced warming made Melissa more likely and worse.
These analyses typically run climate models simulating the world as it is today, with elevated sea-surface temperatures, and compare them with a hypothetical preindustrial world with cooler oceans. If a hurricane is more likely in the former scenario than in the latter, the conclusion is that climate change made the hurricane more likely. Generally, climate change increased the likelihood of about three-quarters of hurricanes, floods and droughts and other events studied worldwide.
But notice what’s missing from the coverage. A New York Times article in October highlighted hurricanes “turning away from the East Coast,” noting 12 named storms so far but only one minor tropical storm brushing the U.S. This was framed as welcome relief, with the misses attributed to atmospheric steering patterns like the Bermuda high-pressure system.
Not once did the piece invoke climate change. The journalists seem to believe that climate change can cause only bad outcomes. If warmer oceans energize storms, couldn’t they also influence other meteorological phenomena that diverted this year’s hurricanes harmlessly out to sea? No one ran the models to check. No professors lined up for quotes.'
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