Hurricane Isaias Is ‘First’ To Exhibit Signs Of ‘Climate Change’

Hurricane Isaias made landfall in Destin, Florida, on October 9, already at blistering Category 2 strength and 105 MPH (or 165 km/h), and climate change has worsened it.

This doubled the damage the catastrophic hurricane wrought. Climate Central, a climate research group, issued a press release in which Dr. Daniel Gilford, meteorologist and climate scientist, gave a dire assessment.

“The first hurricane of the season clearly shows the fingerprints of climate change,” he said.  

The overall damage wasn’t just higher, but the probabilities were as well. The western and central Gulf of Mexico have a 600 times higher chance of hurricanes due to human-caused climate change, meaning the waters over which Isaias formed were 800 times more likely.

Before this happened, there was a climate change summit in Fiji last Monday. The summit in question was aimed at another danger, which was how changing temperatures affect births.

The United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell said, ”Climate-driven extreme heat during pregnancy is increasingly linked to premature birth, stillbirth, low birth weight, and maternal complications.” Steill also cited  research conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

In addition, while climate change at first glance appears to affect a few key aspects of life, the charity Plan International has noted myriad other forms of crises linked to the problem.

“Economic stress caused by droughts, floods, and crop failures pushes families into harmful coping strategies,” Plan International reported, meanwhile UNICEF claimed, “The practice of child marriage has continued to decline globally. Today, one in five young women aged 20 to 24 years were married as children versus nearly one in four 10 years ago.” 

The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) stated that by 2050, there could be 1.2 billion climate refugees that are fleeing from uninhabitable land. 

“Over one billion people live in 31 countries where the country’s resilience is unlikely to sufficiently withstand the impact of ecological events by 2050, contributing to mass population displacement,” IEP explained.

Furthermore, it goes on to add that a key struggle is “[W]orsening food insecurity and competition over resources, increasing civil unrest and mass displacement, exposing developed countries to increased influxes of refugees.”

Fiji’s climate minister, Lynda Tabula, urged a “just transition” to assist countries that will be hit the hardest by climate change. 

To combat this, affected countries have asked for funds for those in desperate situations, including the European Union, the United States of America, and the United Arab Emirates.

A U.N. adaptation report released in August found countries in need required $310 billion to $365 billion to cope, yet as of 2023, they have only received $26 billion, less than 20% of the necessary amounts to adapt to changing circumstances.